Leading researchers offered recommendations for increasing cognitive resilience in the face of the weaponization of social media and information during a program October 28, 2021 hosted by the U.S. Department of Defense Strategic Multi-layer Assessment (SMA) program. SMA, a multidisciplinary, multi-agency portfolio of projects that studies and assesses challenging problems associated with planning and operations...Read More

There are signs that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is increasing its efforts to understand sentiment in support of information operations. A recent article from Mark Pomerleau of C4ISRNET highlighted a nearly $1 billion contract awarded by DoD to Peraton to support four Combatant Commands with influence planning, content development, dissemination of messages, and...Read More

The Washington Post reviews the latest book from photojournalist Jonas Bendiksen, “The Book of Veles,” a book that is a compendium of fakery intended to shock even the most discerning news organization and make us wonder if anything we see or read is real. Bendiksen’s project is complicated. On its surface, “The Book of Veles”...Read More

Good morning! You may have noticed that the Information Professionals Association (IPA) blog has been quiet these past few months and that you haven’t received your usual weekly IPA e-mail newsletter. The IPA Board, Advisors, and staff have been hard at work making some improvements, and I wanted to take this opportunity to update current...Read More

The Information Professionals Association (IPA) is planning to launch a new annual Cognitive Security (COGSEC) survey to assess respondents’ personal level of COGSEC and their understanding of key issues related to COGSEC. IPA hopes to complete our first pilot project by the end of the year. But we can’t do it without your help and...Read More

Gen. Paul Nakasone, Chief of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, raised influence operations and ransomware as national security threats that require U.S. government attention. Speaking at the 2021 Mandiant Cyber Defense Summit, Gen. Nakasone highlighted the increasing use of social media accounts by nation-states and the role of deepfakes in disinformation efforts...Read More

The final report from the Phoenix Challenge conference, held by the Information Professionals Association (IPA) and the University of Maryland Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS) on April 13, 2021, has been posted for IPA members on the IPA website. To join IPA, go to: https://information-professionals.org/join-ipa/. For existing IPA members, please follow the...Read More

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Program Manager Dr. Joshua Baron wrote recently in Defense One on the opportunity the United States has to counter digital authoritarianism by proliferating technologies that enable global digital freedom. In “Fight Digital Authoritarianism by Giving People the Tools to Counter It,” Baron says the Department of Defense should move...Read More

Information Professionals Association (IPA) founding board member Austin Branch, along with colleagues at the University of Maryland’s Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS) Adam Russell, Devin H. Ellis, and Lt. Gen. Ed Cardon (U.S. Army Ret.), co-authored a timely piece with the Modern War Institute at West Point, making the case that the...Read More

Information Professionals Association (IPA) Vice President and Cognitive Crucible podcast host, John Bicknell, recently published in the Unifying Themes in Complex Systems X, Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Complex Systems. The co-authored article, “Process Mining Organization Email Data and National Security Implications,” presents an analysis of corporations (or any organization) as emergent, self-organizing...Read More