Hello World

Talking about cyberwarfare today was weird. It was hard for me to formulate an opinion on how to respond to Russia’s aggressions because I don’t understand the culture or the regime; I don’t know how they would react to anything. In this case, clandestine efforts (like sending spies??) may be necessary to gain more insight on how their culture works and what vulnerabilities they truly have. I have to admit that I’ve never really thought about cyberwarfare much, and I hadn’t considered how the United States should respond to Russia’s interference in the election at all. After our discussion today, I’ve realized how difficult it is to think of an effective response, especially with a government that doesn’t really seem to or want to care about Russia’s interference. I’m hesitant to take an aggressive stance, but it seems like Russia will not stop their aggression until they face some significant push-back. I think that using informational power (for example, disseminating the photographs and bios of dead soldiers) can be effective and it is also not a blatant act of war; in this sense, its effects can be even more powerful because they may not be predicted by the public. Cyberwarfare is very scary to me because I feel like I know nothing about it and I really don’t know what to do about it because I’m unsure of the information I’m getting about the issues. While I know that I should not be content with my ignorance, it seems to me that cyberwarfare is an issue that is best left to “professionals”. I think that something needs to be done about Russia and that the US needs to step up their security game, but I have no idea what things can be done and I don’t know if anyone does. I hope that people who actually know what’s going on will be heard and able to make smart decisions for the country. Our guest speaker today knows a lot more than I do and I would say that I trust his ideas and suggestions.

We also touched on labelling of social media content today. It’s interesting that this idea we talked about a few weeks ago is actually a new bill being passed around right now. I see how there are several complications that may arise in passing the bill, but I hope that it goes through because it is a step in the right direction and the complications can be dealt with. It really is on the social media platforms to ensure a certain amount of security for civilians, and they have a responsibility in preventing the public from being misinformed–since social media nowadays has so much power and influence over people, they also need to take responsibility.

With so much information available on the web, there is no way for people to process everything. Since nobody truly owns the internet, the individual user can technically choose what kind of content they want to see. However, users are often unaware that they use applications that encourage them to think and act a certain way (e.g. for political purposes). For example, a couple years ago I downloaded this application that gave me a “digest” of news around the world; I thought that it was a more efficient way to glean information. I didn’t realize that it was a very liberal source that was subconsciously influencing the way I perceived the world. Although this is problematic, I don’t think that it can be prevented; it is impossible to have a completely objective news source that has to filter through all the news that happens around the world–how can anyone/anything decide what is more important to people without forming a subjective opinion or algorithm? This connects to the very difficult question of how to “govern” the internet.

In this respect, I don’t think we should put the responsibility of correctly monitoring the internet onto the big social media platforms and the government because there really is no correct way to monitor this thing that is the internet. Of course, I think to a certain extent, the government should require companies/websites to be transparent and display “labels” like the ones we talked about last week, informing the viewer that, for example, a certain video is a paid advertisement. But because the Internet is such an open system that nobody truly owns, it seems to me that putting responsibility onto the individual rather than onto the government (which can’t really exist in terms of the internet) would be way more effective in preventing problems like the potency of fake news outlets. If I knew that the “digest” I read every day had bias, it wouldn’t have such a powerful effect on me.

It is true that companies try to manipulate users, and indeed the government can/should lay out some general rules that try to stop this from happening, but the user needs to be aware of the information they expose themselves to. The topics discussed in this seminar have been extremely enlightening for me and I think that they are very important topics to be discussed. Perhaps implementing more of this discussion in elementary/high schools could be a step in the right direction.