We hear so much about disinformation, but
do we even know what disinformation is?
What's the connection between disinformation
and data?
It has a profound impact on our society, our
elections, this concept of fake news.
That's our topic on CXOTalk today, and we
have two experts on the show to talk about
it.
Brett Horvath, who is the founder of Gardians.ai.
Hey, Brett.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me on, Michael.
Brett, tell us about Guardians.ai and tell
us about your work.
Guardians.ai's mission is to protect pro-democracy
groups around the world dealing with information
warfare and what we call engineered volatility.
What we mean by engineered volatility is efforts
to interfere in open markets, elections, culture,
and media.
We've been doing this quietly for about three
years and really run into all sorts of interesting
use cases around the public sector and the
private sector.
It's been an interesting ride.
Excellent.
Well, I can't wait to learn more.
Our second guest and my guest host and a subject
matter expert on this topic is David Bray.
David, welcome back to CXOTalk.
Thank you, Michael.
It's great to be here and actually be joining
with Brett to have great conversations about
what we can do to address the polarizing social
wedges being produced through a combination
of disinformation and taking information out
of context.
All right.
To begin, Brett, let me ask you to kick it
off.
When we talk about disinformation, what exactly
do we mean?
I think disinformation is a great starting
point.
Fake news isn't really the right lens to look
at it because disinformation can start with
something that wasn't intentionally false
but turns into something that confuses lots
of people.
When things are taken out of context, that
is the polarizing social wedge that we face
and the challenges that we face in addressing
this.
What Guardians.ai has been doing is they've
been tracking the data behind this as a way
for the data … (indiscernible, 00:02:12)
in terms of what they're looking for and what
they're trying to address.
When we talk about disinformation, David,
give us some examples.
Sure.
In Europe, we've seen the Yellow Vest Phenomenon
as an example where that was something that
may have been initially produced virally.
But really what made it sort of go accelerate
was when a combination of automated accounts
and intentional actors tried to inflame both
sides of the Yellow Vest Phenomenon debate.
They took pictures out of context, text out
of context, and tried to … (indiscernible,
00:02:48).
Brett, do you have additional thoughts about
examples of where disinformation or taking
information out of context has been weaponized?
Yeah.
I think there are some key themes that come
up.
With disinformation, all things that are old
are new again, efforts to really focus on
racially divisive narratives, and spreading
division amongst different groups of people
online.
We saw that a lot in 2015 and 2016.
It's not just an American phenomenon.
It happens all over Europe in relation to
elections.
We're seeing that happen a lot right now in
the U.S.
We saw groups of accounts on Twitter that
were foreign-based and coordinated, pushing
racially divisive narratives that started
to increase in activity starting in February
and March, but they're really starting to
light up right now in a big way.
We're trying to keep our eye on them and see,
how far will they go; what groups are they
targeting?
Racially divisive narratives, I think, is
one of the most important places to keep your
eye on.
It's not just about politics.
We're seeing these groups of accounts go after
banks and tech companies, so it's interesting.
Brett, a question: It used to be, back in
2012 or so, that you could fairly tell whether
it was a bot or not simply because the bot
never slept whereas humans had to sleep.
As soon as that became sort of publicly known
as a tell to detect bots, in 2013, then they
started actually having the actual programming
to have the automated account that's spreading
tons of information to actually sleep for
eight hours and then come back on.
Could you talk a little bit about the data
behind how you detect if this looks like this
is something that's being intentionally done
as disinformation or intentionally as a polarizing
social wedge?
That's a great question.
There are a lot of bot detector stories and
studies that are trying to map very simple
things like, are accounts retweeting each
other or is it very obvious linguistic tics?
That's just not sufficient anymore.
Bad actors have evolved their tactics significantly
and not only emulate humans but hide amongst
real human users and get them engaged in their
own patterns of coordination.
From our standpoint, you can't rely on automated
solutions alone.
We call it the fallacy of the one big net.
Everyone wants to have one big net of data
and then rely on magical, automated anomaly
detection.
The problem is those are really narrow algorithms
designed with a very narrow intent.
Over time, they have what we call analytical
debt.
It's like buying a new car.
It loses value as soon as you drive it off
the lot.
[Laughter]
Combining human-level analysis and ethnography
with machine systems and automated detection
and then building learning loops between them,
from our standpoint, is the only real way
to solve it.
Definitely be skeptical of anyone promising
one tech, one automated solution because they're
probably not going to be able to keep up with
the pace of innovation of Russia or China's
entire information warfare infrastructure.
What about the issue of scalability?
If we have to use human mechanisms in addition
to algorithmic detection, then how is combatting
this even possible?
Well, this really gets at the challenges and
the limitations of top-down, command and control
approaches to managing information warfare,
either identification analysis or response.
You can have the most well-funded, well run,
top-down organization, but you're going to
be overwhelmed with what is really nonlinear
information warfare that are tactics that
people haven't seen before.
That combination of human-level analysis and
machine systems, we call those augmented intelligence
workflows.
The whole idea is, they're tech agnostic or
they can be.
They're extensible where you can partner with
peers in your industry, a volunteer association,
or an NGO.
We've found that when it's the really nasty
stuff, it's pretty rare that one organization
can fight it alone.
These augmented intelligence workflows allow
you to rapidly spin up new ways of identification
and analysis with partners, either in a one-off
basis or in a sustained manner.
It's really trying to get serious about that
whole collaboration thing and getting outside
of the top-down hierarchy because, no matter
how big, cool, and well-funded your organization
is, you're probably not going to be able to
stay up with the rate of innovation.
David, I think maybe you can share some insight
into the approaches.
Sure.
With the People-Centered Internet that I work
with as Executive Director, we're working
with Guardians.ai and other groups that are
trying to do counter disinformation, counter
misinformation.
The techniques really are as Brett mentioned.
There's no one single way to detect this.
If people claim that or if they say it can
simply be done by one simple solution, that's
not the reality and that actually hasn't been
the reality probably since 2013, 2014.
As Brett mentioned, they're getting much more
advanced in terms of how they adapt and shift.
I know that he's had cases where he identifies
something as appearing to be automated.
Then when someone goes to follow up, be it
a journalist or someone else, on those accounts,
all of a sudden, the accounts shift and they
actually have real people behind those accounts
for that time period.
Then they switch back to some automated fashion.
It really is almost like being a detective
of sorts, which is, you're looking for different
tells.
You're using the data to try and drive that.
It's moving things up or down the probability
curve that this is not a natural human phenomenon,
whether it's in terms of just the sheer volume
or it's in terms of patterns where certain
accounts are only doing other accounts.
It's actually got to be a multifactorial approach
to look at this because it can't be done by
one single bullet alone.
The reason why the People-Centered Internet
cares about this is because we really want
the Internet to be a source of hope for people
much like how it was in the mid-'90s where
it was intended to actually uplift lives,
help reach greater understanding and greater
truth, but now we see it dividing ourselves.
Really, the reason why we find partnering
with Guardians.ai and other groups so valuable
is this is the needed almost public health,
almost epidemiology-like approach, which is
recognizing that this is all of us, including
the public, and what we choose to post that
contribute to this phenomenon.
Brett, we're actually wondering.
Could you actually tell a little bit more
about what you and your team at Guardians.ai
did when you were examining the attempt to
claim that there may or may not have been
election interference with the midterms in
2018?
Could you talk about how did you actually
sort of proceed in that investigation?
We were looking for things that other people
were not spotting.
There was a lot of new kind of bot detector
systems and research.
What we found just by poking around, looking
for strange anomalies, is a group of accounts
that were coordinating around voter fraud
narratives for over three years.
They were co-spiking at bizarrely similar
intervals that looked like an EKG machine
for three years.
Then right around late summer, we realized
that they started surging.
They went from zero mentions in one day to
all of a sudden getting 10,000 mentions.
No one was detecting this because pretty much
everyone's sensor networks were built around
monitoring retweets and were bots retweeting
each other.
This slight shift in tactics from retweet
for amplification to mentions meant that almost
everyone missed what ended up being one of
the largest influence attacks on the 2018
midterms.
How we were able to identify these things
that weren't picked up by bot detectors, were
coordinating in this different way, we had
to spin up this augmented intelligence workflow
with our company, a group of volunteer researchers,
and then the San Diego Super Computing Center
and two academic institutions to figure out
what was going on, spin up different analytical
loops, and then do it faster and faster.
That was the only way we were able to find
that.
I don't think any one organization could have
identified this influence attack.
That collaborative approach isn't just good
for the whole of society and democracy.
Everyone who was involved learned a lot that
was valuable from a business standpoint, from
an innovation and technique standpoint.
But that was a pretty scary thing because,
towards the end, those accounts were the biggest
source pushing the caravan crisis and they
were fusing this distrust of democracy with
these racially charged narratives claiming
that, essentially, millions of people coming
in from the caravan crisis were going to vote
illegally in close senate races.
That fusion of distrust in democracy and racially
charged narratives, that's a common thing.
We saw it in 2016.
We saw it in 2018.
Now we're seeing it again this year.
The issue then is one of collaboration in
terms of solution.
The issue is one of detection first and then
collaboration, but that raises the question.
When you say collaboration, who; who needs
to collaborate and who is going to help them?
How are they going to get that organized?
Collaboration really is thinking about, as
Brett showed, thinking about what was … (indiscernible,
00:12:28) as a polarizing social wedge with
election interference in 2018 that no one
organization spotted, it really is recognizing
that you have to collaborate not just within
your company but also with academia, as he
mentioned.
There are approaches to this, also with other
research institutions, recognizing that there
is a balance between involving the private
sector and the public sector.
A lot of these polarizing social wedge efforts
that are being done, whoever is actually doing
it, are trying to actually inflame divides
across different groups.
Really, they're trying to paralyze us because
we're so divided or we're seeing each other
that we can't actually work together, we can't
trust each other, that that is to them a win.
Oftentimes, it really is about coming forward
and saying, "Look.
We're trying to do the best we can in whatever
situation this is."
As he mentioned, initially, people hadn't
even spotted these things that had been going
on for three years.
It was only when Guardians.ai looked at enough
of the data to see that there were these very
abnormal spikes that seemed to be happening
at very odd, coincidental times.
It wasn't necessarily a telltale signature,
a fingerprint, or something forensic.
It was just simply looking at the spikes and
the signatures.
That, one, to me suggests that you need a
"many eyes approach" that is looking for the
nonobvious, not just the obvious, because
if it's obvious, it may very well be whoever
is doing the social wedge wants you to cue
in on the obvious and be distracted by that.
Instead, they want you to look for what are
the nonobvious social wedges that are these
spikes or coinciding time sequences and then
actually, from there, begin to have a greater
conversation about, what else are we seeing?
What else could this be?
What else is going on here?
It's just recognizing that a lot of these
begin with identifying something that's not
obvious, involving enough of the partners,
and then drilling down into the data so that
you can go further in.
I think that's what makes Guardians.ai so
important is it really is a team effort.
What Brett is doing is really collaborative
across different groups.
Brett, tell us about that collaboration.
One of the things that I was getting to is
that, inside of an organization, it's looking
at this not just as a communications problem
or a cybersecurity problem.
The first act you can do that can be transformative
is building the bridges between risk, cybersecurity,
and communications.
You get a similar taxonomy of what are the
things we're seeing.
One of the first problems is, some smart person
in one of those divisions is seeing something
weird and they don't know what to call it,
what to name it, and who to send the, "This
is weird," email to.
Establishing that shared taxonomy and then
how you get that up to executive decision
making is really important.
If your organization is treating information
anomalies and influence attacks as something
kind of mid-level management and not rising
to the top level, you're probably going to
be missing some significant business risks
or opportunities because these things are
not isolated to one part of the business operation.
It's not just social media.
What happens on social media doesn't stay
there.
Sometimes these social media influence attacks
are designed to actually lead to phishing
attacks to get into CTOs' or CEOs' accounts.
If you don't have those lines of communication
between risk and the coms team, you're going
to be missing out.
We have a question from Twitter.
Sal Rasa is asking about the application to
healthcare and protecting healthcare data
and sharing of data between physicians, clinicians,
and patients.
Any thoughts on that intersection?
I think there is a lot of specific, near term
things.
One item I'll say is that I think it's important
to understand that, as people get really engaged
and some might argue addicted to certain social
media applications or Facebook groups that
are designed to be targeting their amygdala,
their sense of fear, like anti-vaxxer movements,
that starts to have a physiological effect.
You think about a Russian active measure targeting
a group of people, getting them to change
their digital behavior to think about not
vaccinating their kids.
They don't vaccinate their kids.
Then there are measurable, real-world health
outcomes.
Thinking about that risk on a unified, biological,
and information continuum I think is a starting
point to both analyzing near term risks and
then also thinking about what are the health
effects.
I think we need to really move this beyond
politics and not discuss, are these accounts
targeting left or right-leaning people.
Therefore, is it good or bad?
This is something, information warfare, disinformation,
whatever you want to call it, it's a public
health crisis that affects all of us.
If we can start to measure these things scientifically
from a health standpoint, I think that the
health tech community and the public health
sector could have a lot of important business
innovation and public good that they could
do in this space.
I just want to emphasize what Brett just said.
That's a very tangible example of how using
people's anger and fear on social media, which
is designed to have you come back and use
it.
Unfortunately, the platforms have designed
themselves to be habit-forming.
In the case of the antivaccine movement, have
mobilized people that are now taking rather
extreme views and are now resulting in actual
measles showing up in the United States.
This is a case where the realm of disinformation
has now actually had physical effects on a
nation.
It's an interesting example of the reality.
As the physiology changes in terms of as you
get exposed to this disinformation, what happens
is more facts will not change your views or
you lose that relating to that other person
on the other end as being a fellow human being.
That's true as well for those that are trying
to deal with trying to bridge these groups
together is, you have to embody what President
Lincoln said, which is, "I do not like that
person.
I must get to know them better."
What happens as a result of these different
activities with disinformation is, we lose
empathy.
That will affect both our mental health and
our physiology of our health.
It's also recognizing that the way you tackle
this is really hard because, again, more and
more research shows just providing facts will
not change people's opinions.
If anything, it'll make them dig down further
and look for their extreme views to be confirmed
- confirmation bias.
Saying X is not true, nobody remembers the
… (indiscernible, 00:19:10).
They just remember the … (indiscernible,
00:19:12).
This is very much like a new field of public
health, whether it's called cognitive public
health or what.
We need to figure out, especially for open
societies, how can the social media platforms,
the news platforms, the corporations, the
public sector or the private sector, NGOs
all work together for this because, if we
don't, we may find ourselves becoming more
autocracies of thought that will then eventually
lead to more autocracies of societies as a
whole.
Brett, let me change gears slightly here.
When we talk about disinformation or you used
the term information warfare, obviously there's
a strong data component to all of this.
Is it really a matter of data scientists fighting
data scientists?
Is that the situation we're in today?
I think data science is an important part
of it, but I think it's really about who can
spin up the best learning teams.
Usually, the ones that win and evolve are
the interdisciplinary learning teams that
are organized from a culture and operations
standpoint to optimize for learning.
That's the part about machine learning people
often forget is the learning thing.
Humans who are learning are the ones that
encode their learning instincts into those
systems.
Whether it's AI or augmented intelligence
that combines human and machine learning,
I think, if you want to win what could be
arguably called a war of cognition, how you
structure cultures of learning or accelerating
learning cultures, embed those into effective
technical systems and then build learning,
virtuous learning loops between them, those
are the groups that win.
Right now, authoritarians have an advantage
in this space because of how they're concentrating
data.
In the case of China or Russia, they have
coordination between their public sector,
their militaries, and their companies.
But this is where open societies, I think,
can re-exert their advantage is diversity
of thought, open ideas, innovation.
That is where it's not just relying on command
and control.
We have to lean into our advantages and make
the most of them.
Open, diverse, interdisciplinary cultures
and societies can learn better, faster, deeper
if we do it right and do it intentionally.
Brett, have these groups ever come after you?
Have you ever actually experienced it yourself
where they've actually directed a disinformation
attack because maybe you uncovered or exposed
something they didn't want to have exposed?
Have they come after you and tried to do the
same thing?
Oh, yeah.
That's been a fun part of the journey.
When we exposed these group of accounts promoting
these voter fraud and racially charged narratives
in 2018, we thought there'd be some blowback
because it was a national story when we exposed
it, but nothing happened even though we had
taken over the hashtags they were coordinating
for a couple of years.
But then Politico came to us in February and
said, "Could you see any activity going on
in the 2020 presidential race?"
We saw these same group of accounts were driving
the vast majority of the conversation on Twitter.
They were foreign accounts, most of them,
and so we exposed it.
It went around like crazy.
I went on TV.
The reporter went on TV.
Then, all of a sudden, for two weeks, we had
50,000 to 200,000 accounts coming at us.
They were accusing me of being at the center
of a transatlantic conspiracy.
They strung together my college volunteering
for a microfinance org with some guy I know
who was a Silicon Valley investor.
Then Q of QAnon, who is this figure that is
very influential in the conspiratorial Web,
posted on 8Chan saying that I and Guardians.ai
were factious trying to silence the voice
of patriotic Americans.
Q's whole army came at us and we got lawsuit
threats and death threats on our phone, and
the reporter did.
We had our data partners getting attacked
by hackers.
That was pretty scary for a little bit.
I do want to emphasize that what Brett is
sharing is not an isolated case.
This is something that there are different
teams within the United States, within Europe,
North America.
We're also seeing some show up in Australia
and other parts of Southeast Asia.
This is something that needs to be a rallying
call for those individuals who are willing
to commit to the combination of data science
plus almost like gumshoe detective work and,
ultimately, empathy.
You've heard Brett talk about cognition and
public health.
I come from a background that included bioterrorism
preparedness and response.
At the time, we were dealing with invisible
biological agents.
How do you know if the information you're
getting is the whole set of what really has
occurred, the whole set of the facts, or is
it being taken out of context?
The challenge is, with the Internet, we've
removed geography.
Now, anybody and everybody can deliver you
information that may make you feel good or
may play to your belief system and likes,
but you don't know if it's being taken out
of context or if it's meant to polarize you
even further and make you part of this challenge.
This is something that I think, much like
how we had to grapple with how the world was
changing as we became more connected, people
started traveling overseas, you had to deal
with public health and infectious diseases
that were now spreading from different parts
of the world because of the connectivity.
It's not that we say we didn't want to be
connected.
Now that we are connected both physically
but also through the Internet, it's requiring
public sector and private sector organizations
to find new ways of working together if we're
still going to stay open in this society.
When Brett comes back, I think it'll be interesting
for him to talk a little bit about, yes, he
had sort of that group come after him as a
result of what he showed, but how he can move
forward, be more resilient as a result of
it, and how this is something that any individual
organization or community can do as they move
forward together.
Yeah, Brett.
It'd be very interesting to hear about that
and, at the same time, can you address, Brett,
the issue of, are we really talking here about
data-driven lying at scale?
Is that a good way to summarize it?
That's part of it is the data-driven lying.
I think it's really about making people feel
validated, that their world view is real and
then building this kind of tone of interaction
of self-validating thoughts and ideas.
One of the key things that information warfare
plays off of, or disinformation, I don't think
is necessarily lies but it's loneliness.
If you have a narrative you can offer or a
sense of connection, you know, very toxic
people spreading divisive stuff on Reddit,
a lot of lonely young men who feel disaffected.
That's part of it.
Now, in relation to what you do about getting
attacked and how you build more resilience,
I think one of them is you expect the attacks
to happen and you plan for it.
Bad actors are laying all sorts of traps trying
to get people to engage.
Well, when Q came after us, we kind of expected
that something like that might happen.
We had no idea it would be that big, but it's
hard to map these things by getting historical
data from Twitter.
It takes an act of legal and bureaucratic
sorcery to get historical data.
If you expect it when it's coming, you can
capture so much data.
So, when Q attacked us, we had worked with
all of our partners to know what are the keywords,
the networks, et cetera, where they're going
to come at us.
It was kind of like, on a rainy day, we just
let the floodwaters come into our reservoirs
and we built this great, glorious map of the
conspiratorial Web, both foreign and domestic.
We turned the attack by Q into an asset.
Having that antifragile approach where you're
not just resilient to attack but, when you're
attacked, it makes you and your community
allies stronger, I think is a really important
part of good strategy and tactics in this
space.
I think the key to what Brett just showed
is, it is about almost like jujutsu of taking
whatever energy is thrown your way and finding
a way to then find benefit from it.
He said a little bit earlier it's about making
folks recognize that this is not something
about, is it just the left that's having this
happen or just the political right that's
having this happen?
It's really about all of us are experiencing
this.
The interesting thing that Brett has experienced,
that I have experienced, that others that
are working in this space have experienced,
there are some countries, more so in Europe
or up in other parts of North America, that
are more progressive in recognizing that this
is a whole of society challenge.
We here in the United States, for whatever
reason, still seem stuck in different groups
thinking that disinformation only affects
them and they're not reaching across and recognizing
that there is actually disinformation being
done on the other side too to try and almost
throw water on a grease fire to try and make
it even worse.
For societies that are still in that infancy
stage of trying to address this challenge,
I think the one thing I would ask from a People-Centered
Internet perspective is, it's about all of
us and it's about all of us addressing this
together and recognizing that it's not just
one side or the other side.
All sides are being intentionally trying to
be divided.
As Brett mentioned, it's about trying to then
figure out, from that, how we can be more
resilient and more resolving as we go forward
in addressing these issues.
One of the things I would say as an example
of countries that are more forward-leaning,
we've seen what's called the Latvian elves.
The Latvian elves were developed to stand
up against the trolls.
Basically, these are efforts that say, again,
it's not about trying to get your community
rallying.
If you're feeling righteous indignation, that's
probably a case of where someone has polarized
you such, through social media or the news
that you've been presented, that you're no
longer thinking rationally about it and you're
no longer open to having the different facts
be considered in their full context.
That's what really the Latvian elves are trying
to do in Latvia.
We're seeing the same things in Estonia and
Finland.
They obviously have to do that because of
their neighbors that they have to deal with
that are larger that may be doing these sort
of things to them.
Looking for more community-based solutions,
that's really what we're trying to seek for
here as we move forward.
David, what's the solution?
How do we address these issues?
Is that too large a problem?
I don't think anything is ever too large a
problem.
I mean that's what I like to do is sort of
rush in and try and grapple with it even if
it's messy and complex.
I think Brett would agree.
It starts with first just having conversations
about this, greater awareness, and getting
different perspectives on the issues, diversity
and variety of perspectives will make us stronger.
Two, it's saying, "What are the community-centric
approaches that are collaborative?" because
no one organization or no one group is going
to solve this by themselves.
I think the place that gives me peace is that
the solution starts with a mindset of understanding
that a lot of the goals of these efforts are
to divide us, to make us afraid of one another.
Once you realize that, it actually really
feels great where folks in the early 2000s
that I would have thought were my political
enemies, actually, we can be allies because
we have a shared threat and we have a shared
opportunity.
We actually start this in a strategic and
tactical framework we developed over three
years.
It starts with three very simple protocols,
which is really a way of approaching this
space whether you're a member of the public,
a CEO, or a skilled practitioner.
It's three things.
One is to elevate the conversation usually
through increased self-awareness.
If you want to elevate the conversation, increase
your own self-awareness of your organization,
your own biases, how you're getting targeted,
et cetera.
Number two is, find the common cause.
Finding the common cause is a great source
of surprising dividends in power, the people
who know how to do it, because we're in a
time of political and economic weirding, so
there are new coalitions and new opportunities.
The third is to listen for, discover, create,
and share the most effective tactics available.
Whatever you think works, whatever you think
your assumptions are, find the most effective
tactics available, and that's meta.
We call it the meta-framework.
Elevate the conversation, find the common
cause, and look for and create those most
effective tactics available.
If you just keep coming back to that, it's
actually, day-to-day, you end up finding new
allies, mobilizing your team in a different
way, and you see it as an opportunity for
discovery while you're also trying to find
some really powerful weapons to take out some
bad guys if that's the case.
What advice do you have for people?
Let's just go down a list.
Let's start with people in corporations.
Let me ask you both.
I think, with corporations, it's recognizing
that this is a very real issue and, as Brett
mentioned, it's no one part of your organization
that can solve it.
It's not just the IT department.
it's not just communications.
It's not just marketing.
It's really got to be elevated to the C-suite
and the board.
The more that the C-Suite and the board can
have conversations about this as the new reality
and this is occurring, and it's going to happen
whenever you're going to be doing something
that might be an opportunity for people to
just polarize and divide things either in
a country or divide things in your marketplace,
the advice would be to just elevate this board-level
conversation.
Yeah.
I couldn't agree with David more.
I was talking with someone the other day and
said, "I don't imagine myself as waterproof
to influence."
A lot of these campaigns, they target getting
inside the social media loops or the conversations
and discussions of CTOs and CEOs just to change
one little thought on an issue.
You have to be thinking of this, fundamentally,
as risk and something that cuts across all
of your business divisions and opportunities.
I would totally agree with that on the corporation
side.
All right.
Let's go on to journalists and media.
How should they be dealing with disinformation?
David, let's hit you up first.
I think that's an interesting question because
the challenge is how do they even know what
they're pulling from social media or they're
pulling from sources is the full context or
not necessarily even being targeted.
We just saw this week, unfortunately, there's
a case where neo-Nazis are actually targeting
specific journalists with doxing and so that's
a weaponization.
I think, for the media, it really is just
recognizing, be skeptical.
But also, wherever possible, and I think this
is just good practice, try to get all different
perspectives and try to do something that's
a nuanced article that is not inflammatory
of your readers.
Now, the challenge I think we face is that
we're seeing print subscriptions decline and
a lot of what's driving media now is the advertising
base model.
The challenge is, we know that, unfortunately,
this gets to the other problem, which is,
we as people don't tend to read longer, nuanced
articles or we don't read past the headline.
This may even mean that we need a new model
of funding journalists and funneling media
in a way that allows them to write the in-depth
stories they need to write with necessarily
having unconscious or subconscious biases
to making things more polarizing and inflammatory.
David, I know you spend a lot of time with
folks in the government and so, what advice
do you have for leaders, department heads,
and business decision-makers inside the government?
In this case, elevate it to the highest levels
of the executive branch and legislative branch
to recognize this as a challenge.
It would also go further to say, public service
by its nature is very visible and very open.
If it's working well, it needs to be open.
The challenge is that that then gives all
these different opportunities for weaponization
by those people who want to do things that
are divisive, take things out of context,
and create disinformation.
For those leaders, it's actually the same
as with corporations, which is, elevate this
as a risk conversation.
Also, elevate this as a conversation that
it shouldn't be a conversation where you're
trying to point fingers or point blame.
You're trying to actually encourage an always
learning organization where, as Brett mentioned,
the midlevel or the worker that sees something
that's going on that's odd has the ability
to elevate it and say, "I'm seeing something
that's odd.
It may be something.
Maybe we need to focus on it.
Maybe we need to address it."
More importantly, you're in an "always learning
in the public sector" mode.
Then, finally, engage the public in these
conversations that this is a concern for all
open societies, all open nations because,
if not, again, we will become autocracies
of thought and, ultimately, autocracies in
reality too.
Brett, your thoughts on advice for both folks
working in the government, not necessarily
elected officials but people in the government,
as well as for journalists and what they should
be doing in relation to these issues.
I think it starts with a common piece of advice
for both, which is realizing you're in a domain
of intelligence, agencies, influence operations,
et cetera.
For journalists, the rules of investigative
reporting and trying to figure out what's
going on are very different and, especially
with where the state of news media is, you're
just not going to have the resources you need.
Part of the approach that we've developed,
we call it an asymmetric strategic and tactical
framework because, no matter how big you are,
you're not going to have enough resources
to fight back against nation-states or corrupt
international interests.
Learning how to say, if you're a journalist
even at the New York Times in a small outfit,
you need to figure out how to spin up the
right coalition of partners to help you out,
how to make them aligned, and that Aikido
approach of thinking, now can you use the
energy that's already in motion to your favor.
That asymmetric approach is the only way you're
really going to be able to address that problem.
We've trained journalists to do this.
We've worked with journalists in coalitions,
both here and abroad.
As a reporter, you're trying to build up.
You're spinning up a research project.
Journalists are actually really good people
to bring involved because every time they
do a story it's a different learning process.
It's a different learning community.
The ones that stick around learn some good
heuristics and tactics.
Now, for governments, even though you're big,
you've got to think in the same asymmetric
terms.
If you're a big agency or a big military,
it's going to be hard to marshal enough tactics,
forces, and resources all at once.
You've got partner, and you've got to find
those most effective tactics available because
it's cliché in business books, but the best
ideas are probably not inside of your organization's
walls.
What are you going to do about getting those,
vetting those, and incorporating those as
fast as possible and then also partnering
with people that can execute on them that
aren't on your payroll?
That's kind of the mandate of an accelerating
information warfare or disinformation environment.
Finally, as we finish up, let me ask both
of you for your concluding thoughts.
We have just a couple of minutes left.
David, let me turn it over to you.
The one group we didn't talk about is all
of us as members of the public and members
of different communities.
Really, the ask would be the Internet, in
some respects, and this new medium.
We didn't even talk about it, what could easily
be another show, the fact that some of these
things have been around since the 1890s.
We had concerns about Yellow Journalism.
Remember the Maine incident which may or may
not have contributed to causing the Spanish
American War.
What's new with these new technologies involving
the Internet, artificial intelligence, automation,
we have to recognize that we, as humans, have
a responsibility to think before we either
like, to retweet or repost something, to add
emotion to something online.
I'm not saying you shouldn't do it if it's
something, a cause you believe in, but think
about what you're doing because you may be
throwing gasoline on that fire or grease on
that grease fire and making it even worse.
At the end of the day, it comes upon all of
us.
Again, embodying that quote from President
Lincoln, which said, "I do not like that person.
I must get to know them better."
If there could be one appeal, it could be,
think about community-centered approaches
that embrace the diversity of open society
and the diversity of thought and, at the same
time, have empathy to those people that you
may not initially agree with but you can actually
find some way to move forward.
Try to find a big enough tent wherever possible.
Guardians.ai, if people search on eh Web,
you obviously won't find a big footprint,
but you will find some articles about them.
If folks are interested in engaging with Guardians.ai
or engaging with the People-Centered Internet
Coalition, we do have a website, peoplecentered.net.
We do welcome people to get involved with
this community because, at the end of the
day, it really is about community-centered
approaches to this.
What we may be discovering is, we may have
spent the last 20 to 30 years developing tighter
integrations, but we've missed the needed
thing for the next decade, which is, can we
develop technologies that empower a diversity
of community to work together, play together,
and live together in a better way?
Brett, any final, very, very fast thoughts
from you before we end?
Yeah.
Define the common cause with people you wouldn't
ordinarily think about working with.
Diversity of thought as a way to learn faster
and better is one of our greatest strengths.
These technologies that kind of get us in
our own little filter bubble and these influence
campaigns that try and divide us further,
if you can invert that and learn from a lot
of different sources and partner, whether
it's in business or to protect a community
or country, that's a great source of power.
That's a driver of innovation and how I think
the public fights back and wins to defend
open societies.
All right, I think we are just about out of
time.
We've been speaking with Brett Horvath from
Guardians.ai, and we've been talking with
David Bray, who is the executive director
of People-Centered Internet.
Gentlemen, thank you so much.
I hope we'll come back and do it again.
Thanks for having us, Michael.
Thank you.
Everybody, thank you for watching.
Be sure to subscribe on YouTube and hit the
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