Digital Threat Digest - 16 August 2022
PGI’s Digital Investigations Team brings you the Digital Threat Digest, SOCMINT and OSINT insights into disinformation, influence operations, and online harms.
The digitally authoritarian future
I was once asked at the end of a call if I saw any optimism for the future. Having spent 45 minutes explaining how threats were evolving faster than they could be mitigated, and how novel threats were emerging on a daily basis, the answer was an unsurprising no. But I do enjoy thinking about the future. I always have done. As a kid I was fascinated by the unknown, by outer space and alternative universes. As ostensibly an adult I still am – but I was born too late to discover the world, and too early to explore outer space. But luckily just in time to explore more than my fair share of weird digital unknowns and to get paid to think about the future.
The common theme across all the projects I’ve worked on in the last five years has been understanding the transition from the digital world to the real world. Whether it’s an IO designed to make people behave or react in a certain way during an election, or amplified hate speech to incite civil unrest, or the coordinated doxxing of anti-war activists during a nascent conflict, it’s always digital acts that have a real world impact. Yet the work always remains fresh because the behaviours change so rapidly, and because identical behaviours play out differently from one context to another. The threats in an apparent democracy can look very different to those in a system of digital authoritarianism.
And so to the future of this world, and the future of digital authoritarianism. For context, Syria is a good example of something close to an absolute system of digital authoritarianism – wherein a mix of direct government legal and physical intimidation have led to indirect and organic self-censorship from any would-be dissenting opposition. As China has gone Covid Zero, so Syria has gone Opposition Zero. But Russia is different. Egypt is different. Turkey is different. The US is different. And, as with any political concept, digital authoritarianism is a spectrum.
Within this spectrum there will be two main types of digitally authoritarian rule in the future. The cult of personality rule, and the cult of narrative rule. The cult of personality is the classic overt strongman autocrat – Syria, Russia, increasingly Turkey and Egypt. The cult of narrative is more complex, a system that appears to tolerate opposition and debate, but in reality only allows them within specifically defined parameters. It rules by controlling both information and information pathways, controlling what is said and how much of it is allowed to reach specific audiences. Cult of narrative systems present as democratic, framing those who run it as protectors, while simultaneously ensuring all those who oppose it are ‘the enemy’. Both systems are equally digitally authoritarian, and both exploit the information environment to trigger real world impact. A cult of personality system can legitimise and legalise the existence of government militias attacking opposition groups, citing security or terrorism threats. A cult of narrative system demolishes the reputation of a target over time, until an unconnected group takes it upon themselves to carry out the real world harassment. Look to the US and, more recently, to the UK, where right-wing groups have begun harassing drag queen book clubs due to the demonisation of the target group over time.
Culture wars, climate change, election results, petrol prices, migration, inflation, censorship, and gender identity have all been weaponised by threat actors seeking to further digitally authoritarian cult of narrative systems. The cult of narrative is covert, insidious, and is here to stay. Its evolution has been facilitated by a perpetually online population, an audience conditioned to be fed manipulated information on whichever hot button topic is au fait that week in the interest of the rulers.
So no, I’m not optimistic for the future, and yes, I would still like to get off this planet.
More about Protection Group International's Digital Investigations
PGI’s Social Media Intelligence Analysts combine modern exploitative technology with deep human analytical expertise that covers the social media platforms themselves and the behaviours and the intents of those who use them. Our experienced analyst team have a deep understanding of how various threat groups use social media and follow a three-pronged approach focused on content, behaviour and infrastructure to assess and substantiate threat landscapes.
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