Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

by Emerson Brooking, P W Singer, George Guidall (Reader)

Social media has been weaponized, as state hackers and rogue terrorists have seized upon Twitter and Facebook to create chaos and destruction. This urgent report is required reading, from defense expert P.W. Singer and Council on Foreign Relations fellow Emerson Brooking. Social media are transforming war, crime, and diplomacy. Terrorists can broadcast attacks, "Twitter wars" produce real-world casualties, and enemy movements can be tracked on social platforms. War, tech, and politics have blurred into a new battle space that's as close as our own phones. P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking tackle the mind-bending questions that arise when war goes online. In this world, ISIS copies the Twitter tactics of Taylor Swift, an accountant in Georgia foils terrorists thousands of miles away, and OSINT (open source intelligence) outpaces other forms of espionage. What can be kept secret in a world of networks? Does social media expose the truth or bury it? And what role do ordinary people now play in international conflicts? Delving ever deeper into the darkest corners of the web, we meet the unexpected warriors of social media, such as the rapper turned jihadist PR czar and the Russian hipsters who wage unceasing infowars against the West. Finally, looking to the crucial years ahead, LikeWar outlines a radical new paradigm for understanding and defending against the unprecedented threats of our networked world.

Audio CD

Published October 15, 2018

Reviews

[Øzymandias · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was immediately turned off by the dedication to Alexander Nix, who is by all accounts a despicable individual who played a role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal (for more information, read Mindf*ck by Christopher Wylie)

I’m glad I kept reading though because this book was a broad overview of the changing information landscape, and how information and social media has become a battleground for influence operations. From brands to entertainment to governments to terroists, all are harnessing the powers of social media to manipulate users into supporting a cause or fueling the fires of hate.

Through the books 9 chapters, the authors show how social media has been used in influence operations, and the effects of doing so: citizen journalists being murdered, hoaxes being carried out by bot nets, and the rise of the digital warfare.

I give this book only 4 stars because though it was written 6 years ago as of the date of this review, it is now somewhat out of date because of the rise of AI.

Suggested reading after this book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Shoshana Zuboff. Though this book was also published in 2018, it outlines how the amount of data captured by Google and social media sites outpaced regulation. As a result, these data giants act with the power of quasi-states because it’s too late to rein them in. The same thing will happen with AI, through Chat GPT, or other similar projects.

The future looks bleak.