This article, written by David Beskow and Kathleen Carley for the Military Review, explores the somewhat new terrain of social cybersecurity and how the implementations and impacts differ from traditional cybersecurity. The authors begin by describing the concept of social cybersecurity and commenting on the “information blitzkrieg” that could cause the weakening of many social areas such as trust in national institutions and consensus on national values. They then expand on this by giving specific examples of how Russian “political technologists” have exploited this in order to attempt to promote discord among American citizens. Following this, the authors began to explain the challenges faced in trying to combat this new form of warfare due to its decentralized nature and the fact that physical presence is no longer required to change the way people think. They formalize this through talking about the BEND forms of maneuver and how they describe ways that an actor can manipulate information and beliefs through techniques such as information and network maneuvers. Finally, the authors conclude with a brief discussion of bot networks and the recommendation to remove distrust artificially forced into our society, begin attempting to promote American values abroad using similar methods and educate our society about the current nature of the modern information environment.
