HACKED WORLD ORDER
Discussions linking technology and politics has been a linear frame work of analysis Sri Lanka’s competing political narratives vulnerable to foreign tampering A CIA web server reportedly holds thousands of weaponized malware that could carry out intense
The Stratsight column was initiated to trace the depth and breadth of unprecedented global transformations causing significant turbulence for policy makers and analyst alike and illuminate possible local articulations of such global trepidations.
The Wikileaks’ most recent release of a major hack and retrieval of top secret data from a CIA web server holding thousands of weaponized malware that could carry out intense surveillance has created a political firestorm in Washington, but if one watches carefully the effect of such revelations, we truly are living in a situation which techno political analyst Adam Segal calls the ‘hacked world’. The use of technology, spaces of technology such as cyber space and the data we produce on such spaces to be packaged in a manner than can advance the political agenda of an interested party or nation state.
Since the 20th century, the discussions linking technology and politics has been a linear frame work of analysis which traces the rapid technological transformations that made the 20th century a century of innovation and human progress that the world has ever seen. From hyper-globalization, information technologies, Internet Of Things (IOT), military modernization to expanding role of robotics for automated weapons platforms. Such linear narratives started changing since 2007, where one of the most connected States in Europe, Estonia, suffered a major hack attack paralysing the country for weeks, many analysts saw this as an emergence of ‘Cyber War’.
The Hacks on Estonia created a major scramble among global powers to achieve two aspects; first to seek mechanisms to defend their own interests and security against cyber attacks and secondly, to achieve some sort of consensus on internet governance that would facilitate a set of global standards to regulate the internet. Ten years later, both these attempts seem to have failed and the threats they envisaged ten years ago are manifesting in a radically different manner. Estonia cyber attacks prompted States to look at cyber as a realm and space or domain of warfare. Yet with the most recent developments such as a hacks leading to discrediting the Democratic party leadership during American presidential election 2016 to retrieval and leaking of deep surveillance secrets of the America’s premier intelligence agency last week is pushing security experts to understand the threat from a totally different perspective to the events of 2007.
In December of 2010, the USA suffered a unique diplomatic crisis that it never saw coming, the massive leak of American diplomatic cables by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks. The main figure behind Wikileaks, Julian Assange, for many in the cyber world was a legendary hacker who went by the pseudonym ‘Mendex’ with a reputation that linked him to hacking into the most advanced computer systems on board the international space station. The initial leaks apart from US diplomatic cables, included footage from an American Apache gunship cockpit voice recording during a raid in Iraq which killed 12 civilians, including two international journalists. The recording confirmed that the pilots were aware to a certain degree their victims were non- combatants. Such leaks, exposed the illiberal side to America’s war on terror and wars that it justified on the ground of democratic regime change efforts. Since then Wikileaks has been a thorn on the side of the American establishment, until during the recent election campaign where then presidential candidate Donald Trump openly declared that he, ‘Loved Wikileaks’. Where as in 2010, many American law makers called for a ban of Wikileaks and arrest Assange on terrorism charges, much has changed within the last seven years.
Social media network has become battlegrounds over our political ideologies
Wikileaks that the world witnessed as a part of a progressive radical transparency movement which exposed wrong doings of powerful states always attempted to hold a moral high ground claiming it was doing such leaks purely on public interests, yet by 2016 it started leaking emails from the hacked democratic national congress, the functional apparatus of the democratic party, These explicit exposes seriously undermined trust and reputation of the democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Security analysts realized very much later that the single biggest threat coming from cyber space was not cyber weapons, cyber terrorism or cyber war but a form of manipulated narratives that they called ‘weaponized narratives’, powerful enough to sway the public opinion of a country engineered by a third party or a hostile adversary.
In a recent research conducted by a team led by Prof. Jonathan Albright at Elon University, it came to light that a company that went by the name ‘Cambridge Analytica’, which by activating a complex data analytical algorithm could prey on the personalities of individual voters to effect and create large shifts in public opinion. The company has been behind Trump campaign, Ted Cruz campaign and the ‘leave’ campaign during the Brexit vote. Max Boot, the conservative American military analyst in a recent article to the foreign policy magazine questions why doesn’t Wikileaks leak secrets about Russia or why it chose to hack and reveal CIA’S hacking tool kit a few days after President Trump blamed his predecessor of tapping into his conversations during the campaign.
Life and times that we are encountering are pretty much driven by an intricate communication backbone, devices and data, from our ordinary e-banking to hailing a tuk tuk over a call taxi app, what we are not realizing is that even in such mundane acts we create raw data, humanity has created more data in the last two years than data preceding that time period in the whole of human history. Today’s politics and political narratives are driven by a battle for ideas. Social media network has become battlegrounds over our political ideologies where those who wield more data will prevail over the others. If one takes a closer look at Sri Lanka’s competing political narratives, what we are missing is how vulnerable such narratives are to foreign tampering. Sri Lanka is soon becoming a battleground State in the larger Indian Pacific super region. It is becoming alarmingly evident with the interest China, India and US are focusing on the country, there are many analysts in Sri Lanka who do exciting and very serious critical overviews of the geopolitical interests of these regional and extra regional players.
There is no real serious attempt of even comprehension by local security experts to comprehend the new types of external threats that may undermine the social and political cohesion of the country. Scholars argue that weaponized narratives are becoming the Achilles heal of liberal societies, liberal democracies thrived on the fact that openness and transparency is a clear indicator of progress, yet even advanced societies are struggling because of this openness where there is significant space for the manipulation of idea and facts especially in the cyber domain. Social media has empowered so many voiceless and powerless minorities and individuals who may have not voiced their opinions if other wise, yet social media have also empowered the contamination of the political mind.
Erci Schmidt, the former CEO of Google wrote in his PHD thesis, ‘The internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy what we have ever had’. Today in the USA, Wikileaks intentionally or with the aid of a third party is successfully doing what no other could do to the country; create rifts between the presidency and intelligence services.
There is no real serious attempt of even comprehension by local security experts to comprehend the new types of external threat
The debate around America dominance in the 21st Century, is going to take a very different form, if the politico strategic coherence corrodes in the USA, its strategic posture, power projection and foreign operations will be seriously impacted. If the leaks manage to create a divisive rift between the current US administration and the American intelligence community, it would make America more vulnerable to external threats than ever before, while the Trump administration may find ISIL is America’s top enemy, the truth could be far from that. Such breakdowns could send a chilling message to the rest of the world, especially a country like Sri Lanka wedged between serious regional power struggles and trying to save its own political narrative would be far more vulnerable. What we need to understand is that while humanity has progressed rapidly, the techno spaces have encroached not just our lands, but our minds. The writer, Dr. Harinda Vidanage is a Director at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS)