Editor’s note: We have known about the threat of deepfakes for years so it’s not surprising we would have developed an ability to detect them when they are produced by less sophisticated actors.  The threat posed by sophisticated actors continues to be real and we must marshal national-level resources to fight them. This report is...Read More

Interest in research on information and influence to help the federal government is not limited to commercially-offered solutions and operational capabilities. The Department of Defense Basic Research Office is soliciting for multidisciplinary fundamental research to better understand future information warfare and the tracking and prediction of attempts at social manipulation. The Broad Agency Announcement (BAA)...Read More

Editor’s Note: Dr. Paul Lieber, Information Professionals Association (IPA) Advisor and Chief Scientist at COLSA Corporation, shares his perspectives here on how data and social science can best be joined to tackle modern information problems, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Lieber has advocated for aggressively finding and using new approaches to information operations (IO)/information warfare...Read More

Editor’s Note: As the Department of Defense adopts a new focus on information warfare and Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) frameworks, industry is examining its role in supporting systems that are data dependent and highly connected.  An article in C4ISRNET captures some of the industry deliberation over how to provide “warfighters with the...Read More

Editor’s Note: While the June 16 coordinated attack against the Twitter accounts of current Presidential candidate Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Kanye and Kim Kardashian West, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, and other public figures produced little tangible damage (most Tweeters sniffed out the Bitcoin fundraising hoax immediately and Twitter responded...Read More

Editor’s Note: On Wednesday, July 22 at 1400 EDT (1100 PDT), the Naval Postgraduate School’s DOD Information Operations Center for Research (IOCR) will host a Political Warfare Project Panel. The DoD’s IOCR at the Naval Postgraduate School brings together top experts on operations in the information environment to discuss strategy and policy issues relating to...Read More

Editor’s Note: The Washington, DC ecosystem is abuzz with think tanks and policy makers looking into the threat of disinformation across the globe and seeking new techniques to counter foreign influence. Below is a round-up of recent developments of interest to IPA members.  House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Requires DOD Report on how MISO supports Whole...Read More

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) is seeking to fill gaps in the Intelligence Community’s capability to track foreign influence activities targeting the November 2020 U.S. elections on social media platforms.  DHS I&A plans to award a contract in early August for up to three years to a contractor...Read More

UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION OPERATIONS WITH TWITTER DATA: A WORKSHOP SERIES On July 9, the Carnegie Partnership for Countering Influence Operations (PCIO) and Twitter launched a series of virtual workshops to grant exceptional researchers the opportunity to present their cutting-edge work on Information Operations (IO) datasets to a community of scholars and leading experts in IO. The...Read More

Just in time to celebrate U.S. Independence Day, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released a new report looking at Russian and Chinese information campaigns and how governments have struggled to respond.  CSIS examined Russian influence activities in Germany and the United Kingdom and Chinese influence operations in Japan and Australia. “The cases...Read More