Future planning and defenses
Ardis, J. & SD Keene (2018) Maintaining Information Dominance in Complex Environments. Available online
If the U.S. Army is to secure and maintain information dominance in all environments, it must exploit complexity and uncertainty in the battlespace and not simply seek to overcome it. Innovation requires that new ideas are considered, and that old ideas should be robustly challenged. To achieve and maintain information dominance, the U.S. Army will also require a significant injection of innovation, a robust and resilient C2 and intelligence capability, novel technologies and an accelerated information operations capability development program that is broad, deep, sustained and well-coordinated.
Bardon, Adrian. (2020) The truth about denial: bias and self-deception in science, politics, and religion. Available in print
People believe what they want to believe. It is a striking-yet all too familiar-fact about human beings that our belief-forming processes can be so distorted by fears, desires, and prejudices that an otherwise sensible person may sincerely uphold a false claim about the world despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When group interests, creeds, or dogmas are threatened by unwelcome factual information, biased thinking can become ideological denialism. This is a problem that affects everybody: Whereas denial can interfere with individual well-being, ideological denialism can stand in the way of urgent advancements in public policy.
Brotherton, Rob. (2020) Suspicious minds: why we believe conspiracy theories. Available in print
Brotherton explores the history and consequences of conspiracism and delves into the research that offers insights into why so many of us are drawn to implausible, unproven and unproveable conspiracy theories. They resonate with some of our brain's built-in quirks and foibles, and tap into some of our deepest desires, fears, and assumptions about the world.
Brotherton, Rob. (2020) Bad news: why we fall for fake news. Available in print
Today we carry the news with us, getting instant alerts about events around the globe. And yet despite this unprecedented abundance of information, it seems increasingly difficult to know what's true and what's not. In Bad News, Rob Brotherton delves into the psychology of news, reviewing how psychological research can help navigate this post-truth world. Which buzzwords describe psychological reality, and which are empty sound bites? How much of this news is unprecedented, and how much is business as usual?
Hwang, Tim. (2019) Maneuver and Manipulation: On the Military Strategy of Online Information Warfare (SSI and Army War College Advancing strategic thought series). Available online
Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election has focused the public's attention on the threats posed by coordinated campaigns of propaganda and disinformation and have also raised concerns around the broader challenge posed by the emergence of a 'post-fact society.’ Platforms such as Facebook and Google had a significant role in facilitating Russian propaganda efforts, incentivizing the distribution of false information, and encouraging the creation of extremist 'filter bubbles.' As the defense community develops its approach to countering present-day online propaganda and disinformation techniques, it will need to place concerns around immediate threats into a broader understanding of the nature of the challenge.
Jankowicz, Nina. (2020) How to lose the information war: Russia, fake news, and the future of conflict. Available in print
Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? Central and Eastern European states, however, have been aware of the threat for years. The book details the campaigns the Russian operatives run and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them; and it shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.
Kilcullen, David. (2020) The dragons and the snakes: how the rest learned to fight the West. Available in print
Eminent soldier-scholar David Kilcullen asks how, and what, opponents of the West have learned during the last quarter-century of conflict. He explains what happened to the "snakes"-non-state threats including terrorists and guerrillas-and the "dragons"-state-based competitors such as Russia and China. He explores how enemies learn under conditions of conflict, and examines how Western dominance over a very particular, narrowly-defined form of warfare since the Cold War has created a fitness landscape that forces adversaries to adapt in ways that present serious new challenges to America and its allies. Within the world's contemporary conflict zones, Kilcullen argues, state and non-state threats have increasingly come to resemble each other, with states adopting non-state techniques and non-state actors now able to access levels of precision and lethal weapon systems once only available to governments.
Stengel, Richard. (2019) Information wars: how we lost the global battle against disinformation & what we can do about it. Available in print
In February of 2013, Richard Stengel, the former editor-in-chief of Time, joined the Obama administration as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Within days, two shocking events made world-wide headlines: ISIS executed American journalist James Foley on a graphic video seen by tens of millions, and Vladimir Putin's "little green men"--Russian special forces--invaded Crimea, amid a blizzard of Russian denials and false flags. What these events had in common besides their violent lawlessness is that they were the opening salvos in a new era of global information war, where countries and non-state actors use social media and disinformation to create their own narratives and undermine anyone who opposes them. Stengel was thrust onto the front lines of this battle as he was tasked with responding to the relentless weaponizing of information and grievance by ISIS, Russia, China, and others.
Walker, Robert. (2019) Combating Strategic Weapons of Influence on Social Media. Available online
This thesis provides an overview of how the Russian Federation deploys strategic weapons of influence through social media with the intent to weaken the United States. The thesis asserts that these influence weapons are a direct threat to U.S. national security and have not been completely neutralized by present countermeasures. The Kremlin's continued propagation of socially corrosive, divisive narratives over social media highlights the need for an improved response capability that includes cognitive defenses and a government-housed alert mechanism.
Weiss, Andrew. (2020) The Dark Side of Our Digital World: And What You Can Do About It. Available in eBook
The book explores the issues raised by the negative side of information technology, including surveillance and spying, declining privacy, information overload, surveillance capitalism and big data analytics, conspiracy theories and fake news, misinformation and disinformation, trolling and phishing. What's ultimately at stake is how we are able to cope with increasingly invasive anti-social behaviors, the overall decline of privacy in the face of total surveillance technologies, and the lack of a quality online experience that doesn't devolve into flame wars and insults. The future of the internet as well as our societies depends upon our ability to discern truth from lies and reality from propaganda.