Cyber Week in Review: February 19, 2021 cfr.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cfr.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A recent study found that disinformation reaches people six times faster than factually accurate news. This is because fake stories are more likely to be spread by humans and not bots. Bots are just as likely to spread a real story as a fake one. Humans, on the other hand, like spreading sensational, unique, and headline-grabbing stories. Social psychologists [PDF] confirm that when a person’s beliefs are reinforced with misleading or false facts, figures, and claims, the information source is unlikely to be questioned. Furthermore, any attempt to refute the false information once an opinion has been formed may only result in reinforcing the views for those individuals with the strongest ideological beliefs.
U.S. contribution to strategic instability is compounded by Russia’s and China’s cyber strategies. Particularly risky is that both countries incorporate “cyber proxies” as central parts of their cyber doctrines. Broadly defined, cyber proxies are loosely affiliated hacking groups, often times criminal hacking groups, that are called upon by the state to conduct parts of or all of specific cyber operations.
For Russia, it has been longstanding practice for the state security service (FSB) and military intelligence (GRU) to employ cyber criminals for offensive cyber operations in return for implicit legal immunity. This has allowed the state to cheaply leverage technical expertise and, more importantly, facilitate plausible deniability on the part of the Russian government for cyber operations.
Blog Post
Blog posts represent the views of CFR fellows and staff and not those of CFR, which takes no institutional positions.
Amazon, Tech Companies Drop Parler
Parler was forced offline this week after Amazon shut off its web-hosting services to the controversial social media platform. Google and Apple also dropped Parler from their app stores over the weekend. In announcing the decision, Amazon cited Parler s inadequate processes for moderating content that encourages and incites violence, which violates Amazon s terms of service. Parler, the self-described free speech social media platform popular among the far-right, saw a significant increase in users last week after Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms banned President Trump. Parler has loudly criticized Amazon s decision to suspend its web-hosting services, saying that the decision was made for political and anti-competitive reasons.