Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5 Billion by F.T.C. Over Privacy Issues Mike Isaac and Cecilia Kang, April 24th 2019, New York Times Facebook said on Wednesday that it expected to be fined up to $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations. The penalty would be a record by the […]Read More

YouTube recommended a Russian media site thousands of times for analysis of Mueller’s report, a watchdog group says Drew Harwell and Craig Timberg, April 26th, 2019, Washington PostWhen the report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III came out last week, offering the most authoritative account yet of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, […]Read More

Our Take Foreign trolls continue to target social media platforms: ASD Non-resident Fellow Clint Watts joined NPR’s Sacha Pfeiffer to discuss the various manipulation tactics used by Russian trolls to sow discord within the U.S. in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Watts emphasized the need for bipartisan cooperation to remedy the polarization that agents […]Read More

2020 Campaign F.B.I. Warns of Russian Interference in 2020 Race and Boosts Counterintelligence Operations | Julian Barnes and Adam Goldman | The New York Times Here’s the Kremlin’s Playbook For Disrupting the 2020 Election | Casey Michel | Think Progress The 2020 Presidential Campaigns Are Still Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks. Here’s Why | Phillip Elliot […]Read More

The Straits Times, April 22nd, 2019https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-may-outlaw-deepfake-ai-technology-that-alters-faces-of-people China’s top legislative body raised concerns last Saturday (April 20) about a new artificial intelligence (AI) technology that can digitally swap people’s faces. The technology, known as deepfake, is a human image synthesis technique based on AI that uses a combination of existing and source videos to create a […]Read More

CSIS event – May 1st, 2019 – Beyond the Ballot: How the Kremlin Works to Undermine the Justice System Keynote address by former Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff https://www.csis.org/events/democracy-and-justice-age-disinformationRead More

After Social Media Bans, Militant Groups Found Ways to Remain Sheera Frenkel and Ben Hubbard, April 19th, 2019, New York Times In July 2013, a broadcaster affiliated with the Islamist group Hezbollah posted a threatening video on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. It featured gun-toting militants practicing an ambush to kidnap Israeli soldiers. The message: This […]Read More

After years of repression, Ethiopia’s media is free — and fanning the flames of ethnic tension Paul Schemm, April 21st, 2019, Washington Post From a collection of modest offices in a half-empty high rise, one of Ethiopia’s most prominent journalists publishes his weekly paper with a staff of just four. Russian interference in 2016 sets […]Read More

Mark Pomerleau, April 22nd, 2019C4ISRNET The National Defense Strategy, the guiding principle for everything the Department of Defense does these days, is a little more than a year old. The document stresses the return to a so-called great power competition and cites adversaries such as Russia and China as key competitors. Following the release of […]Read More

Thomas Kent, April 22nd, 2019The Atlantic CouncilReport here Russian information operations are carefully curated for each country that Moscow targets. For their own citizens, Russian media describe their country as all-powerful, yet the victim of constant plots and slander. Moldovans are told a predatory European Union (EU) is impoverishing the country and tearing it from […]Read More