Active Measures #23 – A Newsletter of Political Warfare, Influence, and Information Campaigns Here are the top stories seen this week: Say it with Statues:  Brick-and-Mortar Revisionism in Orban’s Hungary | Vivian S. Walker | War on the Rocks ‘Digital Blackface’: Pro-Trump Trolls Are Impersonating Black People on Twitter | Kelly Weill | Daily Beast […]Read More

CNO Wants More Cyber, IW in Navy’s Wargames Paul McLeary, February 6th, 2019, Breaking Defense The Navy needs to increase both the number and complexity of its wargames, the service’s top admiral said Wednesday, citing rapid advances being made by competitors in cyber and information warfare tactics that will muddy and confuse future battlefields. While […]Read More

Countering the Malicious Use of Social Media NATO’s Center for Excellence for Strategic Communication Read the Report here Around the turn of the decade, when the popularity of social media sites was really beginning to take off, few people noticed a secretly burgeoning trend — some users were artificially inflating the number of followers they […]Read More

Fake news: How Lithuania’s ‘elves’ take on Russian trolls Michael Peel, Financial Times, February 4th, 2019 The article is linked above. Several highlights: – Lithuania’s defence ministry monitors how content is being shared via social media – I believe in the 21st century we have to be ready not only to fight in kinetic wars, […]Read More

Weekly round-up of cognitive security-related articles from the New York Times. Foreign Efforts to Influence 2018 U.S. Elections on Twitter ‘Limited’: Company Reuters in the New York Times, January 31st, 2019 Twitter Inc took down nearly 6,000 tweets during last November’s U.S. congressional elections, most of which were attempting to suppress the vote through intimidation or sharing […]Read More

Weekly round-up of cognitive security-related articles from the Washington Post. Twitter removed some accounts originating in Iran, Russia and Venezuela that targeted U.S. midterm election Tony Romm, Washington Post, January 31st, 2019 Twitter revealed Thursday that it had removed thousands of malicious accounts thought to have originated in Iran, Russia and Venezuela for spreading disinformation online, including […]Read More

Dispatch from the Alliance for Securing Democracy Our Take ASD Senior Fellow Joshua Kirschenbaum testified on January 29th before the European Parliament’s Special Committee on Financial Crimes, Tax Evasion, and Tax Avoidance regarding the vulnerability of the European Union’s financial institutions to money laundering and other financial crimes that originate in Russia and the Commonwealth […]Read More

Active Measures #22 – A Newsletter of Political Warfare, Influence, and Information Campaigns Here are the top stories seen this week: How Should Countries Tackle Deep Fakes | Charlotte Stanton | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Twitter and Facebook Say They Removed Thousands of Troll Accounts in Run-up to 2018 Midterms | Ben Colins | […]Read More

Twitter released their comprehensive review of their efforts to protect the integrity of the public conversation from last year’s elections.  Read the press release here and their report here. Some highlights: Twitter tells us that they learned that (1) partnerships matter, (2) threats change, and (3) cross-functional is key. Seems very reasonable, if not universal… More […]Read More

Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service: Russia to spend $350 million dollars to meddle in Ukraine’s 2019 elections January 25, 2019, Unian – Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service Chief – Russian authorities have allocated $350 million dollars for destabilization in Ukraine for meddling in the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections – Propaganda goes first. The ‘EU vs Disinformation’ […]Read More