Fort Liberty forum: Deep fakes, Taylor Swift the military and information warfare

FORT LIBERTY — Warfare is no longer contained to the battlefield and has found a foothold with the general public in what officials described as “information operations” during a panel discussion hosted last week at Fort Liberty.

The discussion Nov. 14 was part of the nonprofit Global SOF Foundation’s Modern Warfare Week symposium held locally.

Panelists tackled topics like the spread of misinformation, social media influencers, Taylor Swift and the concept of "deep fakes," which is the act of creating fake video or audio and passing it off as coming from a celebrity, politician or activist.

What are information operations and deep fakes

Information operations are used by adversaries typically to target an audience and influence their emotions, motives, reasoning, understanding, beliefs and behaviors to advance the adversary's objectives, said Golfo Alexopoulos, director of the Institute for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies and a professor at the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies at the University of South Florida.

Deep fakes started with photography manipulation dating back to the 1860s when a photo of President Abraham Lincoln’s face was put onto an image of Vice President John C. Calhoun, said Scott Grigsby, director of data science at PAR Government, which develops technology products for federal, state and local governments.

Decades later, with the use of applications like Photoshop, Grisby said, some images may not necessarily be fake but can fake a situation as in a photo of a Syrian boy who was purportedly shown lying between the graves of his parents.

Grisby said the boy’s uncle was an art student who staged the photo for a personal project.

In another fake photo, Grisby said, a real photo taken from a Cleveland Cavaliers championship parade was falsely reported as being taken at a rally for former President Donald Trump.

Deep fakes have advanced to using video and audio, he said, showing examples of videos appearing to be of actors Margot Robbie, Emma Watson and Morgan Freeman.

A recent video shows depicts First Lady Jill Biden, but the audio is fake, Grisby said.

He said that while some videos and photos are obviously fake, such as one depicting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy telling Ukrainians to surrender to Russians, others are harder to detect.

“People are able to use this to essentially not believe anything they don’t want to believe,” he said. “When the real stuff comes out, they’ll say it’s fake, when the fake stuff comes out they’ll say it’s real. everyone is kind of grabbing what they want, and the whole area of trust is starting to unravel.... this is the biggest concern. It's not the imagery itself. It's how it’s affecting the psychology of people."

Information warfare

On the military side of things, in the middle of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008, the commander at U.S. Central Command noticed the adversary was online, said Col. Christopher Leung, director of web operations for the U.S. Special Operations Command.

The adversary, Leung said, was using the internet for recruiting, propaganda and spreading disinformation.

CENTCOM’s commander recognized the importance of establishing American military capabilities online to counter the adversary, which other global combatant commanders also saw as “a good idea,” he said. By 2018, Congress authorized the Department of Defense to create an online military presence.

Leung said the Military Information Support Operations Command's Web Operation Center is a tool used for research and development and supports combatant commanders “with different types of messaging.”

Influencers

Cynthia Hetherington, founder and CEO of her own firm that provides corporate training on the latest security threats and cyber investigations, said that while singer Taylor Swift showing up at NFL football games may increase ticket sales, how people respond is also attributed to the sales.

“It’s not just one, young amazing singer showing up and being there,” she said. “That’s social media generating it, whether you like or knew who she was or what football even meant.”

Leung said that technology has also allowed for the rise of social media influences.

He used YouTuber Casey Neistat as an example.

Neistat dropped out of high school at 15, but grew a large social media following for his presentation of information and product reviews, Leung said.

Leung said Neistat is credited with changing Apple’s warranty policy and influenced “the demise” of GoPro’s drone product after a bad review.

“You don’t have to be associated with the state. You can be anybody. You do not need a lot of resources to do it. The internet essentially empowered individual voices. Guess who was paying attention to this — all the bad guys,” he said.

Leung said the U.S. military has shifted to an era “of strategic competition with a number of actors” including China, Russia and Iran.

“Our nation needs to come to terms with the fact that we are being attacked on a daily basis, whatever you want to call it, warfare, (information operations), whatever it is, the enemy is generating effects in the United States against American people and to global audiences everywhere,” Leung said.

Should misinformation be censored?

Hetherington said that because she is a former librarian, she sees having Congress define what information is good or bad becomes censorship and an “overreach into thoughts.”

However, as a security practitioner, she said, she wants to “protect her community” through education.

Grisby said he thinks education is important to combat the issues.

“This technology is going to be out there, and we still need to be able to communicate, but I think we all have to understand what’s going on and have the vigilance and fact-checking ability,” Grisby said.

Leung said not everyone has the same priorities or views the threats the same, and members of Congress who have received information about threats coming from an adversary are hesitant to take action because of censorship.

“That’s something that is a reality that we’re working through,” he said.

Leung asked if international platforms would listen to the U.S. government if it took action against platforms where information is circulated.

At the same time, Leung posed the question of who is in charge of information.

“We know that the Department of State is in charge of diplomacy,” he said. “We know that the Department of Defense is in charge of the military. We know that the Treasury Department is in charge of economics, but who’s in charge of information? There’s no single entity that’s in charge.”

Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Taylor Swift and deep fakes discussed at Fort Liberty forum