The post-truth era: new reasons for war
Lies for good and vice versa
Manipulations of public consciousness have existed at all times. Now it is the so-called "post-truth", which forms perception not on the basis of objective facts, but on the basis of emotions and personal beliefs.
The term itself appeared in the early 90s of the last century in connection with the American operation "Desert Storm". Previously, it was simply called propaganda.
Nowadays, when all the information space is occupied by social networks and Internet resources, post-truth is of particular importance. She is able to influence the processes of a strategic scale.
Any strategic event can become a pretext for a war - first of all, a cold one and, most likely, result in a real armed confrontation.
Retired British General Adrian Bradshaw was one of the first to pronounce this maxim:
"Fake" news, cyber hacks and political influence against one of the NATO countries can be regarded as an act of aggression against the entire alliance. "
Later, Bradshaw's words were confirmed by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who said that cyberattacks against members of the North Atlantic Alliance could be considered a pretext for a real, quite tangible war. To the extent that NATO will in such cases seriously consider the application of the fifth article, which provides for an organized response of the entire alliance to an attack on one of the member states.
NATO has long understood all the delights of cyber warfare and information warfare. The main advantage of such methods is the complete unprovability of an act of aggression.
We have already seen more than once the development of techniques, a kind of "exercise" in the examples of the US presidential elections, in which Russia was among the accused. The logic is simple - if something goes wrong for the upper establishment (Trump's victory), the easiest way is to blame an overseas enemy.
Firstly, this largely reduces the responsibility for the failure, and secondly, once again incites the electorate against opponents. It was decided not to mention that there is no direct evidence of Russian interference in the American elections. We have before us a typical example of the spread of post-truth in the information field of the Internet.
Over the decades, a typical portrait of a consumer of “inferior truth” has been formed on the Internet. First of all, this is a person who respects various exclusive investigations and "leaks" of information. Facts do not play a decisive role here, the most important is the emotionality of presentation and the shock effect.
For example, in 2018, The Times of London spoke in all seriousness about 75 Kremlin informers in the British capital. Sixty years ago, no one in their right mind would have endured such an outspoken duck outside the reading room. Now users of social networks in a couple of clicks release the information genie to freedom.
Reposts and likes make fake news quite real, and within a few hours they are talking about it all over the UK, and after a few days - all over the world.
The almost complete absence of filters in social networks and search engines also plays into the hands of post-truth. However, the lack of critical thinking in the minds of users and populism are also fertile ground for manipulation.
Anti-intellectualism seems to be our future.
The grim future of post-truth
The Internet space has overturned the logic of interaction between media and readers.
Previously, it was mainly one-way communication - the user perceived what was written without the ability to comment publicly.
Now visitors can not only support the information, but also refute, providing irrefutable "proofs". At the same time, under the alleged "facts" are usually signed either by anonymous, or generally fake characters.
This problem is especially acute in social networks.
Examples are common: the Telegram channel NEXTA last year, during the protests, published a video with a five-year-old girl who was beaten up by the Belarusian riot police in Grodno. The shocking content immediately spread all over the world. The girl was really unlucky, but she received injuries as a result of an accident.
The task has been completed - the emotional background has been created, and the protest wave in Belarus has received new fuel. Fake creativity on the web is gradually being automated - a lot of content is needed, and sometimes there is not enough human resources. The so-called bots not only put likes and repost materials, increasing its ratings, but also create fake pages, adjust information to the interests of the majority, and successfully mimic real personalities.
At the top of the post-truth pyramid are artificial intelligence technologies coupled with "deep fakes" (deepfake). Nobody here at all knows what to do with this good, they can have such a serious impact on the masses.
The ability to synthesize very real video images of famous personalities alarms politicians around the world.
There is nothing impossible about creating a video of simulated American military personnel burning the Koran, or how a simulated Israeli prime minister discusses plans to annihilate Iran's political elite. This, by the way, is not the author's inventions, but the fantasies of the Foreign Affairs publication.
On our own behalf, we add that it is also easy and natural to fabricate evidence from surveillance cameras - people can be where they have never been.
This is why, in 2018, several congressmen asked the Director of National Intelligence to assess the potential of false audio, video, and photographic images.
A year later, the House Intelligence Committee launched a massive program
"Examining the threats to national security posed by fake AI-enabled content, how to detect and combat it, and defining the role of governments, the private sector and society at large in confronting the potentially grim future of post-truth."
From all this crystallizes the main thesis: who will manage the entire "factory of fakes" - he will have the keys to the whole world in his pocket.
Trying to define rules
In the XNUMXth century, the nuclear race came to the fore - countries that managed to protect themselves weapons mass destruction, still in a privileged position.
In the XNUMXst century, you will not surprise anyone with an atomic bomb, but it is quite possible to impress with developed cybernetic weapons. The fact that the uncontrolled use of such technologies could become another Gleiwitz incident, which became a formal reason for the Second World War, is no longer a secret to anyone.
If Stoltenberg himself mentions cyberattacks as a reason for the application of the fifth article of the NATO charter, then who prevents third states from fomenting a US / NATO war with Russia?
Or who will prevent the North Atlantic Alliance, for example, from creating a cyber casus belli?
Until now, there are no full-fledged tools for tracking and fixing hacker attacks, cybercrimes and information injections. And if there is no control technique, then everything is possible.
In this regard, the reaction of the United States to the initiative of Vladimir Putin to create an international structure for information security looks very ambiguous. The New York Times cites the response of US Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers, who called the idea "cynical and cheap propaganda."
Such harsh rhetoric says one thing - Washington feels invulnerable in this stories.
When the situation really pressed, the United States willingly went to the reduction of nuclear weapons. And now any compromise is perceived as weakness, and not a manifestation of goodwill. And there is every reason for this - since 2018, Washington and London have been united by the "Cognitive Strategy" aimed against Russian statehood.
It seems that the West has finally mastered the rules of war in social networks and information platforms.
As part of the strategy, an extensive staff of various commentators and experts united by anti-Russian content is being created. The levers of influence of Western structures in Russia are known - these are various non-profit foundations that receive appropriate grants, and committed journalists, to whom new opinion leaders - bloggers have recently been added.
In such a situation, Russia has to either try to resist internal filtering of content through stigmatization of heralds of Western propaganda (cases of "foreign agents"), or try to establish clear rules of the game at the international level.
While everything is relatively good with the first one, the second initiative is frankly stalling.
Information