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Article

6 Mar 2019

Author:
Laura Rosenberger, OpenGlobalRights

Commentary: Democratic nations must get ahead of the technology curve to address emerging threats by authoritarian regimes

 “Failure to act: getting ahead of technological threats to democracy,” 6 March 2019

... Authoritarian regimes are employing social media manipulation and other cyber capabilities to attempt to control the information space and advance their geopolitical goals... There are several steps that the US government, tech companies and civil society need to take to deter and defend against this behavior...  In the immediate future, increased transparency and information-sharing across the public-private divide and among tech companies is paramount... Social media platforms must also do more to increase transparency, while protecting privacy… Twitter took a welcome step in this direction on October 17th when, "to enable independent academic research and investigation," it released over 10 million tweets connected with information operations on their platform ...… Emerging technologies, such as AI, will present both new tools to combat information manipulation and new ways to make it much worse… In the long-term, building resiliency to authoritarian interference is essential to reducing its effectiveness.