Transcripts For CSPAN2 Aspen Security Forum Discussion On Te

CSPAN2 Aspen Security Forum Discussion On Technology Disinformation July 12, 2024

2020th election. This is also from the Aspen Security Forum. Welcome back everyone after that very short break. Were very happy to be back now and what doing a bit of a change in direction. You already heard this morning about modernizing the defense department. You heard from john bolton. You would from u. N. Ambassador kelly craft. Now we are turning west to Silicon Valley, and we have panel for you on technology and democracy actually going to dive into all of the complex things that either individual actors or nationstates are doing to influence social media, start disinformation campaigns and how that is impacting our democracy. To have that panel we have with us Laura Rosenberger who is i think with us here. I see her in the room. She isnt the director of the alliance for security democracy and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the united states. Previously she was a Foreign Policy advisor for hillary for america where she coordinated the Clinton Campaign to National Security policy. Prior to that laura served in aa range of positions in the state department and the white house at the National Security council. Cecilia kang is here to interview, and she covers Technology Policy and politics for the New York Times. Many of you will know her from her hardhitting interviews pictures present senior tech reporter at the Washington Post and began her career in journalism as the pure chief of dow jones newswire in seoul north korea so were very happy to have her here with us. Also have renee derosa, who is the Technical Research manager at the stanford internet observatory where she and i teach together, and renee has been an amazing amount of work on how Different Actors exert influence online, under baptist activists promoting Health Disinformation in conspiracy theres all the way to state actors. Renee also was asked by the Senate Intelligence committee to lead an outside Team Investigating the Russian Internet Research Agencies multitier efforts to interfere in our election 2016 so we really have Nothing Better than lower and renee to talk on this important topic, and another important thing if i can say this, renee is with us even though she is scheduled to have a baby later this week so were particularly grateful to her for making the time. Without i will turn over to cecilia. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, anja. And i agree we could not have two better people to talk on this topic, and yes, thank you renee, especially for joining us. I will tell you there was little bit of a lastminute will she make it, will she make it kind of we knew you would and boy are we pleased. Thank you again lower every night for joining laura for joining. Putting together this panel, there so much that has happened over even lets six months we can almost think about disinformation precovid pandemic and post covid pandemic. A lot of the assessor directly, theres a lot of the disinformation that is rounded the covid virus is related to the election in some ways nothing much related to the election but disinformation was of great concern for voters and candidates, government officials and Technology Platforms ahead of the election. Experts were seeing new tactics by foreign state actors and do threats by domestic actors. The exercises had grown more sophisticated and broader reached, and Silicon Valley public it things in some ways by creating differing policies about speech and addressing conflict removal and check faxing and then the pandemic kick and covid became a new battleground for disinformation. Fueled by foreign actors as well as domestic. And then adding to this this ye rise in popularity of new platforms and technologies and tools. And it all seems like a sort of perfect storm. I know that cliche is overused but it does seem apt in this situation. So that is at the scene setting and where to begin here we thought about lets Start Talking about the election and then we can talk more broadly about the more recent disinformation campaigns and transit you are seeing. I thought i would start with you, laura and ask you we are less than three months from november 3 from election day and can you tell us at this point what are your greatest concerns around Election Security and disinformation . And are they different concerns than perhaps you might of had around the 2016 campaign . Thanks cecilia. Its so great to be with you and with renee to have the support conversation. Thanks for that which really laid out the degree to which this is a complex and dynamic and evolving face. The thing i like you do in terms of addressing the question but election is take a step back a bit. Sometimes when we think about disinformation or threats to democracy just in terms of elections we often miss the Bigger Picture at play. One of the goals especially the foreign actors that i spent so much time looking at is not necessarily just about changing or manipulating and election outcome. That might be one part of it for some actors but a bigger part of it for actors like moscow, beijing, tehran, author returns are using Information Space or jew political purposes is actually to undermine and weaken democracy itself. Its to make people trust the institutions less. Its to make people and less faith in the preparation. Its really to undermine the sense of truth itself. A lot of times what we see in the information manipulation space is not necessarily about driving any particular narrative. Its not always that information that is quantifiably true or false. Its about really undermining that faith and Democratic Institutions and that sense of democratic governance delivering for people. To apply that to the election context the thing that worries me most is so much of that perfect storm that you laid out so many of those dynamics are aimed at making people have less faith in their government, making people of less faith in democracy, something that is delivery, have less data news media, inc. Information to getting about the health. I worry deeply that coupled with questions about how an election would be pulled off in the pandemic, all the changes were seeing to how the election is going to be run, all the questions being raised by some actors were acting i think in less than good faith about what mailin balloting might look at and whether it is vulnerable. I worry about not just about the process leading up to the elections but the night after, the day after. That it will be an effort to really so doubt about the integrity and the process itself and make people question whether they can have trust and faith in it. Understanding the election as part of that bigger perfect formula you just let that is exactly what we need to be doing, and bearing in mind how the focus needs to be on sure sg up these institutions, resilience, peoples faith in quality Information Sources so were less foldable to these manipulative tactics. Renee, that was certainly some of the findings in your research rep the 2016 election of the tactics by the ira. A lot of it was to undermine sense of truth, trusted institution, trust in government, trusted society really. What are you also seeing, for so in response to a lower is saying but also what are using that may be different this time around . Are you seeing for example, russia deployed different tactics, maybe expand the way they have distributed through their campaigns . What are your observations today compared to back then when you were studying it so intently . A lot of things aboard understand is think about the social media system not as some [inaudible] the idea of influence operations if you think about the history of propaganda, influence its always good at in the most technological platform of the time whether television or radio. Theres an incorporation of human agencies influence in undermine society. Anyone who has watched the americans testing the way in which russian actors interface with civil activists who were highlighting and calling attention to very real tensions in american society. A lot of the way we think about this is internet of system and a part of one more broadbased tool of influence capabilities. When you think about it in that regard what we should expect to see if any time the rules are change the adversaries should evolve so they can overcome that change. One example of this would be in the immediate aftermath of us getting understood what happened in 2016 facebook ads became topic of conversation. In response to the recognition rush had, in fact, run ads, what we started to see was facebook begin to make changes they now we will verify your identity, verify, send a postcard home to your address so you have to prove who you are you say you are. This is not an insurmountable check for us this get state actor but it does add more question to that system. When we see the formations investigation teams, Publicprivate Partnerships like at stanford would do work with the Platform Companies in identifying campaigns, what yu see is the evolution of the tactics. A lot of folks became operations of the context of an authentic behavior. One of the things my team saw was the rise of this group in africa russian activities in africa targeting african local politics in which they hired locals. Instead of state identities run out of st. Petersburg what you start to see was one or two real people who were incorporated into the operation. We dont know to what extent they were living or not living at that franchise endeavored eo local actors makes it harder for the platform to decide to take down the entire page because there is some grain of authenticity there. When, in fact, these pages came down extraordinary article about how the sensors at stanford were silencing the voice of real africans. This is the reaction you get when these pages condemned. Facebook is of course preventing these very real people from exercising their right to speak on the platform. Thats a hard narrative to counter short of saying like youre meticulously laid out is our assessment of the operation and how we attributed the way we did and Extensive Research that went into that to justify the taken. What matters is for some percentage of people who believe that needy ecosystem it is ultimately an egregious overreach of censorship. We will get to this more about the struggle are the challenges that poses for the platforms themselves when you are testing the rules and the guidelines with these real individuals that are being used as part of this platform. So well get to that as well but that is a great example of the new tactics. Laura, and you talk about around february and march the pandemic really, the noble coronavirus became a real thing globally. The pandemic was realized as a huge phenomenon. What then did you start observing in terms of disinformation . Particularly by foreign actors as well as domestic around disinformation with the virus . Absolutely. I think i will probably leave most of the domestic peace to renee because shes got Deeper Research the special of the coronavirus on the domestic side. On the foreign actor side i will highlight mostly what we saw the most interesting story i think for me in februarymarch was coming out of beijing. Im going to pass on a definition point which a sound bear with me. Im not going to talk about this in terms of disinformation per se. Im going to talk about information manipulation. Disinformation is classically defined as deliberately falsely information. The vast majority of what we see in the broader information ecosystem is not necessarily something that falls into that space. Theres a whole range of tactics we can talk about. Disinformation is one of them but i use the term information manipulation to talk sort of broadly speaking about some of these tactics that we see that disinformation is one piece appeared thats particularly important in the china context because the Chinese Party taxes have starkly been different than what we had seen from the actor like moscow. That they comes a bit from their geopolitical positions. Putin in russia is an objectively declining power that is becoming weaker and weaker on a whole host of geopolitical and geoeconomic measures. Beijing is an objectively rising power, and so while putins interests are a much sort of shorterterm and much less sort of reputation only involve much less reputational risk. For beijing if your kind to cultivate yourself as a partner and a leader in a chill political player in the specific weight its a different risk calculus. What that is smith was historically we have seen most of the changes party see manipulation strategies focus on amplify, creating an apple find content that was positive about the Chinese Communist party and suppressing or deny Information Space that did want to occupy them. It does that through censorship but also other forms of algorithmic suppression and other kinds of measures. This is very much a part of the strategy internally in terms of what we hear about with the great firewall of china which has technical and legal components two. We have seen shining as a external strategy has become more assertive and it is gained interest more broadly expanding its strategy outside of its borders. What we really saw around februarymarch of the issue with covid was an acceleration of the trains with courtesy over the past year, which is both chinese officials with their foreign minister, of the parts of their official bureaucracy as well as party backed media becoming much more aggressive and use of information. Taking on some tactics that action look a little more russian. Its important to be clear there are still significant differences in weight these actors engage in Information Space but one of the things we saw, things like a departure from past practice from chinese actors, these are all really aimed around what i would characterize acting out of insecurity. The party early on in its response to the Coronavirus Crisis was really seeking to deflect blame from itself for its own initial failings in dealing with the virus. The Chinese Government was being blamed by the u. S. And others for allowing it to get out of control and deflecting blame was a big piece of it. We saw a few different pieces come into play that appear to be new elements of the Chinese Party manipulation strategy. The first is very aggressive engagement on western official media platforms particularly twitter by chinese officials. What the chinese themselves warrior diplomacy. Much more aggressive trolling like tactics that weve seen evolve over the past few months. The second piece of it is the spreading of actual disinformation come in particular about the origin of the virus. In part we saw a few different narratives about with the origin of the virus might have been an resolve coordinated campaigns to promote those different narratives using material from conspiracy three websites that form a sort of central part of the prokremlin disinformation ecosystem. That also felt like a different and something that had similars to activities within from mosca when it sought to deflect blame from sub of the poison of of the downing of the airliner over eastern ukraine. One of the Big Questions is whether this is a permanent departure and do phase tactic or whether this is an apparition of testing and trying out new things. But thats just a few of the dynamics weve seen over the past few months in particular with that china has engage around coronavirus information. Its fascinating to make in their taking some cues from the russian playbook, at the same time renee, you just publishea really fascinating report on sort of the ecosystem of chinas information apparatus and how it goes back so far in history. To have an established playbook online and offline, and can you talk about which observations are combining what laura just competing off what laura was just thing about the sort of [inaudible] ive lost you right in the middle of the question. You are back, okay. It you know what is going. I was going toward your research that was just published last week where you talk about you give a really fascinating look at the ecosystem information sort of tactics by the Chinese Government dovetailing of what laura was saying on the new tactics they are deploying that look similar to what russia was doing over the last few years, would love to hear from you what you found in your study and also can you give us a sense of how threatening the chinese information sort of apparatus is when it comes to and im glad you distinguished the vocabulary, information manipulation as well as disinformation. Sure. The work that we did we have a project that serves as a double entendre because we chose coronavirus apart because it allowed us to have one of the few months in history where the entire world has been talking about the same thing. That doesnt happen very often. When governments, authoritarian governments have justified their existence and when massive numbers of people are dying, and so we looked at russia, china around saudi arabia, the u. S. , some not limited to authoritarians, i think venezuela is next up on deck, so we have a pretty broad assessment of how states and using both media and social media and then covert tactics. Thats been the framework we have tried to use. More broadly for maybe the last just almost a year now we try to understand social media as yet one more channel and influence operation or Information Operation writ large. The wor

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