Russia-Ukraine Inoculate Yourself Against Russian Disinformation - And Its Amplifiers With a little effort and objectivity anyone can learn to spot Russian disinformation narratives. They are pervasive, adaptable to any ideology, and increasingly destabilizing. Developing and honing this skill has never been more important.
Health Coronavirus Resources: The Truth About COVID-19 A frightening global event with life or death consequences presents the greatest possible challenge to information quality.
Covert Contact Terrorists and Technology Levi West, Director of Terrorism Studies at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, returns to look at how terrorists leverage (or don’t) emerging apps and platforms ranging from social media, to encryption, to cryptocurrencies.
Information Warfare Rise of the Politibots In June (which seems far more distant than it really is) I spent some time at Jigsaw (The Google-formed incubator focused on tackling tough global security issues) contibuting to critical discussions about bots.
Information Warfare Motherboard: The Bots That Are Changing Politics Jigsaw, the Google/Alphabet think-tank, recently invited me and a handful of others to spend a day in New York City thinking about how to build a taxonomy for political bots. It was a productive day and a month or so later we made some of that work public in this essay at Motherboard.
Covert Contact Propaganda, Influence, and Disruption A look at recent developments in the social media component of the investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election and what the evidence says about our ability (or inability) to identify and address modern propaganda.
Information Warfare I Uncovered an Iranian Twitter Campaign and a BBC Interview Followed In March of 2016 I uncovered an extensive, but poorly executed, campaign to inflate the capabilities of the Iranian military on Twitter. I documented the evidence in a series of Tweets which led to an interview with the BBC
Updates The Facebook Experiment I’ve never really committed to making Blogs of War available on Facebook. There’s been a page there for years and it has seen the occasional update but it has been largely neglected because, well because I hate Facebook. And seeing as how Blogs of War isn’t a
Updates Less is More: Tweaking the Tweets If you’ve followed @blogsofwar [http://twitter.com/blogsofwar] on Twitter for long you know that it’s not uncommon for me to experiment with content and the way that it’s delivered. At times the feed has been fully human, at others almost fully driven by aggregation tools that
Covert Contact Why Daesh's Social Media Campaign is a Massive Failure In episode 7 of the Covert Contact podcast [https://blogsofwar.com/tag/podcast/] I’m pushing back at the notion that Daesh’s social media use is going to be a significant driver in their long-term success. The group might have mastered trolling and they can shoot and edit passable
Covert Contact Intelligence Failures, eDiplomacy, and Agent Storm In episode one of the Covert Contact podcast [https://blogsofwar.com/tag/podcast/] I am looking at the notion of intelligence failures and why they’re often more complicated than they seem – or not failures at all. I’m also taking a look at the new biography of Murad Storm,
Terrorism A Different Kind of Veteran: Thoughts on Countering Australian Jihadis from Clint Arizmendi and John W. Little Dr. Clint Arizmendi is a researcher in the Emerging Threats and Opportunities section of the Directorate of Future Land Warfare. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect those of the Australian Army, Australian Department of Defence or the Australian Government. John W. Little [https://blogsofwar.com/
Technology PBS NewsHour and Blogs of War Twitter Chat on Social Media and Warfare The nice folks at PBS @NewsHour [http://twitter.com/newshour] asked me and @PJTobia [http://twitter.com/pjtobia] to spend an hour discussing the topic with them on Twitter. "Social media can be used to circulate true information in the face of censorship. It can also cause false information to
Social Media CBC Radio: Talking About ISIS and Social Media on “The Current” I was a guest on the CBC Radio show The Current to once again talk about how ISIS is using social media. You can listen to it here.
Social Media Quoted in l’Express: Marketing et réseaux sociaux: la communication de pro des djihadistes de l’EIIL I’m quoted in this fairly deep dive on jihadist use of social media. You can read it in French or (via Google Translate) English.
Journalism PBS News Hour: A Twitter Chat on Social Media and Warfare The nice folks at PBS News Hour asked me to take part in a conversation with one of their producers on Twitter. I don’t think the transcript still exists but it was a fun experiment with a new format
ISIS Jihadists Go for the Lulz I don’t seek out media appearances but last week was a busy one for me. I was interviewed by CBS News, BBC World Service, Jonathan Green of Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Sunday Extra, and by Piya Chattopadhyay of the CBC’s The Current. I also had invitations from NPR
Social Media Guest Appearance on ABC Radio Sunday Extra to Discuss “The Terror of Social Media” The media blitz continues with an appearance on ABCs (Australia) Sunday Extra program to discuss ISIS’s use of social media. You can download and listen here.
ISIS Social Media and Warfare: Till Death Us Do Part Alexander Trowbridge [https://twitter.com/AlexanderTrow] was kind enough to interview me for his piece on ISIS’ use of social media [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/isis-jihadists-on-move-in-iraq-using-weapons-and-twitter-hashtags/] . I think he did a great job of capturing what is interesting about this group’s communications strategy without overstating the impact that
Mentions Talking ISIS’ Use of Social Media with CBS News I've lost track of the number of interviews I've done on this subject lately. Here's my latest with Alexander Trowbridge for CBS News.
Technology The CIA (Finally) Joins Twitter The U.S. Intelligence Community [http://www.intelligence.gov/] has had one toe (OK a few toes) in the social media pool for some time now but this launch [https://twitter.com/cia] really could represent a significant change in the way it communicates with both the people it protects
Mentions Time Selects @BlogsofWar as one of the Top Twitter Accounts of 2014 The very active account anonymously curates the latest news surrounding international relations and national security, specifically regarding conflict.
Russia 65 Diplomats, Journalists, Spies, and Professors Who Will Help You Make Sense of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine *The usual disclaimers apply. This is not a complete list (it’s not even my complete list) and many informative accounts are not listed here. And of course I am not endorsing every tweet by every account here. However, these accounts will help keep you current and, in some cases,
Guest Posts Security and Defence Accounts in Australia (and the Asia Pacific) You Should be Following on Twitter Natalie Sambhi is an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute [http://www.aspi.org.au/default.aspx] (ASPI) and editor of ASPI’s blog The Strategist [http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/]. Natalie’s research interests include Indonesia and Southeast Asian security. She has previously worked at Department of Defence
Intelligence The Former CIA Officers, Analysts, Intelligence Agencies and Professionals You Should Be Following on Twitter Following spies on Twitter can be a dicey proposition. For every legitimate account there are hundreds, if not thousands, of imposters. Many of the fakes are obvious but others are expertly crafted and potentially up to no good. And then there are those who go to great lengths to obscure
