Social Media is ‘First Tool’ of 21st-Century Warfare, U.S. Lawmaker Says
Social Media is 'First Tool' of 21st-Century Warfare, U.S. Lawmaker Says by Jack Corrigan – Defense One
One lawmaker believes Russia’s use of social media to influence last year’s election demonstrated how warfare has moved away from the battlefield and toward the internet.
And the U.S. has been slow to adjust, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said Thursday.
“We may have in America the best 20th-century military that money can buy, but we’re increasingly in a world where cyber vulnerability, misinformation and disinformation may be the tools of conflict,” Warner said at The Atlantic’s Washington Ideas fest produced by Atlantic Media, which is Nextgov‘s parent company. “What we may have seen are the first tools of 21st-century disinformation.”
As vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Warner has helped lead one of the congressional investigations into the Russian meddling in the 2016 election. During a public interview with The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons, he gave updates on the progress of the investigation and stressed the importance of social media companies helping Congress understand the extent of Russia’s involvement.
According to Warner, there are three things the committee knows to be true: Russia hacked both political parties and used that information in President Donald Trump’s favor; Russia attacked but didn’t fully break into the voter registration systems of 21 states; Russia used paid advertising and fake accounts on social media to disseminate misinformation to voters…
But it is just a tool. The important thing is the strategy that exploits it and then of course understanding and exposing that strategy. Here is a summary of some of things I have been thinking about this:
The open societies of the US and free and democratic nations are being subverted by active measures and propaganda to undermine political processes and sow cultural and political divisions to allow the closed societies of revisionist and revolutionary powers to dominate in international affairs. The way to counter this effort is through a grass roots resistance movement that consists of an educated, activist, energetic, and empowered youth who seek to be part of something larger than themselves and validate their self-worth as disruptors of the status quo. However, the closed societies are challenging their ability to disrupt because active measures and propaganda have taken away their initiative. A new grass roots movement, a cyber underground, organized around special operations principles could create a nationwide and global network that will seek out, identify, understand, and expose active measures and propaganda from closed societies in order to protect free and open societies. In short, our nation wide youth of disruptors could channel their abilities to beat the revisionist and revolutionary disruptors. The exposure of adversary active measures and propaganda can inoculate the population against adversary effects and render their efforts ineffective and useless. This movement will help to restore and sustain what George Kennan termed the “health and vigor of our own society” that is the vital antidote to the subversive threats that we face.
COL Maxwell, below, tells us: “But it (social media?) is just a tool. The important thing is the strategy that exploits it and then of course understanding and exposing that strategy.
Thus, as per COL Maxwell’s thought above, the following — re: understanding and exposing of our enemies’ strategy (or grand strategy?) — is offered:
BEGIN QUOTE
In an unanticipated twist, and in an irony of history, influential authoritarian powers, led by China and Russia, have forged their own version of containment in the post–Cold War era. But it turns Kennan’s ideas about tyranny upside down, seeking to contain the spread of democracy rather than the growth of totalitarianism. …
As the resurgence of authoritarian power has gathered momentum in recent years, some observers have taken comfort in the fact that the regimes in Beijing, Moscow, and elsewhere have not actively sought to promote their own systems as governance models. There has been little or no effort to create a policy of “autocracy promotion.” The fact that these regimes are not seeking to export an ideology of authoritarianism has made the West less likely to worry about their mobilization against democracy, including the powerful propaganda machines they have assembled. But it is a mistake not to take seriously the effectiveness of their strategy of containing what they fear and do not possess: democratic legitimacy.
At the Cold War’s end, the West pursued a policy of engagement in the hope that interlocking relationships would encourage undemocratic partners to adopt basic democratic standards, and that market-oriented trade and development would inevitably lead to political liberalization. The leading authoritarian regimes have confounded such hopes and, unlike the Soviet Union, not merely hunkered down to defend an indefensible system, but gone to great lengths to delegitimize the
democratic competition.
Over the years, this new containment policy has adapted, matured, and extended its reach on a global scale. The authoritarian challenge that has grown during this time deserves a far more vigorous response from the established democracies, if their own standards and values are to survive and flourish.
George Kennan did not see his Cold War–era version of containment as an end in itself but as a means to an end, one that would enable Soviet totalitarianism to self-destruct. The new authoritarians are pursuing their version of containment as a means to an end as well. Having come to the conclusion that their regime security is under perpetual threat in the era of globalization, they have decided to go after democracy before it comes after them.
END QUOTE
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/new-containment-undermining-democracy
Thus, in the spirit of Clausewitz: “The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish…the kind of war on which they are embarking … ” to suggest:
a. A New Cold War; wherein,
b. Containment (of the spread of democracy/the spread of Western institutions and values in this case) is the strategy of our enemies. And, wherein,
c. Subversion (in any of its old, new, novel, etc., forms, for example, disinformation; hacking of political parties; use of social media in these and other efforts) is the “First Tool of 21st-Century Warfare;” this, in the service of the strategy of containment — as outlined above?