Misinformation has long been an affordable and effective way for governments, advocacy groups, and other partisan entities to push an agenda. Ranging from mischaracterizations of groups of people to stem public sympathy (think of how the Japanese were portrayed in American media during World War II) to the outright creation of a fictitious reality (think of the right-wing media’s depiction of the terrorist attacks of Jan. 6, 2021), the proliferation of misinformation is a powerful weapon and one that’s remarkably difficult to combat.
Frances Townsend, former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush from 2004 through 2007 and longtime official in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, recognizes the threat of misinformation as particularly concerning when it comes in an organized and well-executed fashion from entities, like groups classified as terrorist organizations, that aren’t traditionally known for their tactical competence.
And she believes the time to take action is now. “My greatest fear,” she says, “and look, I hope I’m wrong. My great fear is we’re not going to see real progress in this area until there’s some sort of cataclysmic 9/11-type cyber event.”
If terrorist organizations are becoming competent in spreading misinformation, they clearly see value in sowing discord, which more often than not goes against the interests of the U.S. government and its citizens.
Townsend has the experience and credentials to put a keen eye on what the fallout could be if terrorist organizations, either foreign or domestic, are able to consistently sway public opinion through misinformation. And she sees trouble.
Frances Townsend, as well as others in the national security space, have raised this alarm before.
“The American people have the ability to effect [change] not only by elections, but by public debate, their views on how that balance should be made, whether we’re talking about terrorism, or cybersecurity, or information sharing, have real value,” she said in an interview with PBS.
Previous administrations, especially post 9/11, have raised red flags about disinformation, but the topic has taken on new urgency with the vast changes in technology that have occurred over the past 10 years, providing more channels and opportunities for those looking to exploit public opinion.
While al-Qaeda was able to circulate grainy videos of the supposed evils of the U.S. government, the Proud Boys — whose criminal activity has been identified by the FBI as a domestic terrorism threat — can upload slickly produced videos to various social media sites from anywhere, multiple times a day, and have those videos proliferate via social sharing.
The barrier to reaching more people has quickly been eased.
While the power to circulate information rapidly and with a degree of credibility still belongs mostly to more established entities, such as governments and legitimate advocacy groups, the entrance of terrorist groups into the fray over the past decade throws a wrench into the apparatus meant to combat it.
State-sponsored misinformation efforts often have a specific objective in mind, such as Russia trying to sway public opinion over its invasion of Ukraine, while terrorist groups often look to sow general discord through their efforts, with their endgame being more nebulous.
What makes things more complicated, as Frances Townsend has noted, is when governments essentially cooperate with terrorist organizations, either directly or indirectly, if they have a common goal.
Iran, for example, has been accused of aiding terrorist organizations within its borders that align with the regime’s needs, including putting the United States in compromising positions in hostage negotiations
The Kremlin keeps close tabs on domestic hacker groups such as the REvil ransomware operation while stopping short of disincentivizing their efforts.
A New York Times article from September 2021 stated that “Moscow’s intelligence services have influence over Russian criminal ransomware groups and broad insight into their activities, but they do not control the organizations’ targets. This allows the Russian government to have (somewhat) plausible deniability when it comes to the fallout from the group’s efforts.
Says Townsend, “America’s ability to innovate and maintain our global technological edge will be crucial in the fight against rising cyber hostilities from foreign adversaries.”
While China, Iran, and other governments not necessarily friendly with the U.S. will continue to probe and pick out pressure points in public forums for information, more recently the disinformation campaigns in the U.S. have come from domestic efforts.
Most notably, evidence suggests that groups designated as domestic terrorist organizations — such as white nationalist groups the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys — acted in concert with the outgoing Trump administration to perpetuate the false narrative of a rigged presidential election in 2020.
A Georgetown University Journal of International Affairs study found that foreign interference in the 2020 election was far less pervasive and significantly less effective than the efforts made in 2016, which many credit for the election of Donald Trump.
The study said that a combination of increased security and, just as importantly, an increase in awareness by the citizenry of these efforts, made foreign interference much less impactful this time around.
While the past six years may have made people aware of the dangers of foreign misinformation, domestic efforts, possibly because they are in fact domestic efforts, have been much more effective.
While the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers can push fringe conspiracy theories on social media and on certain far-right websites, their reach is dramatically improved due to more “mainstream” media outlets amplifying their message.
Domestic terror groups seized on the concept of a stolen election, pushing conspiracy theories on everything from compromised voting machines to checking for bamboo shards in paper ballots, insinuating that the ballots were from China. All of these efforts have been debunked repeatedly, but the lies, repeated often and with vigor, still manage to sway certain elements of the population.
Frances Townsend has been making the argument that the most dangerous misinformation is coming from within the United States for some time. During her tenure under Bush, the most obvious threats of terrorism, and the disinformation those groups spread, was from international entities.
However, that danger now comes from within. In a panel discussion with Biden administration Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall at the University of Virginia in June 2021, Townsend and Sherwood-Randall both said that the issue of radicalization via social media misinformation was a major issue that would require both private and public sector input in order to contain it.
Sherwood-Randall said the Biden adminsitration would be “augmenting efforts to address online terrorist recruitment and mobilization to violence by domestic terrorists. This is an enormous challenge and one that will require ongoing ingenuity and collaboration with the private sector. The strategy directs increased information sharing with the technology companies and the creation of innovative approaches to foster digital literacy and build resilience in the face of terrorist recruitment and mobilization.”
In an interview on CBS in 2019, Townsend said that some of the lessons learned fighting international terrorist threats could be applied to mitigating domestic terrorist efforts, but it would require a deep look at what is acceptable for the citizenry. “I think there are privacy and civil liberties concerns,” Townsend said in the interview. “There are First Amendment concerns. I think we’ve got to get over that, and I think we have to understand that there’s a balance, but we’ve got to give law enforcement both the resources and the authorities they need.”
