The Digital Battlefield: Ukraine vs. Russia

[VIDEO]
It's now more than three months since Russia launched its military invasion of Ukraine. As it intensifies its offensive in the eastern region, Ukraine continues to offer stiff resistance. A notable feature of this conflict is the fierce "information warfare" that is unfolding out of sight in cyberspace. Ukraine has countered Russia's superior military strength by using social media to win the hearts and minds of people around the world.
[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Ukrainian President]
"We will not lay down our weapons. We will defend our land."
[MAN]
"All down! Go down!"
Global opinion has been moved by firsthand accounts of the damage and anguish posted daily by individual Ukrainians.
[MAN 2]
"Carefully! Everyone go down."
On the other hand, the Russian government has chosen to tighten control over information. By blocking access to Facebook and Twitter, it's trying to disconnect its people from the outside world. President Putin calling the Zelenskyy administration "neo-Nazis" has justified the invasion under the pretext of protecting the ethnic Russians living in Ukraine.
[Vladimir Putin / Russian President]
"Conflict with the neo-Nazis affiliated with the US and its cronies cannot be avoided."
How will this information war unfold?

[Kohno Kenji / Chief, NHK News Commentators Bureau]
Welcome to Global Agenda. I'm Kohno Kenji. The military conflict between Ukraine and Russia is set to be the largest in Europe since World War II. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has announced that, as of May 27th, there were more than 8,700 Ukrainian civilian casualties. In the city of Mariupol alone, reportedly, at least 20,000 lives were lost. But even as the human toll mounts, the war is also raging on another battlefield in cyberspace. Today, our four guests will explore how contemporary information warfare is casting both light and shadow onto the war in Ukraine. Let me start from Geneva. Elena Servettaz, former correspondent for Echo of Moscow, an independent Russian media outlet that was recently shut down by the government. She's now working for an independent, antiwar group called True Russia and will continue reporting on Russia from outside the country. From Washington, Peter Warren Singer, a strategist at the think tank New America. He's a leading researcher on information warfare using social media and coauthor of 2018 book "Likewar" which looks into how social media can be used as a weapon. And from London, Jonathan Eyal, an expert on Eastern Europe and international security. He's also associate director at RUSI, Royal United Services Institute, a famous British think tank. Now, joining us in the studio is Matsubara Mihoko, a cybersecurity expert, a former official with Japan's Ministry of Defense, and now works for NTT Corporation which is Japan's largest telecommunication company. There, she monitors cyberspace activity. Thank you all for joining us. This conflict is characterized by the fact that it's taken place in an environment of unprecedented development and familiarity with the Internet. Let's begin by looking at Ukraine's strategy.

[VIDEO]
In the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion, amid a flurry of speculation that President Zelenskyy had fled the country, the world was surprised by a video he posted on social media.
[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Ukrainian President]
"We are all here, the military, the people. We will defend our independence."
This message showing his will to fight together with the people spread widely and inspired many Ukrainians. President Zelenskyy went on to release a variety of messages to the world. His social media followers now exceed 27 million. The Ukrainian government also launched a massive social media campaign. After the invasion started, Internet transmission facilities in many areas were at risk of being destroyed. The Ukrainian vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, turned to American business magnate Elon Musk for help. His SOS was sent via Twitter. "While you try to colonize Mars, Russia tries to occupy Ukraine! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations." "Starlink" is a next-generation Internet service using communications satellites. Musk is the CEO of the company that operates it. Ten hours later, Musk tweeted back, "Starlink service is now active in Ukraine." And transceiver terminals were soon delivered to the country. The Ukrainian government then formed its "IT Army." Through social media, it called on IT experts at home and abroad to launch cyberattacks on websites affiliated with the Russian government. This member of the IT Army teaches information technology at a university in Ukraine. He says he receives instructions from the government and carries out DDoS attacks which inundate recipients with massive amounts of data.
[IT Army member]
"Everybody is trying to put their parts in that war."
How effective is Ukraine's digital strategy?

[KOHNO]
It looks like the Ukrainian government made a quick and very skillful use of the information. Dr. Singer, let me start with you. How would you evaluate the influence of President Zelenskyy?

[Peter Warren Singer / Strategist, New America]
I think President Zelenskyy has been masterful in his performance not only as a leader but also as a communicator during this conflict. And he's actually shown the importance of how they come together. He has spoken to essentially two core target audiences. He both rallied his own public but he also drew the world's attention and support. And you can see it in the numbers. But more important, in speaking to the rest of the world, he was able to show that he himself was out in the fight and that they needed to come join. They needed to support, as well. And we've seen military and economic aid from around the world, from places as far away as Australia and Japan. But even more so we've seen corporations as well as governments join in the economic punishment of Russia. Everything from Switzerland to McDonald's. So Zelenskyy has been quite, quite talented at this. And it's in many ways, I think the final point to make is that he's become a model for other leaders moving forward.

[KOHNO]
Dr. Eyal, Dr. Singer mentioned the support from other countries. But in terms of the information, do you know any specific support that Ukraine has been receiving from other nations?

[Jonathan Eyal / Associate Director, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)]
I think first of all, the important thing to mention just to strengthen Dr. Singer's point is that what we're witnessing here is not just someone who is very good at the so-called media spin. At the end of the day, it was an authentic message because of a decision that Mr. Zelenskyy took at the same time as we saw the first clip, which is to refuse to be evacuated from Ukraine as he was offered by the Americans at the time. So I think it's important to remember that this media campaign worked so well because it appeared to be genuine and truthful. And it was genuine and truthful because it was conducted with a personal example of one individual. So, the Ukrainians did get a lot of media advice, but much of it was actually irrelevant at the end. Because Western governments prepared for a massive propaganda campaign in a very traditional style from the Russian government which actually didn't happen. The most extraordinary thing about this whole Ukraine War is that the Russian official message was discredited for a variety of reasons including the Western intelligence information that was released before the war began in such a way that Moscow's voice was almost not heard outside the borders of Russia.

[KOHNO]
That was unusual that the Western intelligence services released the information before the war.

[EYAL]
Yes, indeed. It was very unusual. It failed to achieve the original objective. The original objective was to persuade Mr. Putin not to launch the military offensive. That failed. But it succeeded in many other ways. It succeeded in puncturing the whole justification of Russia for why it was going to war. Nobody really believed the idea that ethnic Russians or Russian speakers in Ukraine were under threat or that the so-called self-proclaimed People's Republics were about to be overrun but Ukrainian forces. So the justification failed. And it also falls to the Russians to maintain a much higher level of secrecy to their own armed forces. So a lot of the troops that went into Ukraine had absolutely no idea why they were there or even that they were in Ukraine. So it disrupted the Russian military and informational operations. It did not achieve the initial objective but it played straight into the hands of the Ukrainian information objectives.

[KOHNO]
Ms. Servettaz, you have worked in Russia of course, and you have experience in Russian media. How do you think the Russian side views Ukraine's social media strategy?

[Elena Servettaz / Head of Press, True Russia]
Russians are viewing this strategy while you will be observing their actions after the releasing of the Volodymyr Zelenskyy videos. As soon as there is a new video from the Russian side, you will see that they are making active informational attacks to destabilize public opinion in Ukraine. And in order to provoke conflicts, they will release fake videos or they will release some "leaks" to the foreign media of various plan and ideas including the Russian negotiation position. And they are trying to put fear in the minds of the civilian population so that they panic. And by all means push forward the false propaganda campaign to provoke internal and maybe administrative crisis in the Ukraine. And of course, now when we are living in the era of YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, the policy of Volodymyr Zelenskyy is very clear to everyone who is, let's say... starting from 10 to 13 years old. How he will make this campaign work for you, you should be sincere. You should touch people's feelings. And like this, you will have people around you. What Zelenskyy is doing, he's very sincere. He's showing the exact situation. He is showing exactly not only his victory but even his bad moments. And that's how people around him are shaped to support him. So I think that they're a bit afraid of what he's doing.

[KOHNO]
They are afraid of President Zelenskyy, right? Ms. Matsubara. You're a cybersecurity expert. And we know that the Ukrainians had secured the access to Starlink network, satellite network at early stages of the war. How do you see that strategy?

[Matsubara Mihoko / Chief Cybersecurity Strategist, NTT Corporation]
I think that the Starlink Internet service has been playing a vital role to support Ukrainians' information warfare and also to refute Russians' disinformation campaigns. Because as soon as the war broke out in late February, the Russians have been attacking the Ukrainians' infrastructure, especially communications infrastructure by kinetic and cyber means. But SpaceX has been resisting Russians' cyberattacks and jamming, so that is why SpaceX and Starlink Internet service have allowed the Ukrainians, not only the government but also citizens, to stay online. Not only to receive Ukrainians' own narratives but also vivid images and the strong messages from President Zelenskyy so that they can refute Russians' claims but also to convince the West to keep aiding the Ukrainians.

[KOHNO]
Dr. Singer, as Ms. Matsubara mentioned, not only the government but citizens can use the satellite or send the messages to overseas, for help. What kind of role do you think this civilian messaging has played in this war?

[SINGER]
It's been individual citizens doing everything from their own reporting of their being targeted, going into air raid shelters, documenting Russian missiles hitting playgrounds, hitting shopping centers. But the other part that the Ukrainian citizens are showing online is their own resistance. And in this battle of legitimacy, that's so crucial. And the fighting back is everything from physically fighting back, resisting with javelins or Molotov cocktails... It might be a non-violent means, the famous video of the elderly Ukrainian woman going up to the Russian soldiers and yelling at them and telling them, leave Ukraine and if you don't, I want you to put sunflower seeds in your pocket because you're going to die here. Or it might be online fighting back in new means, this IT Army that is volunteers in Ukraine but importantly around the world who are using cyber means to attack Russian infrastructure, everything from Russian media sites, they've hacked that, to Russian electric car charging stations. And so I think again, it's this illustration of a war where it's not just about the individuals. It's about the network.

[KOHNO]
Ms. Matsubara. Dr. Singer mentioned the IT Army which we don't usually hear. But you're the cybersecurity expert. The Ukrainian government called for cyberattacks on Russia, and asked for the help of IT armies or IT experts around the world. And this is something that we've never seen before. What's your take on this?

[MATSUBARA]
So, it is totally unprecedented to see that any country to openly call for volunteers of their own citizens or even non-citizens to attack another country, and they actually outsourced the cyber-offensive capabilities to civilians. So this is new. We should also note that it is very difficult to gauge how effectively or successfully the IT Army of Ukraine's has been taking down websites by these attacks. Because they only claim on the telegrams and it is hard to prove. And we should also note that the Western government officials strongly discourage their own citizens to taking part in any hacking attempts against the Russians because this can be illegal. So, we should also know that this is incredible to see that not only Ukrainians but also non-Ukrainians are taking part not only in the physical domain but also in the cyber domain. But we should be also cautious about how credible the Ukraine is.

[KOHNO]
Thank you very much. Now, we go on. Behind Ukraine's quick response this time around was a bitter lesson learned eight years ago when Russia unilaterally annexed Crimea. We will focus now on Russia's information tactics.

[VIDEO]
In 2014, President Putin annexed Crimea. A region with many ethnic Russian residents, it's strategically placed on the Black Sea coast. Prior to the annexation made at lightning speed over the course of a month or so, there had been careful preparation. Russia began by disrupting the Internet and other media in Ukraine. It's also said to have spread disinformation, claiming that "The new pro-West administration is abusing the ethnic Russians." By using disinformation together with military force, Russia achieved its goals by means of a "hybrid war." Ukraine learned important lessons from that experience. It started implementing countermeasures by strengthening its cybersecurity and communications infrastructure, and by attracting IT firms.
[Yurii Shchyhol / Head, State Service of Special Communication & Information Protection]
"We have moved ahead since 2014. We already have a system that allows each Ukrainian to receive correct information."
So what sort of information war is Russia conducting this time? President Putin heavily restricted freedom of expression at home and gave instructions for cybersecurity to be strengthened.
[Vladimir Putin / Russian President]
"Cyber-aggression and economic sanctions against Russia have failed."
Russia's independent media have been forced to shut down while the state-controlled media continue to justify what they call "a military operation."

[KOHNO]
Dr. Eyal, it seems that the Russians are having a harder time than eight years ago. What do you think? And if that is the case, do you have any idea why?

[EYAL]
There's no question that the Russians were able to spring a lot of surprises on us back in 2014. Let's not forget, this was a very unique situation. Russia already had a military basis in Crimea. Russia had about 30 years of planning to seize Crimea. This was the emergency plan that they had in place since the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early 1990s. So, mounting the operation that we've seen there, doing it with soldiers that carried no particular markings, the so-called little green men as they were called at the time, with Mr. Putin laughing at us and saying he doesn't know who they are because anyone can buy a uniform in a shop, and then a month later, doing a ceremony in the Kremlin where they were all awarded medals. All that stuff gave us this image of this monumental Russian information machine that was bound to overwhelm us. And then, two years later, of course, we have the story of interference in the US presidential elections where, yet again, it looked like the Russians were about three meters tall, much stronger than all of us and much more able than all of us. In fact, as we've seen at the beginning of the Ukraine War, a lot of the propaganda campaign was actually quite easy to dismantle once you understand what they were doing. Russia Today, Sputnik, and all the other outfits, the plug was pulled on all of them within 24 hours at the beginning of the invasion in Europe. So the audiences literally vanished. So there was enormous amount of preparation that went into it. If you wish, the American practice of releasing intelligence information and on preparing the narrative at the runup to this war in February this year was based on lessons drawn from the last six years or so. So I think it's a mixture of two things. First, that actually despite their prowess or supposed superiority, a lot of the Russian propaganda machine was actually very much belonging to the Analog Age rather than the Internet Age. And secondly, it was eminently refutable we could deal with it once we knew what we were dealing with.

[KOHNO]
Ms. Matsubara, some people believe that Russia may be holding back on cyberattacks intentionally. Do you agree with that analysis?

[MATSUBARA]
Nobody knows the real answer, but there are potential reasons why. So maybe Russians just totally underestimated the Ukrainians' strong will to fight back. Or they maybe just wanted to keep Ukrainians' communications infrastructure as much as possible, so that they can keep using it after occupation. Or Russians maybe just wanted to keep the infrastructures to launch their own cyber espionage against Ukrainians for intelligence collection in wartime. And also, there can be some Ukrainians' own reasons why. As Dr. Eyal already pointed out, the Ukrainians have been learning lots of lessons from the 2014 Crimea crisis. And one of them is to enhance cyber defensive capabilities so that they can also decentralize their communications infrastructure to make it difficult for the Russians to take down the whole computer network by a single attack. So I think that these are the reasons why we still keep seeing the live communications for the Ukrainians.

[KOHNO]
Dr. Singer, Russia is believed to be very good at the information manipulation based on their long experience during Cold War, right? Do you see any possibility that the Russians will recover the information warfare capability in some way?

[SINGER]
That's an interesting question. At least so far, on both the physical battlefield and the digital battlefield, we've not seen them be a learning organization. We've not seen them be an organization where smart ideas come from the bottom up. Instead, it's an organization. It's very static. It's obviously afraid of what Putin might say or do. In war, whether it's physical war or digital war, it's the learning organizations that win. And I see no evidence that Russia has been a learning organization.

[KOHNO]
Dr. Eyal, what do you think? Do you agree with Dr. Singer or can Russia rally back again?

[EYAL]
I do agree. I agree very strongly with that. I mean, it was very obvious. Our Russian colleague may be able to support this. It was very obvious in the coverage on the Moscow state television where all they could do is just repeat the same old narrative with the same old slogans. They were not even able to come out of this sort of curious title of special military operation which became such a joke in most of the social media around the world. The same words, the same slogans, the same strategy repeated time and time again. What I think they have succeeded in doing is, perhaps, maintaining the narrative internally inside Russia. And I think what they still do and they still have and we mustn't forget, we're talking too much about just the developed world. We're talking about the 45 to 50 countries that include the West plus countries such as Japan, and Australia, and a few others in Asia. But there is a whole world beyond that where some of the Russian messaging is still holding quite strong, in Latin America, in India, and of course, in the tightly controlled, Chinese market. So in the Western markets, I find it difficult to see how they can regain the initiative. But we have not succeeded in some of the so-called global south markets where some of the Russian narratives continue to be quite potent. But it's yesterday's narratives, not tomorrow's.

[KOHNO]
But Dr. Singer, I heard that some Russian narratives are reported in American media as well. Do you think there's something changing?

[SINGER]
I'll just end it this way by saying there are three target audiences that matter most in this conflict. One is within Ukraine, and it's very clear that, that side is held together. The second is within the wider world. And at least so far, Russia has not been able to succeed in that. They may be able to win messaging in Latin America or the like. But within the core parts of the global economy, they have lost that messaging. But the final part to me that matters most, and I would love to hear from my colleague about it, is within Russia. Because that's what Putin cares the most about, and that's where they've been able to... because they control the media market, at least so far, maintain that narrative. But the longer the war goes on, the more there are deaths, the harder the economic sanctions, it's an open question as to whether they're going to succeed.

[KOHNO]
Ms. Servettaz, I would have to ask you about within Russia. In Russia, the Russian government restricted the information quite strongly and domestically. I wonder, what is the actual situation in Russia? And is anything changing among the Russian population?

[SERVETTAZ]
(audio interference) ...the war, each day. Of course, they didn't start the war with the political opponents being free, with media which has been free, or NGOs operating freely first. They cut off the NGOs. They put Alexei Navalny in jail and a lot of the supporters of his movement in jail. They stopped the broadcast of Echo of Moscow, they shut down Novaya Gazeta and all other liberal and independent media. And that's how they started to lead their so-called special operation. So any opinion today that differs from the position of the Kremlin will punished, and it is punished up to, 15 years in prison. It didn't start today. If, let's say collective "West" as we used to see, powerful and strong, would react in 2014 in the annexation of Crimea in different terms, we would not be having maybe the war in Ukraine today. It's also our fault, our fault as a journalist, our fault as Western countries, who all the time until now, were allowing Vladimir Putin to do what he wants to do. So now, this response, with sanctions, for me, it's coming a bit late, I would say.

[KOHNO]
Thank you very much. It's quite an interesting observation. Now, in past wars, the information was strictly controlled by government actors. Now, anyone can transmit information, even in wartime. Then what kind of care must be taken in this new world of the information overload?

[VIDEO]
The information war between Ukraine and Russia is intensifying as the war drags on. The Ukrainian government released a purported communications intercept of Russian troops talking about shooting civilians.
[MAN 3]
"Two persons, from the grove, dressed in civilian."
[MAN 4]
"F**king kill them all for f**k's sake!"
[MAN 3]
"Got it. All the village here is in civilian..."
[MAN 4]
"What the f**k is wrong with you, motherf**kers. Civilians, slay them all."
Meanwhile, Russian troops broke into the office of an Internet provider in Kherson, in southern Ukraine. They reportedly threatened to shut down the system and redirect the communications to Russian networks. As more and more information floods the Internet, there is growing concern about how to deal with fake news and propaganda. A method to verify the authenticity of such information called Open-Source Intelligence is now drawing attention. The Netherlands-based Bellingcat private investigative group is said to be a leader in this field. Trained investigators gather multiple pieces of information that have been posted on social media and fact-check them against satellite images and positional information.
[Hannah Bagdasar / Lead Investigator, Bellingcat]
"It's integral to our processes to have independence and to not be swayed by anything or anyone else."

[KOHNO]
Dr. Singer, we just saw this piece on Bellingcat. What do you think of them? What do you think of their activity?

[SINGER]
I'm very impressed with the work that Bellingcat has done. And I consider them a very reliable source. And I think this is one of the lessons of when you're dealing with so much information coming out of war zones, but what frankly applies to any kind of news is that you want to be drawing information from sources that are credible and have a history of credibility. That is, not something that is new to the Internet, not if you're pulling from an organization, not something that might be government-linked, or have a history of engaging in mis or disinformation. Bellingcat, they've been at this dating back to the Syrian conflict, et cetera. I think one of the other keys is they're representative of a large phenomenon that you talked about which is this notion of Open-Source Intelligence. Where, on one hand, the benefit is that anyone, anyone with a smartphone can collect and share information. And so we have this wealth of information from the conflict in Ukraine gathered by everything from civilians to Ukrainian soldiers themselves filming what's happening in battle. That's a benefit in understanding. However, weaved throughout it all is, sometimes deliberate disinformation. Other times, it's people that are maybe posing information that isn't deliberate but it still might share some kind of mistake. The lesson that I take from this is one, try and verify your sources. Two, understand that in information war, virality will often trump veracity. That is, information may get ahead of the reality. And that just comes with the new realm that we're in. And so you as an individual consumer of this information recognize that you're not just reading it. They're trying to get you individually to share it, to become a fellow information war combatant. And so before you share it out, try and do that one last check.

[KOHNO]
Ms. Servettaz, Dr. Singer pointed out some issues that media like us have to think about, right? You are also the media. What do you think we should keep in mind when we report the news?

[SERVETTAZ]
Exactly what was said. When you collect information by yourself, you should analyze from what side it's coming. Who is it? Is there a part who is interested in this kind of information? Why it's coming, what is the origin of this information? We had a very famous case of a Russian journalist a few years ago. It was reported that Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko was killed in Ukraine. And we started to report. Everybody said he was killed, he was killed, but no one of those journalists saw the body. Nobody stated that this journalist was killed. Nobody verified. And that's how a few days after, we knew that there was a special operation and the journalist was alive, and everything was prepared and broadcasted as this. So from that day on, we are more careful of the news we are translating and broadcasting. A few days ago, in Russian networks, a piece was released. It was written with BBC letters, characters, and colors, but the message was a bit different. And so, I went to the BBC website, because on that video on social media, it said that it's Ukrainians who killed civilian in Kramatorsk. And I was thinking it's very bizarre. I contacted my colleague who is working in BBC, and said, is it your video? And she goes, no, it's fake. So this product had been presented as BBC's. So be very careful and check where the video is coming from.

[KOHNO]
So we have to be careful. Dr. Eyal, do you have any thoughts on that?

[EYAL]
Yeah, two points. First is that the danger seems to be with the citizens' journalism so-called stories that are planted seems to be very big at the beginning of a conflict when the international media is hungry for information and everyone jumps on it. And the reality is that some of these stories that are fake stories actually stick. The same applies to the fake story of the so-called Ghost of Kyiv. This mysterious Ukrainian pilot who was shooting down so many Russian aircraft. Of course, the pilot never existed. The story, however, stuck, and it created the image of a Russian Air Force that is impotent, that is unable to control the air, with its aircrafts being shot down by the Ukrainians. So some of these fake stories, if they are placed immediately at the beginning of the conflict in particular, work very well, and we have to admit to it. The other point that I wanted to make is about institutions like Bellingcat. I think the most important thing to me is to show that actually contrary to what all of us think, that deep fakes are difficult to expose, that fakes in general are easy to spread and almost impossible to fight. Bellingcat has indicated that if you are a professional, if you know how to put together the bits of evidence, it is possible to geolocate pictures, it is possible to expose pictures as being fundamentally fake, and it is possible to disentangle all kinds of fake stories that were put in the media. The real greatness of Bellingcat is not merely that it exposes them, but it tells you how they've done it and in a way, it teaches you how you could do it yourself.

[KOHNO]
But Ms. Matsubara, technology develops. And probably information warfare will be changed technologically. And you are a cybersecurity expert. Do you have any concerns about how this information space will evolve?

[MATSUBARA]
So I heard so far two takes from this information warfare. So as Dr. Singer already pointed out, information can precede or go ahead of reality sometimes. The researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came up with a fascinating statistic four years ago. So false stories actually spread out six times faster than true stories on Twitter. So that is why as everybody agreed on this panel, fact-checking is crucial to prevent mind hacking and also to prevent ourselves to being used as a weapon to spread disinformation. And the second take on this warfare is we need to have a bigger picture beyond Ukraine and Russia. Because we should note that some countries are closely monitoring what's happening in this war and they're carefully using the insights to launch their own warfare or attacks in the future, as Ms. Lindy Cameron, the chief executive of British National Cyber Security Centre, already warned in early May. And in fact, Mandiant, a cybersecurity company based in the United States detected pro-Iranian and pro-China disinformation campaigns are already taking advantage of this war to take a wedge in the West or discredit in the West.

[KOHNO]
Dr. Eyal, if, and when this physical war ends, do you think this information war ends, as well?

[EYAL]
No, it doesn't. And it doesn't for a variety of reasons. First, because I don't think information wars end, full stop. We are looking here at a massive confrontation that is going to go on between places. I think our Japanese colleague was very right to point out to some powers that are learning lessons exactly as we speak. If you look at what Chinese diplomats did around the world, they amplified a lot of the fake stories planted by Russia such as the so-called secret biolabs that the United States allegedly operates on Ukrainian soil and other such matters. So I don't think it will end, but I think that there is more to it than that. I think we are going to witness probably a much deeper, information warfare, even when the guns fall silent in Ukraine. There is the very painful problem of war crimes. There is the very painful story of disappeared or people that are untraced, of lost property, of the destruction taking place, and of course, of the bits that are the most curious of the lot which is that we actually do not know what the Ukrainian casualties or the Russian casualties are in terms of civilians and in terms of the militaries. One of the most curious things for me has been how good the Ukrainians have been in their propaganda efforts or in their communication efforts. To such an extent that most of the Western media found it almost difficult, impolite to ask the fundamental question, what are your losses? We don't know. So I think you'll find that there's going to be a storm of information warfare regardless of how this war ultimately stops.

[KOHNO]
Dr. Singer, to wrap up this debate, we live in an age in which every one of our citizens can send information directly to the world and there are lots of information out there. What do you think of this power of information or power of social media in this information war era? Briefly.

[SINGER]
So for the last, say, generation, when we thought about the threats that were carried on computer networks, we thought about traditional cyberwar, so to speak. The hacking of networks, stealing of email, bank account information and the like. But what we've seen over the last several years, whether it was in the episodes that we mentioned of, 2014 in Ukraine, or the 2016 election in the US or Brexit, or most recently now in Ukraine is that it is the twin of cyberwar, what we call "Likewar." It's not merely the hacking of networks. It's the hacking of people on the networks that can have an equal or in some cases greater effect. And I think the lesson that we should take more broadly from this so-called weaponization of social media is to recognize that it's obviously been a powerful player within the Ukraine conflict. But it shapes so much else, whether it is elections in the US or Britain, or in Japan. Or if we think about the costs of the pandemic, it's not just been the pandemic. It's been what public health professionals call the "infodemic," the swirl of mis and disinformation that's surrounded coronavirus, that's made the pandemic so deadly. And so moving forward, I would urge, all of us, not just as individuals but also the organizations that we're in, the media, our governments, that we need to take this side of Likewar. We need to take this information threat more seriously and prepare for it in terms of how do we train and equip our nations, our individual citizens to be more resilient to these new kind of information threats? And I think that's what you're hearing from all of us that it's a new kind of responsibility, whether it's you as a reporter to each of us as family members and users of computers.

[KOHNO]
Quite a fascinating discussion but the time is up. Thank you very much, and that's it for today's program. Thanks to all our guests for your insight and to all of you for watching Global Agenda.