Information is manipulated to organize state destabilizing actions
Information & public opinion became one of the most valuable commodities in the world, companies are selling their soul for it, large governments are spending many billions of dollars to get access to the information and data in a structured way and prepare themselves for this 3rd world war.
3 large countries with their direct allies have absolute dominance from this perspective, lots of games are being played in between, just like it would be in a real war with spies and double spies.
There are now tens of very concrete examples where governments were taken over because of mass manipulation.
A very concrete example was in Egypt, the revolution some years ago would not have been possible without manipulation of the (social) media. Lucky for Egypt, some groups of people managed to re-organize and undo some of the damage done and the 2e revolution happened, but it shows how dangerous it can be. This is like the box of Pandora, it's very dangerous to execute on and even more difficult to protect against.
Information Manipulation
Manipulation of data leads to huge side effects even going as far as manipulating election results and even genocide in some cases.
It's becoming extremely difficult to distinguish between truth and untruths, one of the issues which need to be addressed is the role of anonymity and reputation. A new internet paradigm is needed.
See:
https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/img/pdf/
information_manipulation_rvb_cle838736.pdf
Some links to demonstrate:
- https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2017/manipulating-social-media-undermine-democracy
- https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-01-13-social-media-manipulation-political-actors-industrial-scale-problem-oxford-report
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_manipulation
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_propaganda
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
- https://africacenter.org/spotlight/strategic-implications-for-africa-from-russias-invasion-in-ukraine/
Cyber manipulation and cyber attacks are the most efficient way to destabilize full countries and take over power.
Countries like China and Russia have been preparing for this for many years now so they can cut their internet from the global one which we believe is NOT THE RIGHT SOLUTION, this undo’s one of the most important happenings in the world during the last 100 years. The internet brought global access to information and collaboration possibilities. Going back to 100 separate internets would be a very bad move. But we might wonder, why do large powerful countries like this feel the need to be able to cut and separate/control their internet?