Far-fetched? by @BloggersRUs

Far-fetched?

by Tom Sullivan

Something from Axios this morning gave me a shudder. Why, in a minute.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) spoke to Axios about his new book. Sasse said:

"I had a conversation last month with one of the most senior U.S. intelligence officials, who told me that many leaders in the [Intelligence Committee] worry that we’re on the verge of a deepfakes [artificial intelligence algorithms that create convincing fake images, audio and video] 'perfect storm.'"
"Americans are so divided right now, about who we are and what we hold in common, that there are dozens of scabs at which malevolent foreign actors can pick in their efforts to weaken us."
Key conclusions from "Them":
"I talk with the leaders of the U.S. intelligence community nearly every day, and most of them are deeply anxious about information operations that are currently being conducted by foreign powers, which see an unexpected opportunity to undermine Americans' own confidence in our system, in our institutions, and in our American idea."

"Put more bluntly: Vladimir Putin loves cable news, and the divides it helps to solidify in the American soul.

I remember how the Internet locked up the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was on a paper mill site in northern New Hampshire. An old boiler man with me in the construction trailer said planes had crashed into the World Trade towers. His wife had just called the trailer. My first thought? It was an Internet hoax. But I couldn't get anything online to load to verify the story. Pipe fitters, millwrights, and electricians outside were hunched over their radios. Everything on site ground to a halt. Everyone else in the country was transfixed, glued to their TVs watching the unfolding tragedy. The attacks shook the country to its core.

Now, recall the scene from Live Free or Die Hard in which cyber-terrorists construct and broadcast a fake film of the U.S. Capitol building exploding. People in D.C. could run into the streets and see in a moment the video was a phony. People not there (as I was not in New York City on 9/11) could not. People like me relied on accounts that spread like wildfire, that reached me in minutes via a land line. But with the Internet choked with traffic, I could not "verify" the rumor I heard by word of mouth. These days, if a cyber attack was comprehensive enough, could you even believe what you found there? Or would the fake have already done its work of dissolving external reality?

Our faith in what we learn from the news and the Internet has been so deliberately eroded since 9/11, might something upsetting and disruptive like Live Free or Die Hard happen without any physical attack at all? A cyber attack that overwhelms our information systems with unverifiable rumors of incredible violence or attacks in remote locations might (if TV is involved too) cause tremendous psychological damage (or worse). The rumor would spread in seconds, but we would spend weeks and months cleaning up the mess. Would we trust anything we heard afterwards? Conspiracy nuts don't now.

Far-fetched?

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