Politics and information warfare

Information warfare is no doubted a strategy that a weaker adversary would use to manipulate a stronger adversary. In the case of the politics in America, there is always the threat of Russian interference. There have been claims that Russia is using information warfare against the United States to interfere in the elections. Information warfare is a wide-open playing field consisting of anything to do with information. No one is safe from information warfare, you might think that a meme is funny when you read it, and it is, but that same meme could be a piece of information warfare targeted at a more gullible person. Information warfare is used heavily in social networks so being alert while reading things that are spreading around is very important.

Things with respect to the issue of social network manipulation with information warfare could evolve in a number of ways. One might someday see penalties for posting manipulating data on a social network site like community service. A policy to address this kind of issue is difficult to address because people are entitled to free speech and that is the main ingredient of information warfare. The public can get educated on this issue by following this one guideline, common sense. The far left and the far right of political parties are first in line to revolt on certain issues which makes great entertainment for the rest of us, but they lack common sense when it comes to social networking aspects. For example, lately there was a picture of President Trump coloring the American flag wrong. Now some people are saying that he does not even know what the flag looks like. However, the truth about that meme was that he was copying off the little girl next to him. It is not a big issue; it was just something funny that we can all appreciate the humor in.

My reaction to this news story was that it was interesting to read. It was an interview of a professor at a university who is suggesting that Russia meddling with the election is really a form of information warfare. He suggests that Russia floods social media with manipulating information leading to misinformed voters. I agree with him, there are many people misinformed about politics because of this kind of information warfare and like I said it all boils down to common sense.

source: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/21/631164914/meddling-vs-information-warfare