The Intentions of the Adversary

[00:00:00] There is concern tonight as election officials prepare for primaries and the presidential

[00:00:10] election about the unprecedented number of threats they are facing just for doing their

[00:00:14] job.

[00:00:15] One looming threat as America's presidential election years is security at polling places.

[00:00:22] Can it be maintained?

[00:00:24] This is no abstract concern that ABC News report noting that the number of threats to election

[00:00:30] workers has surged.

[00:00:32] As November approaches, however, the threat to people is but one concern.

[00:00:38] There are also worries about election infrastructure and reputational concerns about public confidence

[00:00:45] in the overall electoral process.

[00:00:48] An important new study on these three risks, again human infrastructure and reputational

[00:00:54] says that together they constitute a potential perfect storm.

[00:00:59] And weaving its way among these worries is the issue of false narratives also known as

[00:01:05] disinformation.

[00:01:06] I'm Paul Brandes and that's the name of this podcast series, Disinformation, a co-production

[00:01:17] of Evergreen Podcasting and Emergent Risk International, a global risk advisory firm.

[00:01:24] The Rand Corporation, the Los Angeles based think tank, menses no words with its report

[00:01:30] on our coming election, indulge me in reading the first few sentences of that report.

[00:01:36] Quote, foreign governments interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election while some

[00:01:42] domestic leaders alleged election fraud before voting even began.

[00:01:48] Assertions that the election was stolen gained so much traction that as certification

[00:01:54] began a crowd rallied and attacked the U.S. Capitol causing damage, injury and death.

[00:02:01] Messages discrediting the election results and the agencies and officials investigating

[00:02:06] the riot and election related offenses have continued unabated particularly on social

[00:02:12] media.

[00:02:13] Unquote.

[00:02:14] But what about now?

[00:02:16] One of the authors of the study, Mark Posard is a military sociologist also faculty

[00:02:22] member at the Rand Graduate School of Public Policy.

[00:02:26] Your support of our conversation.

[00:02:29] Your report on America's upcoming election is disturbing on, well, lots of front.

[00:02:36] You say a perfect storm is brewing.

[00:02:40] Give our listeners if you could a brief summary of that perfect storm and then we'll go

[00:02:45] into the details.

[00:02:47] I think there's kind of three examples here.

[00:02:49] The first is that we do have this hyper partisanship in our country right now.

[00:02:56] And you have both parties jockeying for a very small number of votes in many of these swing

[00:03:02] states.

[00:03:03] You have the potential for a crisis that is completely or seemingly completely unrelated

[00:03:09] to the election such as an attack on critical infrastructure that could occur.

[00:03:14] There are parties that are trying to amplify various crises for their own political benefit.

[00:03:20] And then you have these adversaries that are looking for these tactical opportunities that

[00:03:24] they can jump in and they can amplify falsehoods.

[00:03:27] They can try to gin up the population and these can all converge at the right moment

[00:03:34] right being from the perspective of an adversary to really kind of create a lot of lasting

[00:03:40] problems in the 2024 election in my humble opinion.

[00:03:44] So there are domestic concerns.

[00:03:47] There are foreign based concerns.

[00:03:50] Let's talk about some of these in detail.

[00:03:52] You classify them in three general areas physical threats, human threats, reputational

[00:03:59] threats.

[00:04:00] If you could discuss them within the context of disinformation if you could this is a podcast

[00:04:07] on disinformation first the physical threats tell me about those.

[00:04:13] So the truth of the matter is that because we have a decentralized election system these

[00:04:18] physical threats which are really anything that is tangible that relates to our election

[00:04:24] infrastructure.

[00:04:25] So facilities, equipment, information storage, voting machines, ballots.

[00:04:31] What's nice here in terms of the U.S. is that we have a decentralized election system

[00:04:35] so it's actually very difficult to systematically target physical aspects of our election infrastructure.

[00:04:44] The same goes for human what we call human assets or human parts of this infrastructure.

[00:04:49] These are the people that actually run our elections, government contractors, non-government

[00:04:54] partners, volunteer poll workers and again this is very decentralized so those are

[00:04:59] hard things to actually systematically target.

[00:05:02] So we have this third asset class that we call reputational assets.

[00:05:06] These are public perceptions of physical and human assets in our election system.

[00:05:12] There's some interesting paradox with our election system it's decentralized so it's

[00:05:16] really hard to systematically target physical and human assets but that makes it really

[00:05:21] easy to target reputational assets.

[00:05:24] It's really easy in the U.S. to make people think an election was stolen because all

[00:05:27] you got to do is find a few one-off examples of where something maybe not right happened

[00:05:33] and then you can amplify them.

[00:05:35] And I think that's where this issue of mis and disinformation comes in is you can use

[00:05:40] one-off examples, amplify them to kind of essentially gin up the population.

[00:05:46] Now we saw in 2020 not to delve into recent history but there were obviously plenty

[00:05:54] of examples where people took one little discrepancy or minor anomaly in one voting system in one

[00:06:04] county or precinct or something blew it up but there have been scores of court challenges,

[00:06:12] court investigations, these kinds of things.

[00:06:16] None of them have really proven to show that there has been a widespread or even

[00:06:23] minor election fraud and yet these views continue to persist.

[00:06:30] Why is that?

[00:06:32] Why do these false narratives live on years after the fact?

[00:06:37] Why does that happen?

[00:06:39] Well, at RAND we have this broader research portfolio called Truth Decay and there's been

[00:06:43] this broader trend I think across our society of the decline of facts and objective

[00:06:49] analysis to take these issues head-on.

[00:06:52] I think there's a broader social headwind that occurs plus there's this issue, a larger

[00:06:56] issue of distrust of the government that I think is brewing across our country.

[00:07:01] The issue with elections in particular though is that when you find those one-offs and amplify

[00:07:08] them we do have a judicial process that the United States uses to essentially adjudicate

[00:07:15] these facts.

[00:07:17] What I am most concerned about is our adversary is getting into the bunch.

[00:07:21] And so I led RAND's work on election or foreign election interference in 2020 for

[00:07:25] Governor Newsom in the state of California and one thing that we found was the Russians

[00:07:30] in particular would find targets of opportunity and amplify and essentially

[00:07:35] recycle our partisanship at scale.

[00:07:42] The Russians in particular which brings us to Vladimir Putin you're speaking in the Kremlin

[00:07:47] earlier this month after being sworn in for another six-year term as Russia's president.

[00:07:53] It is hardly news that Russia's information warfare efforts are robust, widespread and

[00:07:59] increasingly sophisticated but what makes them even more effective RAND study says

[00:08:05] is that those efforts are taking full advantage of our own weaknesses and divisions

[00:08:11] in other words what we're doing to ourselves.

[00:08:14] In this regard the Russians are hardly alone.

[00:08:18] And so in many cases it's not that Russia or China or these other countries are doing this

[00:08:22] what the fact is happening is they're waiting for us to kind of essentially create a tactical

[00:08:27] opportunity that they exploit and then they can amplify it further.

[00:08:31] So we're doing it to ourselves and then our adversaries essentially exploit it.

[00:08:35] And I think that's what happens in many cases with our elections where there might be

[00:08:39] some one-off case there might be a court case that one is trying to have adjudicated

[00:08:45] and then our adversaries are going to jump in the mix and start trying to amplify this stuff online

[00:08:50] or in other mediums.

[00:08:51] They're just piling on two things that we are doing to ourselves.

[00:08:56] Oh yeah I mean when this issue of partisanship and actually broader truth decay in our society

[00:09:01] are actually are really tactical opportunities for adversaries.

[00:09:04] It is a Christmas gift to the Russians.

[00:09:07] It is a gift to the Chinese and the Iranians and other countries that are trying to harm our democracy.

[00:09:13] And you say rather disturbingly that these are not individual silos that the seemingly

[00:09:21] unrelated threats could happen simultaneously.

[00:09:25] Tell me more about that how might that unfold what should we be looking for?

[00:09:31] I think well the key thing we should be looking for here is how one type of seemingly

[00:09:37] disconnected threat could suddenly relate to another threat.

[00:09:40] So if there's an attack on our critical infrastructure such as our utility companies

[00:09:45] and there is a partisan reaction and suddenly you start seeing it grow.

[00:09:51] We do have to ask ourselves is why is it growing?

[00:09:53] Is it actually homegrown in terms of the reaction to some type of crisis which could be

[00:09:58] an attack on critical infrastructure.

[00:10:00] It could be a hurricane.

[00:10:02] It could be a cyber attack or our adversaries trying to amplify this up further.

[00:10:08] And I think one thing that we're not particularly prepared for is having multiple adversaries

[00:10:13] jumping in at the same time.

[00:10:15] And so if there is some national crisis or a regional crisis

[00:10:19] that may affect the ability for us to carry out election in a state or locality

[00:10:23] and then suddenly you have Russian trolls online.

[00:10:27] You might have Iranian operations operating separately to really just kind of mishmash this crisis.

[00:10:34] Are we going to be in a position to be able to adjudicate it accordingly essentially

[00:10:40] and say what do we need to do to get this done to carry out our elections

[00:10:43] or are we going to essentially just self-consume ourselves during this crisis?

[00:10:47] At a recent summit between Russian President of Putin

[00:10:52] and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Xi said there are no bounds to our relationship

[00:10:59] meaning a military cooperation, intelligence cooperation, economic cooperation on and on and on.

[00:11:07] Is there any evidence that you have seen that they are coordinating their efforts

[00:11:13] to interfere with their election in any of the ways that you have described?

[00:11:18] So I haven't actually looked at that question specifically.

[00:11:21] So I don't want to speak to whether or not that's happening.

[00:11:24] I will say as a hypothesis it wouldn't be super surprising.

[00:11:29] These are very cheap operations to carry out.

[00:11:32] You don't need to invest in a 10-year weapons system

[00:11:35] and dump hundreds of millions of dollars to an R&D to carry this stuff out.

[00:11:40] It really is a matter of you have a direct pipeline,

[00:11:44] particularly the social media and with individuals.

[00:11:47] So essentially all you're doing is figuring out who you want to target

[00:11:50] and you pump out content.

[00:11:52] So it would be not super surprising to say the least if Russia and China were somehow coordinating,

[00:11:57] either explicitly or implicitly.

[00:12:00] And that very well could just be that there might be a tactical opportunity

[00:12:03] that Russia finds and they exploit

[00:12:05] and then China jumps in their own way,

[00:12:08] not necessarily coordinating every step of the way,

[00:12:11] but again just finding that opportunity and being able to communicate it.

[00:12:15] You don't need to do a whole lot to gen people out, particularly in this type of election cycle

[00:12:20] where I would suspect we're going through a political realignment.

[00:12:24] And so it's a lot of exploitable opportunities to say the least.

[00:12:27] And to your earlier point about our election system being decentralized,

[00:12:32] you really don't have to do that much.

[00:12:35] And in the case of Russia and China,

[00:12:38] you really only have to look at these handful of swing states

[00:12:42] that are going to determine the election.

[00:12:45] It's conceivable they could target just two or three states

[00:12:50] that they think are going to make a difference and just focus on those.

[00:12:54] So talk about asymmetric warfare in a very tiny way

[00:12:58] could actually make a huge difference.

[00:13:01] Exactly.

[00:13:02] And I think the key is, is that they're not going to...

[00:13:05] I don't think it's really a huge payoff

[00:13:07] to necessarily try to hack our voting machines

[00:13:10] or try to turn individuals who are local election workers.

[00:13:14] Because it's such a decentralized system,

[00:13:16] there's a lot of different standard operating procedures across states.

[00:13:19] But you're right, there's a few states where vote margins are very narrow.

[00:13:24] And if you can find a crisis that somehow relates to

[00:13:27] or is happening inside that state,

[00:13:30] it's not that hard to gin people up

[00:13:32] and then you start casting doubt more broadly on the election system

[00:13:36] based on one or two examples or one or two crises

[00:13:39] that are occurring in a swing state

[00:13:41] that could potentially directly relate to kind of the national outcome

[00:13:45] because of our electoral college.

[00:13:47] It's an opportunity for the Russians and the Chinese,

[00:13:50] the Iranians and others.

[00:13:51] Let's shift if we could just for a minute

[00:13:53] to artificial intelligence.

[00:13:55] This is something that is far more top of mind

[00:13:59] than it was in 2020.

[00:14:02] What's the impact of that in 2020,

[00:14:06] relative to four years ago?

[00:14:09] So I had a hypothesize here.

[00:14:11] I would probably suspect that it's just going to pollute the information space.

[00:14:15] Well, I think there's two things.

[00:14:18] One, it's going to pollute the information space

[00:14:20] because it's just going to create more bullshit on the internet.

[00:14:23] And when you have more crap on the internet,

[00:14:25] it's difficult for individuals to disentangle

[00:14:28] what is true from what is a falsehood,

[00:14:31] because you might have images and video that look very, very realistic.

[00:14:36] The second thing is it allows our adversaries

[00:14:39] to scale their operations relatively easy.

[00:14:41] So these are already cheap operations to run.

[00:14:44] You don't need a lot of money to stand up a server

[00:14:47] and maybe stand up some individuals to produce content,

[00:14:51] but this will allow you to automate that.

[00:14:53] So essentially you're reducing the costs

[00:14:56] to enter into this kind of operation.

[00:14:58] And we already have a lot of crap on the internet,

[00:15:00] and now you're going to have AI producing more crap,

[00:15:03] especially polluting the information space,

[00:15:05] making it harder for regular citizens

[00:15:07] to make an informed decision based on whatever policy issue

[00:15:10] is popping up in a discussion on a given day.

[00:15:13] Now, you and I are speaking in early May.

[00:15:17] The general election is six months away,

[00:15:20] but we've already gone through the primaries and so forth.

[00:15:24] In terms of false narratives, disinformation,

[00:15:27] AI and all the rest,

[00:15:29] what have you already seen this year that makes you worry?

[00:15:34] Well, I think you've seen these videos pop up periodically

[00:15:40] of President Trump and President Biden

[00:15:44] in some cases where they're doing things that they didn't do.

[00:15:47] They're just deep fakes.

[00:15:49] And I think that's the thing that could potential be problematic.

[00:15:52] Not so much that that's going to destroy our democracy

[00:15:55] and I don't think AI is this existential risk personally.

[00:15:58] But what I do think could happen is if you time it correctly,

[00:16:02] you could take a crisis and you can exploit it.

[00:16:05] And all you got to do is get that one viral video

[00:16:08] and then get the news cycle running

[00:16:10] and have it get picked up.

[00:16:12] And I think that's going to be really particularly concerning.

[00:16:15] If our adversaries get the timing right

[00:16:18] and they get the right piece of content

[00:16:20] that hooks onto a percentage of the electorate

[00:16:23] and it goes viral,

[00:16:24] it's really hard to get ahead of that story.

[00:16:27] A bunch of Milwaukee,

[00:16:29] you know the value of voting Democratic on our votes count.

[00:16:32] It's important that you save your vote for the November election.

[00:16:35] And deep fakes are getting better every day

[00:16:38] like this fake robo-call

[00:16:40] of President Biden urging New Hampshire Democrats

[00:16:43] to skip that state's primary.

[00:16:46] You claim to have found evidence of corruption

[00:16:48] and deceit in Trump's data center.

[00:16:50] Yeah, right.

[00:16:51] Krusty Hillary tried that s*** too and failed miserably.

[00:16:54] Donald Trump has also been a target of deep fakes

[00:16:57] like this clip, again artificially manufactured.

[00:17:00] The problem, of course,

[00:17:02] is that for the average person looking at

[00:17:04] or listening to something,

[00:17:06] it may be difficult to discern fact from fiction.

[00:17:09] What can be done to bolster our defenses

[00:17:12] against this sort of thing?

[00:17:14] I put that question to Mr. Posard.

[00:17:17] So, I mean, the truth of the matter is

[00:17:19] that the Washington D.A. Americans are living their lives.

[00:17:22] They've got mortgages to pay,

[00:17:24] they've got kids to take care of.

[00:17:27] They're not thinking about these issues as deeply

[00:17:30] as maybe folks inside the D.C. bubble.

[00:17:32] And so I think sometimes people, you know,

[00:17:35] there should be a concern that this may sway the elector.

[00:17:38] We also often understand that

[00:17:41] other people have their lives to live.

[00:17:43] So they're not going to be thinking about this

[00:17:45] as closely as maybe folks inside the belt they are.

[00:17:48] A little bit of planning can go a long way.

[00:17:50] And so one thing that we recommend is scenario-based planning

[00:17:53] where we work with local, state and federal governments.

[00:17:56] This becomes important because this mishmash of crises

[00:18:00] that could really just blow up in our face,

[00:18:03] we can start trying to plan ahead in terms of

[00:18:05] who's going to do what if something hits

[00:18:07] and we can get creative with these scenarios.

[00:18:10] One thing I can tell you, for example,

[00:18:12] with misinformation from my work in 2020 was

[00:18:16] you might be far right or far left,

[00:18:18] but nobody wants Russia reaffirming their beliefs.

[00:18:21] We found that in our focus groups and interviews

[00:18:23] in 2020 a month before the election.

[00:18:26] You might believe in the Second Amendment

[00:18:28] and you believe that the Democrats are going to

[00:18:31] take your guns away, but you don't want Russia to do that.

[00:18:34] The same thing for those on the far left.

[00:18:36] So I think a lot of times it's figuring out

[00:18:38] getting ahead of this stuff and figuring out

[00:18:40] what one was going to do quickly as a whole

[00:18:42] government approach and meeting people where they're at

[00:18:45] and having a kind of strategy up front.

[00:18:48] Because right now I think we just respond once it happens

[00:18:50] and that's going to be a recipe for disaster, I think.

[00:18:53] That's an interesting point being reactive

[00:18:56] as opposed to being a proactive

[00:18:59] and you outlined a couple of things that can be done.

[00:19:03] But is that going to be enough in your review to prevent?

[00:19:07] I'm thinking about some kind of October surprise,

[00:19:11] the proverbial October surprise that tends to pop up

[00:19:15] every election cycle.

[00:19:17] Are we doing enough to prevent that?

[00:19:19] I suppose it's hard to answer that,

[00:19:21] but give me your forecast.

[00:19:24] I think we don't know until it happens, right?

[00:19:27] But I would argue that these proactive measures

[00:19:29] across state local tribal and church-related governments

[00:19:32] is going to be key.

[00:19:33] And I would go a step further.

[00:19:35] This is not in the actual report,

[00:19:37] but there's a handful of states where the vote margins

[00:19:41] are pretty narrow and it turns out those are the states

[00:19:44] where a lot of election fall-sides really gain traction

[00:19:46] because there's a reasonable chance that even a small

[00:19:50] regularity could change the outcome in terms of who gets

[00:19:54] what electoral votes.

[00:19:55] No one's claiming that people are stealing elections

[00:19:57] or there's not popular claims that people are stealing

[00:20:00] elections in the state of Maryland

[00:20:02] or the state of California.

[00:20:05] But there are claims in these states that we know already

[00:20:08] that they have narrow vote margins.

[00:20:10] And so what I think needs to be done in many cases

[00:20:13] is further investment in those states to increase the

[00:20:16] barriers for people that actually have falsehoods

[00:20:19] that are going to gain traction.

[00:20:21] And again, we do the scenario-based planning.

[00:20:23] We work with local state federal governments

[00:20:25] and we identify the states that we pretty much are

[00:20:27] sure are going to have a very narrow vote margin

[00:20:29] to begin with and invest in those states.

[00:20:31] I think we can do a lot to tamp down on some of these

[00:20:34] election fall-sides.

[00:20:38] Let's take a short break here when we come back

[00:20:40] and chat with Brady Roberts, the Chief Operating Officer

[00:20:43] of Emergent Risk International.

[00:20:47] This series on disinformation is a co-production

[00:20:50] of Evergreen Podcasts and Emergent Risk International,

[00:20:53] a global risk advisory firm.

[00:20:55] Emergent Risk International.

[00:20:57] We build intelligent solutions that find opportunities

[00:21:00] in a world of risk.

[00:21:10] Welcome back. Let's bring in Brady Roberts,

[00:21:12] the Chief Operating Officer of Emergent Risk International.

[00:21:17] Brady, this Rand report shows that AIs increasing capabilities

[00:21:21] are such that they have, and according to their report,

[00:21:25] the potential to significantly increase

[00:21:28] the persuasive power of disinformation, unquote.

[00:21:33] Is that persuasive power in your view accelerating faster

[00:21:37] than our ability to discern between fact and fiction?

[00:21:41] I would argue, yes, today it is.

[00:21:46] The ability for groups, for organizations,

[00:21:50] for individuals to create content for whatever the purpose,

[00:21:54] whether it's for a legitimate business purpose

[00:21:57] or whether it's for influencing voters in the election

[00:22:02] or selling narratives in the media

[00:22:09] or simply creating content as an individual in social media,

[00:22:13] the ability for us to be able to create content

[00:22:17] and whatever narrative that we want to choose to create

[00:22:20] has rapidly, rapidly expanded and increased

[00:22:25] and becomes so much easier now.

[00:22:28] And so that does lead to so many different narratives out there.

[00:22:31] And absolutely, I think your average consumer of content,

[00:22:36] your average American,

[00:22:38] definitely is more boring but far more information

[00:22:40] than they ever have been before

[00:22:42] and they only have so much time to read and to absorb.

[00:22:47] So therefore their ability to talk about

[00:22:49] the average layman here,

[00:22:53] their ability again to discern fact from fiction

[00:22:57] you were saying is almost impossible

[00:23:00] given just the sheer scale of things that they're exposed to.

[00:23:06] Absolutely, especially when you consider the fact that

[00:23:09] so many laymen are still receiving information

[00:23:14] via social media, which is algorithmically driven,

[00:23:21] meaning for business purposes it's producing content

[00:23:24] or showing you content that you want to see alongside ads

[00:23:28] that you've hovered over in a recent use.

[00:23:33] And so it's driving that content

[00:23:35] and so that's what you're seeing

[00:23:36] and so it's not giving you different sides of any equation,

[00:23:40] it's tending to give you more of one side

[00:23:42] and that makes it very hard I think for the most anyone

[00:23:46] really to discern as a fact as a fiction

[00:23:48] am I seeing both sides

[00:23:49] am I able to kind of evaluate a certain piece of information?

[00:23:53] It's also quite easy to use large language models, these LLMs

[00:23:57] to quickly generate what Rand calls

[00:24:00] and I'll quote again from their report

[00:24:02] eloquent false and misleading claims about

[00:24:05] significant topics in the news.

[00:24:08] These are obviously going to be election related issues

[00:24:12] Ukraine for example school shootings, immigration and so forth

[00:24:16] in your judgment what can be done about this

[00:24:19] we just agreed that this information is proliferating

[00:24:23] at a scale beyond the average person's ability to comprehend

[00:24:28] so what can we do about it?

[00:24:30] And that is such a broad question

[00:24:32] and I'll take that back to my perspective

[00:24:35] as someone has spent their entire career

[00:24:37] in the intelligence field.

[00:24:40] As an intelligence analyst

[00:24:42] we're taught first and foremost to use critical thinking

[00:24:46] and we're taught how to

[00:24:49] what critical thinking is and how to apply it

[00:24:52] to anything that we're evaluating in order to make judgment solemn

[00:24:56] and the first principle of critical thinking

[00:25:00] is objectivity.

[00:25:02] In other words being able to look at

[00:25:04] look at a piece of information

[00:25:06] and think about and investigate and determine

[00:25:11] how factual it might be

[00:25:13] and whether or not that piece of information

[00:25:17] could have bias behind it.

[00:25:20] And so as someone that is an intelligence professional

[00:25:24] this world that we live in today

[00:25:26] the information that I myself am bombarded with

[00:25:29] it's not so scary because I understand

[00:25:31] that anything I look at

[00:25:33] anything I view, anything that I read

[00:25:35] could have a motivation behind it

[00:25:38] and it's up to me to be able to sort that out

[00:25:41] look at that source, evaluate

[00:25:43] think objectively and move on

[00:25:45] to make my own personal decision

[00:25:47] in whatever it is I'm making a decision about today.

[00:25:49] I believe that

[00:25:51] what can we do about this?

[00:25:53] You know, I'll get back to a comment

[00:25:55] I've made in a previous

[00:25:57] a previous episode of this podcast

[00:26:00] I think we start with education

[00:26:04] taking this tradecraft

[00:26:06] that we as intelligence analysts

[00:26:08] and intelligence professionals

[00:26:10] understand that underpins our career profession

[00:26:13] and teaching that

[00:26:15] and increasingly teaching that at a younger age

[00:26:18] in this country.

[00:26:20] When we go back to thinking about those old civic scores

[00:26:22] they once upon a time so many of us went through

[00:26:25] I think we need to look at

[00:26:27] whether or not we should be teaching

[00:26:29] in the schools at an early age

[00:26:31] especially as kids are being

[00:26:33] introduced to social media

[00:26:35] this idea of critical thinking

[00:26:38] and looking at that from the lens of

[00:26:40] what does this mean for

[00:26:42] how we think about our government

[00:26:44] what we think about the world around us

[00:26:46] how we think about how that's going to make us

[00:26:50] better participants

[00:26:52] in our own US democracy

[00:26:56] as we become adults

[00:26:58] and looking at that the recidivist lens.

[00:27:00] Brady, I don't want to ask about

[00:27:03] specific clients but from

[00:27:06] general observation for businesses in general

[00:27:11] what are they most concerned about again

[00:27:14] six months out to the election

[00:27:16] a lot of issues in play that could affect them

[00:27:19] what are you hearing in general

[00:27:22] that appears to be of concern with them

[00:27:25] and again within the parameters of what we're talking about here

[00:27:28] which are these false narratives

[00:27:30] sure I think number one

[00:27:32] we are in across the board

[00:27:35] there are concerns about

[00:27:37] the potential for

[00:27:40] another round of

[00:27:43] demonstrations if not violence

[00:27:46] things that could potentially impact business

[00:27:51] or you know lead us towards

[00:27:54] another round of mass demonstrations

[00:27:57] across the country

[00:27:59] or simply violence

[00:28:02] I think other some of our clients are also just worried about

[00:28:05] just reputation issues in general

[00:28:09] if they're perceived as being

[00:28:12] you know tied to one side of the political equation

[00:28:15] or the other what might that mean for their business

[00:28:18] One of the final things I just wanted to ask about

[00:28:21] you know we worry about the Russian

[00:28:24] efforts Chinese efforts

[00:28:27] in this area RAND report says that

[00:28:30] adversaries like them and their others

[00:28:33] can increasingly benefit from technology

[00:28:36] that effectively obscure their foreign origins

[00:28:39] in other words we try and trace the breadcrumbs

[00:28:42] of these false narratives but through getting awfully good

[00:28:45] RAND report says about covering up

[00:28:48] those breadcrumbs

[00:28:50] what are your thoughts on kind of

[00:28:53] overcoming that it seems like the bad guys are always

[00:28:56] a step ahead of the good guys

[00:29:00] today's LLMs make the ability to create content

[00:29:04] that sounds like

[00:29:07] any voice that you wanted to sound like

[00:29:09] so incredibly easy

[00:29:11] it can also pull from more localized information

[00:29:14] to really give it a contextual flavor

[00:29:17] that makes that content

[00:29:20] really hard to discern

[00:29:22] I think back for example to

[00:29:24] the very earliest days of phishing emails Paul

[00:29:27] you know we used to teach people

[00:29:30] that when you're looking for a potential phishing email

[00:29:33] the first thing you look for are typos

[00:29:36] spelling errors or does this sound like it actually comes from

[00:29:39] in the case of an English email

[00:29:42] a native English speaker and if it doesn't

[00:29:45] that's your first red flag

[00:29:47] today of course all of that goes away and this is not something

[00:29:50] we worry about anymore because phishing emails

[00:29:53] read so much more eloquently now than they ever did

[00:29:56] I think the same principle applies to when we think about

[00:29:59] any sort of content whatsoever

[00:30:02] it's very easy to make something sound very legitimate

[00:30:05] or though it's coming from in this case we're talking about

[00:30:08] the US making it sound as though it comes from

[00:30:11] a member of the American audience

[00:30:14] and so that alone much less looking at where the sourcing

[00:30:17] of that comes from but that authenticity

[00:30:20] that you can give content makes it increasingly difficult

[00:30:24] and I think the random report is absolutely right

[00:30:26] and that it will make the layman reader

[00:30:29] the layman viewer much more susceptible

[00:30:32] to this content that seems so authentic

[00:30:35] I was hoping for some reassurance from me Brady

[00:30:38] and I'm not getting that

[00:30:40] well you know this is Paul

[00:30:42] this is where I go back to I think it's about

[00:30:45] you know teaching looking at this

[00:30:48] from a long term strategic objective

[00:30:51] in the United States and teaching

[00:30:53] our young population

[00:30:56] what it means to look at this material

[00:30:58] what it means to think critically about it

[00:31:00] what it means to identify your sourcing

[00:31:02] and think through what that sourcing might come from

[00:31:05] and understand motives

[00:31:09] behind a given piece of information

[00:31:11] I think that's our good start

[00:31:13] I will say

[00:31:15] if you want one piece of good news Paul

[00:31:17] and I say this not as an intelligence professional

[00:31:19] but I say it as a parent raising kids of different ages right now

[00:31:22] and watching their media literacy grow

[00:31:25] I think I do think that our younger population

[00:31:28] in this country really is taking on head first

[00:31:31] this concept of media literacy

[00:31:34] and they're thinking about that in ways that we never would have before

[00:31:37] thanks to Mark Posard a military sociologist

[00:31:42] and faculty member at the Rand Graduate School

[00:31:45] of Public Policy

[00:31:47] and Brady Roberts chief operating officer

[00:31:50] of Emergent Risk International

[00:31:53] sound from ABC News

[00:31:55] our sound designer and editor Noah Fouts

[00:31:58] audio engineer Nathan Corson

[00:32:00] executive producers Michael Dale-Loya

[00:32:03] and Gerardo Orlando

[00:32:05] and on behalf of Meredith Wilson

[00:32:07] the CEO of Emergent Risk International

[00:32:10] I'm Paul Brandes

[00:32:12] thanks so much for listening