The Frontlines of Digital Warfare
Two decades ago, optimistic predictions abounded about what good the Internet would do for world politics. The Arab Spring in 2010 probably marked the height of optimism about the Internet and social media, but its negative and ugly side rapidly emerged. This book, if published a decade ago, would have been but one of a few dystopian prophecies of the new media. Today’s reality, however, confirms that social media is a “powerful weapon of war” — to quote Steve Bannon, Breitbart’s CEO and former advisor to US President Donald Trump.
Technology is neutral.
But Singer and Brooking, both defense experts, argue that, depending upon the intentions and motivations of those using social media, a formidable new ecosystem is built in which human nature’s homophily (“love of the same”) combine with virality augmented by social media’s algorithms to have grave impacts on society by exciting, amplifying and even fabricating conflicts. With this premise, the book navigates conflicts aggravated by social media, from electoral politics to inter-state and inter-ethnic conflicts to terrorism.
To counter the “weaponization” of social media, the authors underline the importance of information literacy not merely as an education issue but as a national security imperative, and people’s open participation in the fight against this “nonlinear war.”
The authors underline information literacy as a national security imperative.