Title

Information Disorder Machines

Authors

Brain David Johnson, Arizona State UniversityFollow

Document Type

Book

Files

Contributing USMA Research Unit(s)

Army Cyber Institute

Description

"Weaponized narrative is an attack that seeks to undermine an opponent’s civilization, identity, and will. By generating confusion, complexity, and political and social schisms, it confounds response on the part of the defender."

A fast-moving information deluge is an ideal environment for this kind of adversarial attack. A firehose of narrative attacks gives the targeted populace little time to process and evaluate. It is cognitively disorienting and confusing – especially if the opponents barely realize what’s occurring. Opportunities abound for emotional manipulation undermining the opponent’s will to resist.

The following report captures the goals, subject matter expert inputs, raw data, and findings of Arizona State University’s Threatcasting Lab Workshop exploring the future of Weaponized Narrative. The findings exposed multiple threat areas and the coming of information disorder machines (IDMs) that could harm individuals, organizations, and even the entire United States of America. To empower people and organizations to disrupt, mitigate and recover from these potential threats the findings in this report identify not only specific threats but also provide recommendations through which organizations and individuals can disrupt, mitigate, and recover from the future of effects of IDMs.

Publication Date

2017

Keywords

threatcasting, disinformation

Recommended Citation

Johnson, Brain David, "Information Disorder Machines" (2017). ACI Books & Book Chapters. 35.
https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/aci_books/35