In the long list of things to be worried about, make sure to make some space for disinformation

I have been pretty deeply immersed in the topic of disinformation security for the last four years. Researching and writing the book “World Without Truth” with my wonderful co-authors Andrew Frank and Richard Hunter. Collaborating with and learning from colleagues like Leigh McMullen, Tom Turcan, Apeksha Kaushik, Akif Khan, Owen Pengelly, David Senf, Dymah P., Laurie Shotton, Alistair Newton, Avivah Litan, Svetlana Sicular, Amber Boyes, Patryck Allen. Talking to hundreds of governments, public and private sector clients and vendors around the world. And last year and this year participating in the fascinating Cambridge Disinformation Summit organized by Alan Jagolinzer. The short story is: be afraid, be very afraid. It’s not an extension of cyber-security. It’s not a minor functional challenge. It is a cross-cutting, multidisciplinary, trillion dollar threat to the global economy. It’s a meta-issue in that swimming in a sea of disinformation (as we increasingly are) means it’s harder to make progress on every other issue, and whilst there are lots of awesome tools and techniques to help, disinformation security is not yet a mature discipline. Here are a few things I picked up in Cambridge last week that might tantalize you (with thanks to the various speakers from the event): *The wonderful terms ‘Angertainment’ (infotainment designed to create anger), ‘Agnotology’ (the study of deliberately producing ignorance and doubt), ‘Stochastic Terrorism’ (those who have access to large online audiences mobilizing them to damage a target). *The idea that misinformation, disinformation and mainformation should not be our sole focus. Other tactics like ‘flooding the channel’ or creating very attractive narratives to distract (I would like to coin the term ‘Informational Honeypots’ for this) are equally scary and effective. *A significant amount of disinformation targets vulnerable and minority groups. Disinformation targeting women and children is a big worry. *There is strong evidence suggesting that disinformation often leads to other bad things, like physical violence. The good news is that there are more and more great vendors, tools, techniques, laws and educational opportunities to fight back against disinformation. But that is only good news if we understand and use them. Please talk to my colleagues and I about this important topic. And remember that our book World Without Truth makes an excellent late Easter/ Passover/ Chinese New Year/ Songkran present ;) Link in the first comment below. #WorldWithoutTruth #Disinformation #Deepfakes