Social Media Has Become a Global Battlefield
About seven years ago, during the Arab Spring, the power of social media to drive major political change burst onto the world stage. The promise of Twitter and Facebook to help democratically minded protesters share information, organize protests, and ultimately free themselves from dictatorships looked tantalizing and almost unstoppable. Soon, however, many democratic gains across the Arab world proved unsustainable or curdled into violence, and another facet of the technology emerged. Within a few years, ISIS was using the internet to mobilize recruits, spread propaganda, and encourage attacks in the U.S. and elsewhere. Then there came an actual attack on the U.S. conducted via social media itself—the spread of Russian disinformation as part of an effort to sway the 2016 American presidential election.
P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, two national security experts, started examining the role of social media in conflict for a book project—which along the way, two years ago, yielded a cover story in The Atlantic. The piece noted that the internet didn’t just connect people and bring them together—it was also “reshaping war itself.” Their article was called "War Goes Viral"; it duly went viral itself.
[How social media is being weaponized across the world]
Singer and Brooking have presented, to leaders in the American military, intelligence agencies, and the U.S. Congress. Ahead of the book’s release today, I spoke to Singer about what these changes in warfare, politics, culture, and communication mean for the rest of us, who are all unwitting participants in this new reality. The interview that follows has been edited for length and clarity.
