Media Literacy is National Security
The U.S. Election, Government, and Well-Being is Threatened by AI, Social Media, and Disinformation
You might have heard that there was a hearing today with the Senate Intelligence Committee where intel chiefs mentioned that national security is under threat due to a world order that is getting more “fragile”.
It also doesn’t help that adversaries of the United States are using technology such as AI and social media to harm the upcoming U.S. election. How so, well that depends. China, Iran, and Russia are the biggest culprits with “more capable non-state actors [who] are challenging longstanding rules of the international system as well as U.S. primacy within it," the intelligence community revealed in a report, as per Time Magazine.
Sadly, none of this is anything new. We saw Russia and its bot farms influence the 2016 election, as well as Brexit a few months later; there is also evidence that Russia played a role in the major increase of far-right beliefs in Sweden. In 2020, the same thing happened again, and this time even Iran got involved. China did not get involved, however, since the country thought the risks were too great to do so. But it changed its mind for the 2022 midterm elections.
And now with the 2024 election upon us, and the stakes being so high, the aforementioned three countries and possibly others (please note that people in other countries may be hired to work for bot farms and other companies from Russia, China, and Iran; this happened with some Eastern European countries doing so in 2016) may be hard at work at influencing November’s election so the results would be the way either country wants it to be.
The three areas that these, or any, country will focus on will be social media (of course), AI, and mis/disinformation.
Firstly, TikTok faces being banned or being sold to another company because the U.S. government believes that since it is owned by a Chinese company, it is also controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, who could access the data from all U.S. users and influence how they vote (hey that sounds familiar. Didn’t Facebook sort of do that in 2016?).
But what about the social media sites? X/Twitter is still active, though many of its posts contain misinformation. That was the case last October when the war between Israel and Hamas started, and it’s still the case now. Even owner Elon Musk has been typing away at spreading misinformation and even blatant conspiracy theories, such as blaming the door plug coming off the Alaska Airlines flight last month on the company’s DEI policy. Let’s not forget the deepfakes of celebrity women (including Taylor Swift) having sex with multiple men or even being raped floating around X/Twitter. Is X/Twitter a safe place for election news?
As for Facebook and Instagram, I went over that recently and there are no major updates, but not much good news either.
And then there is AI, and it is already at work trying to manipulate the 2024 election. A couple of weeks ago two images went viral of Donald Trump posing with Black supporters as if proving that Black Americans are willing to vote for him. Problem is, those two pictures are AI-generated - meaning they are totally fake. And what is troublesome is that they were not created by any foreign entity, but by Americans themselves who thought what they were doing was innocent. One picture was made by a conservative radio show host in Florida who explained that he wasn’t a photojournalist taking pictures. He also said this: “If anybody's voting one way or another because of one photo they see on a Facebook page, that's a problem with that person, not with the post itself."
Another AI pic was made by a man in Michigan who blocked a BBC reporter after he tried to ask him about the AI-generated image.
So there you have it. It is mid-March and already there is plenty to concern over for this year’s election. And if trouble has just begun, it may just get worse and more intense as Election Day draws closer. It pretty much doesn’t matter who creates a deepfake video or an AI image or spreads outrageous lies and assumptions on social media; it is being done both inside and outside of America. Just like terrorism is not only committed by foreigners; time and time America has been attacked by its own.
But either way, all these strategies are doing harm to our country and its democracy. All of us need to recognize what is what and what is the intention here before we get sucked into the influence of anyone looking to turn the election upside down, deliberately or not. Because without recognizing what is on our digital screens, we risk our country’s future and its national security. If a foreign country can influence our election like they did before, our elections are not safe. If one of our own is influencing this year’s election the same way as foreign entities are, again, our elections are not safe.
Our national security is only as good as long as we protect it. Granted, we are so politically divided that we have such an Achilles’ heel that foreign governments can easily prey on us. Perhaps we need to stop being at each other’s throats.
Practicing media literacy in all its forms will not only help you from being susceptible to misinformation and even lies floating around the Internet. It will help your future and your country’s future. It will keep your country safe from its enemies, both inside and out.