50. Disinformation Threats to the All-Volunteer Force with MAJ Joe Littell and CPT Maggie Smith

MAJ Joe Littell is a U.S. Army officer and researcher assigned to the Army Cyber Institute at the United States Military Academy. He has been an instructor in the Math and History departments, teaching statistics and intelligence history. His research includes computational propaganda, open source intelligence, narrative warfare, de-platforming, and generative media (such as deepfakes).

CPT Maggie Smith, PhD, is a U.S. Army cyber officer also assigned to the Army Cyber Institute, where she is a scientific researcher, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences, and an affiliated faculty of the Modern War Institute. She is also the director of the Competition in Cyberspace Project.

In our interview with MAJ Littell and CPT Smith, we discussed the impact of information operations on recruitment, retention, and overall force readiness, and how we can gain information advantage over our adversaries. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• Western liberal democracies’ concept of the internet as a platform for the free exchange of ideas is not shared by Russia and China, who regularly manage the information available to their populations via their concept of “cyber sovereignty.” As a result, Russia and China have extensive experience in manipulating online information to influence both domestic and foreign populations via propaganda. The United States has not developed this skillset.

• While Russia and China see information operations as a critical component of every operation, the United States has yet to adopt this strategy. Consequently, the U.S. is lagging behind its peer competitors in information warfare, oftentimes considering the narrative-building component of its actions only as an afterthought.

• The technologies facilitating today’s social media age are not the first to impact information operations — the printing press and radio were two revolutionary technologies that have been weaponized to control public opinion. Today’s digital technologies, however, are unique in that actors can now buy data to determine what messaging will be most impactful, enabling them to precisely target groups of individuals.For example, in the run up to the 2016 Presidential election, Russia created “Blacktivist” and “Back the Badge” social media accounts to exploit and push a divisive agenda, manipulating and polarizing American citizens.
  • Russia and China are leveraging information operation...