2020 has already been a WILD year to say the least – opening with the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, proceeding through multiple ecological crisis, and continuing with a historical pandemic (and all its implications for information security), we live in very interesting times indeed.
And yet, we’ve only just begun! An even greater event lies in our future with all sorts of possibilities for disinformation, disruption, and unrest: the 2020 US Presidential Election. After the influence operations surrounding the 2016 campaign – documented in great detail by various investigative committees – the expectation is that similar influence behaviors should be expected in 2020. Yet while US authorities have stood up efforts to ostensibly defend the election from foreign influence and manipulation, one wonders if this is the true threat to upcoming events.
That the Trump Presidency has been controversial is a massive understatement. From his clear defeat in the US popular vote through various scandals, life in the US from 2017 to the present has been interesting, to say the least. Yet all of this has set up an election viewed by many partisans (of both right and left persuasion) of existential significance. Many already viewed the yet-to-be-determined results with suspicion and expect varying degrees of manipulation – a perspective only made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. When combined with the emergence of a significant, powerful anti-racism movement in the US following the murder of George Floyd, an event which already is inviting potential disinformation campaigns of its own, the state of US society and politics is in an especially vulnerable position.
As previously discussed here, albeit from the context of physical operations, systems in distress are uniquely primed for malicious “nudges” towards more-catastrophic endstates. From a social and political standpoint, the US stands at a precipice at the moment where events could provoke significant – or violent – reaction from either the (hard) left or the (general) right.
In light of such concerns, recent reporting from mainstream (or at least, widely-watched) US media outlets is deeply concerning. Fox News, although never a paragon of journalistic integrity, ran multiple clips in mid-June 2020 concerning the nascent “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone”. As noted in other reporting, this movement has already been targeted by likely disinformation operations. However, altering photographs running in multiple venues – television and internet – based on a single Getty image of a “volunteer” is quite interesting. As shown in the image below, the reproduction is quite blatant across multiple platforms and programs.
Documented in detail on a Reddit thread, it appears that conservative-leaning, (generally) Trump-supporting Fox News has fully leaned in to building a narrative of armed, leftist insurrection connected with the cluster of anti-racist protests emerging after George Floyd’s murder.
Most significantly from an information operations perspective, anything published, posted, or displayed by Fox News will reach a far wider audience with much greater credibility than any Twitter or Facebook item connected with an entity such as the Internet Research Agency. Given the very deliberate action taken to modify photographs of scenes in Seattle, it would appear that one of the three main, non-network television news sources in the US (the others being CNN and MSNBC) has decided to not only present a skewed perspective, but is actively working to show a biased, manipulated view of reality for ostensibly political purposes.
As one might imagine, this is very concerning! While Fox News’ failings are legion from a journalistic integrity perspective, outright manipulation of items is deeply troubling – and shows that in the run-up to what will be a very fraught election, the primary worry for US entities isn’t some shadowy foreign conspiracy – but domestic actions to support one’s own side. Given that the 2016 election already featured multiple controversies, the addition of the controversial Trump administration, COVID-19, and a willingness to ascribe manipulation and influence to shadowy forces – whether “the Russians” or some global “leftist, socialist” conspiracy – will make 2020 especially concerning.
While CISA’s dedication to “Protect 2020” is admirable, I deeply question whether the organization (or any element of the US government) has the capability to actually do so. The reason for this is simple: threats have migrated from “external”, foreign entities to instead encompass domestic interest groups and players with agendas (and resources) of their own. While CISA and other elements of the US government have ample authority to potentially police or deny external influence over domestic actions, purely domestic activity is largely outside the purview of all such agencies – and in many instances actually protected by items such as the First Amendment.
As shown in this blatant, Soveit-like image manipulation at Fox News, the real threat to 2020 likely does not reside outside the US – but instead exists within the country’s borders. As different camps settle in to ever more hardened, fortified positions, the risk for conflagration following the November 2020 result increases substantially. While there is some degree of “both sides” to this narrative, overall right-leaning entities appear to be both most invested and most active in trying to shape narratives and indicating likely recourse to violence in the event of a result with which they disagree. Given that Trump’s ratings are, as of this writing, basically in the toilet, the potential for a reactionary, violent response to an election is not only concerning, but very real.
Ultimately, while many entities would like to proclaim influence operations and similar entities as an item beyond their borders, political realities mean that domestic entities – including such institutional bodies as Fox News – are increasingly playing in this sphere. In an already tense landscape, such actions prime society for disruptive, potentially violent responses to ordinary political events. Yet such communication presumably remains within the realm of protected, desirable speech – setting up an interesting dilemma between social stability and freedom of expression (even if such expression is faked or manipulated). Based on all of these observations, I am deeply and profoundly concerned how 2020 will play out within the United States. I hope that cooler heads prevail, but given the willingness of entities such as the established, semi-mainstream Fox News organization to dabble in manipulation and disinformation, my hopes are very circumscribed.
