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The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence

Author: Daniel W. Drezner

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780815738374

How globalized information networks can be used for strategic advantage Until recently, globalization was viewed, on balance, as an inherently good thing that would benefit people and societies nearly everywhere. Now there is growing concern that some countries will use their position in globalized networks to gain undue influence over other societies through their dominance of information and financial networks, a concept known as "weaponized interdependence." In exploring the conditions under which China, Russia, and the United States might be expected to weaponize control of information and manipulate the global economy, the contributors to this volume challenge scholars and practitioners to think differently about foreign economic policy, national security, and statecraft for the twenty-first century. The book addresses such questions as: What areas of the global economy are most vulnerable to unilateral control of information and financial networks? How sustainable is the use of weaponized interdependence? What are the possible responses from targeted actors? And how sustainable is the open global economy if weaponized interdependence becomes a default tool for managing international relations?

Information Wars

Author: Richard Stengel

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 0802147992

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A “well-told” insider account of the State Department’s twenty-first-century struggle to defend America against malicious propaganda and disinformation (The Washington Post). Disinformation is nothing new. When Satan told Eve nothing would happen if she bit the apple, that was disinformation. But today, social media has made disinformation even more pervasive and pernicious. In a disturbing turn of events, authoritarian governments are increasingly using it to create their own false narratives, and democracies are proving not to be very good at fighting it. During the final three years of the Obama administration, Richard Stengel, former editor of Time, was an Under Secretary of State on the front lines of this new global information war—tasked with unpacking, disproving, and combating both ISIS’s messaging and Russian disinformation. Then, during the 2016 election, Stengel watched as Donald Trump used disinformation himself. In fact, Stengel quickly came to see how all three had used the same playbook: ISIS sought to make Islam great again; Putin tried to make Russia great again; and we know the rest. In Information Wars, Stengel moves through Russia and Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and introduces characters from Putin to Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Mohamed bin Salman, to show how disinformation is impacting our global society. He illustrates how ISIS terrorized the world using social media, and how the Russians launched a tsunami of disinformation around the annexation of Crimea—a scheme that would became a model for future endeavors. An urgent book for our times, now with a new preface from the author, Information Wars challenges us to combat this ever-growing threat to democracy. “[A] refreshingly frank account . . . revealing.” —Kirkus Reviews “This sobering book is indeed needed to help individuals better understand how information can be massaged to produce any sort of message desired.” —Library Journal

Fake News

Author: Melissa Zimdars

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13: 0262538369

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New perspectives on the misinformation ecosystem that is the production and circulation of fake news. What is fake news? Is it an item on Breitbart, an article in The Onion, an outright falsehood disseminated via Russian bot, or a catchphrase used by a politician to discredit a story he doesn't like? This book examines the real fake news: the constant flow of purposefully crafted, sensational, emotionally charged, misleading or totally fabricated information that mimics the form of mainstream news. Rather than viewing fake news through a single lens, the book maps the various kinds of misinformation through several different disciplinary perspectives, taking into account the overlapping contexts of politics, technology, and journalism. The contributors consider topics including fake news as “disorganized” propaganda; folkloric falsehood in the “Pizzagate” conspiracy; native advertising as counterfeit news; the limitations of regulatory reform and technological solutionism; Reddit's enabling of fake news; the psychological mechanisms by which people make sense of information; and the evolution of fake news in America. A section on media hoaxes and satire features an oral history of and an interview with prankster-activists the Yes Men, famous for parodies that reveal hidden truths. Finally, contributors consider possible solutions to the complex problem of fake news—ways to mitigate its spread, to teach students to find factually accurate information, and to go beyond fact-checking. Contributors Mark Andrejevic, Benjamin Burroughs, Nicholas Bowman, Mark Brewin, Elizabeth Cohen, Colin Doty, Dan Faltesek, Johan Farkas, Cherian George, Tarleton Gillespie, Dawn R. Gilpin, Gina Giotta, Theodore Glasser, Amanda Ann Klein, Paul Levinson, Adrienne Massanari, Sophia A. McClennen, Kembrew McLeod, Panagiotis Takis Metaxas, Paul Mihailidis, Benjamin Peters, Whitney Phillips, Victor Pickard, Danielle Polage, Stephanie Ricker Schulte, Leslie-Jean Thornton, Anita Varma, Claire Wardle, Melissa Zimdars, Sheng Zou

The Militarization and Weaponization of Space

Author: Matthew Mowthorpe

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780739107133

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The militarization of space began as a rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and grew to enormous proportions during the height of the Cold War. Satellite reconnaissance, navigation and weapons guidance, and electronic intelligence comprise only a few of the efforts taken to militarize and dominate space. Today as the prominence of information technology, computing, and telecommunications advances, so does the concept of space as a battlefield. In The Militarization and Weaponization of Space, Matthew Mowthorpe diligently analyzes the military space policies of the United States, the Soviet Union/Russia, and the People's Republic of China from the Cold War period to the present day. Mowthorpe focuses on the development of the ballistic missile defense and other anti-satellite systems and aptly assesses to what degree space will become armed. This work cogently addresses an issue of increasing urgency to scholars of international politics.

Threatcasting

Author: Brian David Johnson

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-06-01

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 303102575X

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Impending technological advances will widen an adversary’s attack plane over the next decade. Visualizing what the future will hold, and what new threat vectors could emerge, is a task that traditional planning mechanisms struggle to accomplish given the wide range of potential issues. Understanding and preparing for the future operating environment is the basis of an analytical method known as Threatcasting. It is a method that gives researchers a structured way to envision and plan for risks ten years in the future. Threatcasting uses input from social science, technical research, cultural history, economics, trends, expert interviews, and even a little science fiction to recognize future threats and design potential futures. During this human-centric process, participants brainstorm what actions can be taken to identify, track, disrupt, mitigate, and recover from the possible threats. Specifically, groups explore how to transform the future they desire into reality while avoiding an undesired future. The Threatcasting method also exposes what events could happen that indicate the progression toward an increasingly possible threat landscape. This book begins with an overview of the Threatcasting method with examples and case studies to enhance the academic foundation. Along with end-of-chapter exercises to enhance the reader’s understanding of the concepts, there is also a full project where the reader can conduct a mock Threatcasting on the topic of “the next biological public health crisis.” The second half of the book is designed as a practitioner’s handbook. It has three separate chapters (based on the general size of the Threatcasting group) that walk the reader through how to apply the knowledge from Part I to conduct an actual Threatcasting activity. This book will be useful for a wide audience (from student to practitioner) and will hopefully promote new dialogues across communities and novel developments in the area.

The Weaponization of Trade

Author: Rebecca Harding

Publisher: London Publishing Partnership

Published: 2017-10-25

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1907994734

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Trade is being weaponized – and this is not good. As politicians on both sides of the Atlantic raise the stakes, trade is increasingly a tool of coercion to achieve strategic influence. This book looks at the risks for us all as trade becomes an instrument of foreign policy, and it shows how politicians could turn things around.