Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

by P.W. Singer

And finally, there are the MADCOMs. The inherent promise of such technology—an AI that is essentially indistinguishable from a human operator—also sets it up for terrible misuse. Today, it remains possible for a savvy internet user to distinguish “real” people from automated botnets and even many sockpuppets (the Russified English helped us spot a few). Soon enough, even this uncertain state of affairs may be recalled fondly as the “good old days”—the last time it was possible to have some confidence that another social media user was a flesh-and-blood human being instead of a manipulative machine. Give a Twitter botnet to a MADCOM and the network might be able to distort the algorithmic prominence of a topic without anyone noticing, simply by creating realistic conversations among its many fake component selves. MADCOMs won’t just drive news cycles, but will also trick and manipulate the people reacting to them. They may even grant interviews to unwitting reporters. Feed a MADCOM enough arguments and it will never repeat itself. Feed it enough information about a target population—such as the hundreds of billions of data points that reside in a voter database like Project Alamo—and it can spin a personalized narrative for every resident in a country. The network never sleeps, and it’s always learning. In the midst of a crisis, it will invariably be the first to respond, commanding disproportionate attention and guiding the social media narrative in whichever direction bes...