Information Warfare | Molly McKew

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“It is this much darker, more sinister basket of things that are not just standard political tactics.”
— Molly McKew

SHOW DESCRIPTION

Location: Taiwan
Date: Wednesday, 11th Sep 2019
Company: Fianna Strategies
Role: Information warfare expert. Foreign Policy and Strategy Consultant.

Information warfare is a tactic used to push misleading or persuasive information to a large group of people.

Propaganda, a type of information warfare, has forever been used by states, religions and governments to promote views, incite hatred and manipulate opinion.

In the digital age, information warfare is more prevalent than ever. With the growth of social media, there has been a dramatic increase in the weaponisation of information.

Many companies now have a broader reach and influence than the state, and with data-driven targeted information, the tools to wage information warfare are available to all. The Cambridge Analytica scandal highlighted how data and misinformation were used, through social media, to manipulate voters in the 2016 U.S. elections.

In this interview, I talk with Molly McKew, an information warfare expert and foreign policy & strategy consultant. We discuss propaganda in the digital age.

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TIMESTAMPS

  • 00:00:00 - Show Intro

  • 00:01:39 - Welcoming Molly to the show

  • 00:01:44 - Information Warfare introduction

  • 00:04:34 - Russian interference in the US elections

  • 00:08:44 - Molly’s career background

  • 00:11:43 - Russian v US election interference

  • 00:15:18 - Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal & behavioural engineering

  • 00:23:22 - News manipulation

  • 00:28:48 - Russian PR machine

  • 00:32:01 - The role of social media

  • 00:36:33 - Brittany Kaiser and CA/Facebook

  • 00:41:23 - Apathy towards manipulation

  • 00:45:26 - Social media CEOs in the future becoming de facto heads of state

  • 00:47:59 - Facebook Libra

  • 00:49:45 - China social scoring

  • 00:50:20 - Molly as a target of information warfare

SHOW NOTES

Connect with Molly:

Molly as a target of information warfare:

About information warfare:

Mentioned in the show:

People mentioned in the show:

Media references:

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