While the United States has no peers in conventional military power, it is especially vulnerable – as a free and democratic society – to cyber misinformation campaigns, a Stanford scholar says.

Herbert Lin, a senior research scholar for cyberpolicy and security at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), is the co-author of a new draft working paper that spells out the perilous risks facing democratic, wired-up countries around the world.

America’s adversaries are seeking “asymmetric” methods for social disruption, rather than direct military conflict, Lin said.

“Cyber warfare is one asymmetric counter to Western (and especially U.S.) military advantages that depend on the use of cyberspace,” wrote Lin and his co-author Jackie Kerr, a research fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

This new type of cyber aggression is aimed at winning – and confusing – hearts and minds, the very control centers of human existence, Lin said.

As a result, “information/influence warfare and manipulation,” or IIWAM as Lin describes it, poses profound implications for Western democracies, even though much of it may not be illegal under international law. This approach is based on the deliberate use of information by one party on an adversary to confuse, mislead, and ultimately to influence the choices and decisions that the adversary makes.

A recent example in point would be the 2016 Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential election and the surge of so-called “fake news.”

Lin points out that while misinformation campaigns are not new, the technology to spread it far and wide globally is. He noted that the patron saint of distorting reality for war-like purposes is Sun Tzu, who wrote that, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

While traditional cyber attacks typically hit hard targets like computer systems, cyber “influence” campaigns are conducted over longer periods of time and rely on soft power – propaganda, persuasion, culture, social forces, confusion and deception, Lin said. 

Words and images

How does it work? Lin explains:

“Victory is achieved by A when A succeeds changing B’s political goals so that they are aligned with those of A.  But such alignment is not the result of B’s 'capitulation' or B’s loss of the ability to resist – on the contrary, B (the losing side) is openly willing.”  That is, such victory shares the focus on subverting the opponent’s will, though not on destroying his military forces.

The ammunition in these cyberspace battles are “words and images,” the kind that persuade, inform, mislead, and deceive so that the adversary cannot respond militarily. In the example of a “fake news” story, they often take place below legal thresholds of “use of force” or “armed attack,” and at least in an international legal sense, do not trigger a military response.

The target is the “adversary’s perceptions,” which reside in the “cognitive dimension of the information environment.” In other words, such cyber warfare focuses on “damaging knowledge, truth, and confidence, rather than physical or digital artifacts,” according to Lin. It is the “brain-space.”

Additionally, IIWAM injects fear, anger, anxiety, uncertainty, and doubt into the adversary’s decision making processes, he added.  Success is defined as altering such perceptions so the target makes choices favoring the aggressor.

“Sowing chaos and confusion is thus essentially operational preparation of the information battlefield – shaping actions that make the information environment more favorable for actual operations should they become necessary,” the researchers wrote.

These cyber manipulations often prey upon cognitive and emotional biases present in the psychological and mental makeup of human beings, Lin said. 

For example, media channels such as Fox News play to “confirmation bias” for individuals with a right-of-center orientation, and similarly for MSNBC for those with a left-of-center, orientation, he wrote. Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.

Countering misinformation

“Naming and shaming” is probably ineffective against many nation states conducting cyber disinformation campaigns, Lin said. And the idea that a government like the U.S. can quickly respond to misinformation created in the private sphere is unlikely to be effective as well.

What, then, might work? Lin suggests new tactics are needed, as no existing approach seems adequate. For example, Facebook is deploying a new protocol for its users to flag questionable news sites.  Google has banned fake news web sites from using its online advertising service. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook shut down accounts that they determine are promoting terrorist content.  He noted that a recent Facebook letter from CEO Mark Zuckerberg states that, “Our approach will focus less on banning misinformation and more on surfacing additional perspectives and information, including that fact checkers dispute an item's accuracy.”

But such measures are unlikely to stem the “rising tide of misinformation conveyed” through cyber warfare, Lin said, because they mostly require users to do additional mental work.  

Wired world riskier

Today’s Internet-driven Western world offers countless opportunities for cyber influence mischief, Lin wrote.

“Democracy has rested on an underlying foundation of an enlightened, informed populace engaging in rational debate and argument to sort out truth from fiction and half-truth in an attempt to produce the best possible policy and political outcomes,” Lin wrote.

Cyber manipulators have exploited an arguable gap between ideals and reality in democratic systems – “rendered it much more questionable” – through the tremendous reach and speed of misinformation, he said. Many countries cannot deal with the onslaught of such focused efforts. This serves to make the democratic process look weak and unstable in the eyes of its citizens. The same dynamic does not apply equally around the world.

“Cyber weapons pose a greater threat to nations that are more advanced users of information technology than to less-developed nations,” Lin wrote.

He said that less developed or authoritarian countries do not have much Internet infrastructure or that wield control over expression – North Korea is an example.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Herbert Lin, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 497-8600, herbert.s.lin@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-0224, cbparker@stanford.edu

Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) Director Gi-Wook Shin spoke with Yonhap News about the situation on the Korean Peninsula, following a visit to U.S. Pacific Command with a delegation of scholars from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

While there, U.S. officials conveyed that the United States has the capability to strike North Korea should the president make that call.

U.S. officials said that North Korea had already moved into the “red zone,” and that the Trump administration has the view that it cannot miss a window of opportunity to stop the nuclear and missile program before it advances further.

Shin also said he believed that the Trump administration holds a view that the policy of “strategic patience” failed under the Obama administration, and that growing tensions on the Peninsula have compelled the Trump administration to consider – with greater plausibility – the option of a preemptive military strike.

Regional tensions have risen in the midst of impending political shifts in South Korea, where a new president will assume office following a snap election this May, and in China, where the Party Congress will meet to appoint new senior leadership of the Chinese Communist Party this fall.

Whoever becomes president in South Korea should place relations with North Korea at the top of the agenda and consider sending an envoy early on to meet its leader Kim Jong-un in-person, Shin said.

The Yonhap interview can be viewed in Korean, and a shorter version, in English. A related analysis piece is also available on MK News (in Korean).

Anna Péczeli, a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC, wrote the following op-ed for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

What does the future hold for the US nuclear posture under President Trump? The last Nuclear Posture Review occurred in April 2009, when a 12-month review process was conducted to translate President Obama’s vision into a comprehensive nuclear strategy for the next five to 10 years. The review addressed several major areas: the role of nuclear forces, policy requirements, and objectives to maintain a safe, reliable, and credible deterrence posture; the relationship between deterrence policy, targeting strategy, and arms control objectives; the role of missile defense and conventional forces in determining the role and size of the nuclear arsenal; the size and composition of delivery capabilities; the nuclear weapons complex; and finally the necessary number of active and inactive nuclear weapons stockpiles to meet the requirements of national and military strategies.

Clearly, changes are afoot. On January 27, 2017, President Trump issued a presidential memorandum that mandated “a new Nuclear Posture Review to ensure that the United States nuclear deterrent is modern, robust, flexible, resilient, ready, and appropriately tailored to deter 21st-century threats and reassure our allies.” 

Looking ahead, the new administration should conduct this review through a broad, inter-agency process, involving the State and Energy departments, and allies as well. This approach offers several valuable benefits by broadening the focus from deterrence to non-proliferation, reassurance, and nuclear security.

The main role of the Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR, is to assess the threat environment, outline nuclear deterrence policy and strategy for the next 5 to 10 years, and align the country’s nuclear forces accordingly. Since the end of the Cold War, each administration has conducted its own NPR, but the process and the scope of the reviews were different in all three cases. 

The first NPR was conducted by the Clinton administration in 1994, and even though important senior positions have still not been appointed by the Trump White House, Trump's mandate suggests that their review might use it as a template for 2017. It was a bottom-up review, initiated by the Department of Defense, mostly focusing on a set of force structure decisions—such as the right size and composition of US nuclear forces, including the size of the reserve or so-called “ hedge” force. That review lasted for 10 months, and the Pentagon was in charge of the entire process, mainly focusing on deterrence requirements. 

In contrast, the 2001 NPR of the Bush administration was mandated by Congress, and it addressed a broader set of issues, including all components of the deterrence mix—nuclear and non-nuclear offensive strike systems, active and passive defenses, and the defense infrastructure. The Defense Department took the lead in this case just as before, but this time the Energy Department and the White House were also engaged in the process. As a result, the Bush NPR’s force structure requirements—how to size and sustain the country’s forces—were driven by four factors: assuring allies, deterring aggressors, dissuading competitors, and defeating enemies. 

The Obama administration’s 2010 NPR was also mandated by Congress, but the Defense Department was specifically tasked to conduct an inter-agency review. Besides the unprecedented level of such cooperation, a bipartisan Congressional commission also laid out a number of recommendations for the review process, many of which became part of the final text of the Obama review. Officials from State, Energy, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were involved, as well as US allies who were regularly briefed during the different stages of the review. 

In the final phase of the 2010 NPR, the White House leadership made the decisions on the actual content of the nuclear posture. While the Clinton and the Bush reviews were largely conducted behind the scenes and only short briefing materials were published on the outcome, the Obama administration released an unprecedentedly long report on its nuclear posture review. 

These cases offer two models for a review process: It can be conducted by a small group of people in the most highly classified manner, or it can be a larger, relatively transparent inter-agency process. In the former approach, the final decisions are typically presented to the secretary of defense, the president, Congress, and allies. The problem is that this tends to be a one-sided approach, putting the main focus on deterrence and modernizations. 

Though it is effective and fast, the implementation of a Nuclear Posture Review requires all stakeholders to be on board with the new strategy. One of the most painful lessons of the Bush review was that because the White House and Defense failed to explain their new approach to the public, the military, and Congress, there was effectively a loss of leadership—which made procurement extremely difficult and caused major problems in the implementation of their strategy. 

On the other hand, involving all stakeholders and providing a balanced approach to nuclear strategy would support the goals of not just deterrence, but those of reassurance, non-proliferation, and nuclear security as well. Due to the involvement of the State Department, the 2010 NPR, for example, emphasized a number of policies which supported non-proliferation objectives and strengthened US negotiating positions at global arms control forums. One of these policies was the “negative security assurance,” which stated that the United States would not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations. 

The other policy that was advocated by senior State Department officials was the so called sole-purpose posture—which means that nuclear weapons only serve to deter or respond to a nuclear attack, and they no longer play a role in non-nuclear scenarios. Although the sole purpose posture was eventually dropped and it was set only as a long-term objective, the Obama administration still reduced the role of nuclear weapons with the new negative security assurance, and it signaled its intent to continue this process with the promise of sole purpose. These steps supported US leadership at the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference and they contributed to the adoption of a consensual final document at the conference. 

This broader scope strengthens inter-agency cooperation, and ensures that all the departments that are affected by the NPR are on board with the strategy, which eases the implementation of the decisions. Besides, it also strengthens alliance relations by regular consultations. The Trump administration’s mandate did not include a specific timeline or format; consequently it will be mainly the responsibility of Defense Secretary James Mattis to decide on the framework. Though the presidential memorandum did not require an inter-agency process, it would be wise to conduct one.

Compared to 2010, the security environment has dramatically deteriorated: renewed tensions between NATO and Russia since the annexation of Crimea, China’s building of military bases in what had previously been international waters, significant military modernization efforts by both these states, and North Korea’s increasingly bellicose nuclear threats. All of these developments have created a serious deterrence and security challenge for the United States and its allies. Only a broader approach can address all relevant threats and create the necessary internal consensus for the funding and creation of a modern, robust, flexible, resilient, ready, and appropriately tailored nuclear arsenal.

This talk was given during the Stanford's "Disruption: Challenges of a New Era" conference organized by Fundacion RAP,  in March 2017. Beatriz Magaloni, a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, presents results of her work on social order and violence in Latin America, with a focus on her research in Brazil and Mexico.

Production: Roger Winkelman, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford. 

Event Recap: First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, Visits Stanford

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In her April visit to Stanford University, Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), spoke to over 300 members of the Stanford community about Scotland's place in the world. An additional 4475 people viewed the talk remotely via live stream. With many Scottish voters choosing to remain a part of the United Kingdom in order to ensure continued membership in the European Union, Sturgeon argued that the June 2016 Brexit vote posed a "fundamental question for Scotland" and that the Scottish populace had a right to decide whether to pursue independence in order to continue to be a part of the European Union. Furthermore, Sturgeon argued that Scottish priorities of inclusivity, equality, openness, fairness, climate protection, and economic prosperity are at odds with a decision to prioritize "immigration curbs above all else." She contrasted the 2014 independence referendum with the 2016 Brexit vote: "[The independence referendum] was a debate that had a high level of understanding about the issues at stake. The EU referendum by contrast had none of that. The information that people had was reduced to a lie on the side of double decker bus." Adding, however, "I fervently hope for the independence of my country. I wouldn't want it to be won on the basis of a campaign that was as dishonest as the EU referendum campaign." Sturgeon stated that she is "fairly certain" that there will be a second referendum on Scottish independence.

Voted into the Scottish Parliament in 1999, Nicola Sturgeon became the First Minister of Scotland in 2014 and is the first female to hold the position. She led her party to success in the Westminster and Holyrood elections, with the SNP becoming the first party in Scotland to secure a third term in government. Following the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, the First Minister has been a leading voice arguing for a continuing relationship between Scotland and the European Union and an open and welcoming approach to immigration. She was ranked as the 50th most powerful woman in the world in 2016 and 2nd in the United Kingdom by Forbes magazine.

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In her dissertation, Playing to the Point: Weimar-Era Agitprop and the Aesthetics of Progressive Popular Performance, Jessi examines political street theater. Throughout the dissertation, she first focuses on Weimar-era "agitprop" and then uses the findings from the first part to rethink standard assumptions about contemporary forms of activist street theater.

Funded by The Europe Center, Jessi spent August and September 2016 in Berlin, Germany conducting archival and site-specific research for her dissertation. While in Germany, Jessi's research centered on the agitprop troupes of Weimar-era Germany. Agitprop was a popular form of live entertainment that was generally both created and performed by amateur artists from Germany’s working classes. Today, the texts are generally unavailable in published form and are primarily available in the Agit-Prop-Sammlung at the Akademie der Künste Archiv in Berlin. Moreover, as Jessi learned from the head of the archive’s Performing Arts division, with the exception of a single volume from 1961, little of the material has been referred to in academic work. Jessi notes that the materials in this collection are extraordinarily diverse, and have allowed her to begin to reconstruct aspects of this fascinating theatrical tradition that have largely escaped the attention of performance scholars. An important part of this research focuses on the Bildsprache, or iconography, developed by agitprop troupes throughout the 1920s. Jessi argues that contrary to popular thought, the “heavy-handedness” and simplicity of these performances paradoxically helped to constitute a space for critical reflection, dialogue, and dissensus among spectators and performers alike.

Jessi has been awarded a DAAD Research Grant and will therefore be returning to Berlin for the 2017-2018 academic year. During that time she will conduct additional archival research and will embark upon an ethnographic exploration of contemporary performances. At this time, Jessi intends to return to Stanford for the 2018-2019 academic year in order to complete and defend her dissertation.

Please visit our website for more information about our Graduate Student Grant program.

Protecting freedom of expression is essential to vibrant democracies and to meet the needs of people now and into the future, Indian historian Ramachandra Guha said at a Stanford event seeking to draw people together for policy-relevant discussions about India’s growth following 25 years of reforms.

Guha’s remarks were part of a colloquium titled “Eight Threats to Freedom of Expression in India,” and one in a series, co-hosted by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and Center for South Asia.

The colloquia, which continue this spring, are motivated by an opportunity to garner reflections and expertise from Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute, who served as chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy New Delhi in 2014.

“As I was preparing to go to India, I read Ram’s extraordinary book India after Gandhi, which provided much-needed historical, cultural and political context,” Stephens said. “When I visited Bangalore, we met and instantly clicked as we talked about U.S.-India relations. It’s a pleasure to welcome him back to Stanford.”

Guha, a renowned author and scholar, has written numerous critically acclaimed books about India’s history and culture as well as social ecology, and is a frequent commentary contributor to publications such as The Telegraph and Hindustan Times. In 2000, Guha was a visiting professor at Stanford, where he taught courses on the politics and culture of South Asia and cross-cultural perspectives on the global environmental debate.

India is often referred to as the world’s largest democracy for its population size of 1.3 billion and system of governance since partition and independence in 1947. Guha said that, while India is “solidly and certifiably democratic,” there are serious flaws, including growing threats to freedom of expression of Indian artists, filmmakers and writers.

Indian society, Guha said, has become too sensitive to criticism, wherein “somebody will take objection” to any message. This kind of environment has encouraged newspaper editors to self-censor, for example, and led public figures to, at times, neglect to protect artists, filmmakers and writers.

In total, Guha detailed eight threats to freedom of expression in contemporary India: 1) archaic colonial laws affecting the first amendment, 2) imperfections in the judicial system, 3) rising importance of identity politics, 4) complicity of the police force, 5) pusillanimity of politicians, 6) dependence of media on government-sponsored advertisements, 7) dependence of media on commercially-sponsored advertisements and 8) ideologically–driven writers.

Would an absence of those threats imply freedom of expression? Responding to the question from the audience, Guha lamented that the answer wasn’t simple. His task was to offer a diagnosis of the challenges, he said, and not provide instruction on how to solve them, but in general, focused efforts bear change.

“Building democracies is about quiet persistent work,” Guha said of next steps in the process to extinguish threats to freedom of expression. “I think quiet persistent work in repairing our institutions, modernizing our laws and improving civil society institutions can still mitigate some of the threats.”

Guha expressed optimism about India’s civil society, noting an expansion in the supply of non-governmental organizations working on social issues and private philanthropists funding projects in that sector. But he tempered: “we could do more.”

Stephens ended the event by thanking Guha for leading the discussion, and referenced America’s first president George Washington, who at the end of his term in office, called upon citizens to be “‘anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy.’”

“And, I see that today in Ram and in the many people here – very jealous, anxious and passionate guardians of our democracy – who we can learn a lot from,” she said.

Listen to an audio recording of the colloquium.