Information Wars

by Mark Rowe

Author: Richard Stengel

ISBN No: 9781611856385

Review date: 29/03/2024

No of pages:

Publisher: Atlantic

Publisher URL:
https://atlantic-books.co.uk/book/information-wars/

Year of publication: 27/01/2020

Brief:

price

£20, hardback

While this is very much an American book, the story is a global one, and the problem it raises is the same for any country, whether they seek to attack or defend in ‘information wars’. To set out the scenery, briefly: Richard Stengel, editor-in-chief of Time magazine, and thus one of the most important men in US journalism, from 2006, in 2013 joined the Obama administration as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

This is (as the publisher’s blurb puts it) ‘the first and only insider account’ of how the US government tried, and failed, to combat a global rise of disinformation. That was (as others have pointed out) by the Islamist terror group ISIS, spreading their message online, so that it can reach bedrooms and mobile phones in any western city.

Russian disinformation dated from President Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Stengel writes of the ‘weaponisation’ of information by ISIS and Russia. Then famously the Russians turned their sights on the US presidential election. As the sub-title of Information Wars suggests, Stengel sees disinformation is a threat to democracy, but offers ways to do something about it.

For security manager readers, the most striking gleaning from this book may come towards the start. Stengel describes starting work at the State Department, both in terms of his first months and the start of a working day. As with any first=person account, thanks to the repeated use of ‘I’ we share the sense that we are on the inside – Stengel talks of the 8.30am meeting of the main powers in the department, or (for those in the know), ‘the 8.30’ for short.

Yet for all the feeling of power – State is one of the most powerful institutions on the planet, ever – Stengel writes of how slow the IT system was, taking minutes at best or maybe half an hour to let anyone in. Small wonder that – as in any workplace – people used less secure gmail to actually get things done, and pass documents and words around. While that may be endearing – if you ever curse at your keyboard, you are in good company – it’s also disturbing; if the State department can’t have well-working IT, what hope the rest of us? And if State couldn’t get such basics right, what hope for them to do anything else effectively? Or maybe the plotters of ISIS and the men in charge of disinformation at the Kremlin suffer from bad IT too. Social media and computers are merely neutral tools, as radio and newsreel were for the 1939-45 war.

The difference; anyone can upload and converse through social media, so long as they have an internet connection and their device is powered. Those sending out disinformation can be more nimble than those seeking to dismiss it. And unlike radio; online videos, cook-books, threads and tutorials can be out there forever, picked up at any time.

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