How to Defeat ISIS with Twitter Trolls

With all the handwringing over how ISIS is “ winning ” on social media , enrol new hoi polloi using Facebook , Twitter and YouTube , one insurance policy wonk thinks we should fight back . He ’s got disturbingly elaborated architectural plan for how the US government could borrow troll scheme to defeat ISIS on the internet .

New Jersey senator Cory Booker once noted that ISIS has “ fancy meme ” — so why should n’t we get some weaponized meme of our own ? That ’s what Kalev H. Leetaru believes . He ’s a senior confrere at the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security and a council member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Future of Government . Andhe ’s written an article for Foreign Policyabout how we could run a great psychological ops campaign against ISIS .

He begin by point out that the US is focusing all its efforts on censoring ISIS score , a strategy that has been show not to work . We should , he argue , hear from China and Russia that censorship is n’t enough . Instead , the government has to plight actively in distraction , propaganda , and abuse .

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Leetaru writes :

China and Russia hear long ago that but censor objectionable materialdoes not work . rather , the United States couldflood the online environmentwith an overpowering book of parry - narration that simply drown out all other interpreter . The Taiwanese propaganda car , for instance , employs over300,000 multitude , including over a quarter - milliononline commentators , whosejobis to impregnate the vane with Beijing - friendly material , while encouraging ego - censorship through high - mass eccentric plan of attack against users post objectionable material . Russiaemploys a like modelto command domesticated cyberspace conversation . It adds an offensive element , viapropaganda campaignsthat spread panic - inciting , pretended reports of industrial accident , pandemic outbreaks , and other calamities across the United States .

think if we used a similar approach against the Islamic State . Each time Twitter freeze one of its news report — let ’s habituate the assumed @ISISSupporter as an example — the U.S. government could record a thousand fresh I , using every conceivable mutation of the original user name , designed to seem identical to the suspend explanation , with handles like @ISISSupporter2 , @ISISSupporter3 , @SupporterOfISIS , and so on . Each account statement would claim to be the reliable reincarnation of the original .

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When the real Moslem State user in the end registers a new account , the U.S.-registered accounts would go on the offensive , tweeting claims that the real write up is a phony designed to ensnare sympathiser . Other score would be set up to look like official Islamic State recruiter chronicle , post real Islamic State material . But the “ recruiters ” operating those accounts would , in reality , be government federal agent lurking in encrypted chat rooms , station link that redirect the user ’s web browser to location - tracing malware .

In conjunction , U.S. cyber warrior would upload hundreds of thousands of videos to YouTube and similar platform . The first few second would be lifted from an Islamic State video to guarantee that their thumbnail and preview come along licit , while the relaxation would show a counter narrative or be blank . Links to these faux telecasting would be tweeted in the same style that the Islamic State tweets its own video , efficaciously drown legitimate videos in a ocean of phony ones . Simultaneously , every Twitter hashtag and meme post by the Islamic State would be meet with a barrage of decade of millions of counter message , crowding out pro - Islamic State sentiments . A non - stop barrage of false content would post claims of battlefield failures , defections , and dawdler strikes , overwhelming positive news and inciting local panic . The conclusion issue would be an surround where would - be Islamic State supporters and fighters could no longer distinguish between what was real and what was semblance , or who and what to confide — “ a wild of mirrors , ” to borrow the word of the former head of U.S. counterintelligence .

This is so intensely detailed that I get the feeling I ’m reading psyops fanfic , or perhaps an NSA proposal that got spud down . Still , this really could be the future of psychological war . The job is — where do you contain ? Once we ’ve started emulate China by creating a “ wilderness of mirrors ” on societal media to shoot down ISIS , will we start to see a widespread acceptance of the praxis ?

Photo: Jae C. Hong

Anti - jovial churches could create false “ homosexual ” accounts where prominent gay drawing card babble out about how much they love paedophilia . Presidential campaign could create fake accounts for their opponents , which post racist jokes . fossil oil companies could venture to be environmental advocates online , smearing the reputations of environmentalists and residential district activists .

Once you create an surround where it ’s acceptable weaponize memes , anyone can use them . perhaps the solution to bad actor’s line is n’t always more speech , especially when what you mean by “ more voice communication ” is really “ more lies . ”

[ viaForeign Policy ]

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