ben nimmo 03 reedit — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00my name is ben nimmo and i'm the
2. 0:02director of investigations at graphica
3. 0:04which is a new york based social media
4. 0:06analytics company
5. 0:08my job is to identify expose
6. 0:12and understand disinformation and
7. 0:15information operations online
8. 0:17and i've been doing this since 2014.
9. 0:21i used to be a journalist based in the
10. 0:22baltic states and then in brussels
11. 0:25and i used to work at nato so in my
12. 0:27various different jobs i've been
13. 0:29studying disinformation and information
14. 0:31operations
15. 0:32for a long time and one of the things
16. 0:34i've worked on the most is trying to
17. 0:36predict the kind of things that threat
18. 0:38actors are going to do
19. 0:39and the kind of ways that they can shape
20. 0:41their disinformation
21. 0:42and cross their message uh and the model
22. 0:46i've developed is a a rule of thumb
23. 0:48that anyone can use to predict roughly
24. 0:50what
25. 0:51a threat actor might say in particular
26. 0:55circumstances
27. 0:56and this model is called the 4ds the 4ds
28. 0:59are dismiss
29. 1:00distort distract and dismay
30. 1:04these are the four things that you can
31. 1:06expect a disinformation actor to try and
32. 1:08do
33. 1:09if they come across a story which is
34. 1:11unfavorable to them
35. 1:12i developed this model from studying
36. 1:14russian information operations
37. 1:16particularly
38. 1:17and in the wake of the annexation of
39. 1:18crimea in 2014
40. 1:21but this is not a model that's limited
41. 1:23to russian operations it seems to be
42. 1:24more a
43. 1:25general pattern that you can observe in
44. 1:27lots of different threat actors around
45. 1:29the world
46. 1:30the way it works dismiss is the simplest
47. 1:32one if somebody comes out with
48. 1:35news or comment that is unfavorable to
49. 1:38the threat actor the threat act will
50. 1:39find a way to say
51. 1:40don't listen to them because and then
52. 1:43they'll throw in some kind of insult
53. 1:45it can be many kinds of different insult
54. 1:47in the russian context for example don't
55. 1:48listen to them because
56. 1:50they're a russophobe don't listen to
57. 1:52them because they're working for the cia
58. 1:55don't listen to them because they're
59. 1:56crazy in the case of china
60. 1:59we've seen chinese messaging recently
61. 2:01saying don't listen to president trump
62. 2:02when he criticizes china
63. 2:04because he's only doing it to try to get
64. 2:06re-elected
65. 2:08the most important thing in the dismiss
66. 2:10construct is that
67. 2:11don't listen to them it's trying to
68. 2:13silence the witness
69. 2:14or to make the witness go away without
70. 2:16being heard
71. 2:17and the insult the dismissal that goes
72. 2:19on with it is tacked onto the end
73. 2:22don't listen to them because and then
74. 2:24you add an insult so that's the first
75. 2:25technique it's by far the most common
76. 2:27technique
77. 2:28it's the easiest one for threat actors
78. 2:30to deploy you just throw in an insult
79. 2:33the second one is distort if the facts
80. 2:36don't suit your story
81. 2:38make up your own facts the classic
82. 2:40example of this
83. 2:41was in july 2014 a russian military unit
84. 2:45shot down malaysian airlines flight mh17
85. 2:48over ukraine
86. 2:49international investigators have already
87. 2:51named the unit
88. 2:53this was bad news for russia clearly and
89. 2:55so one of the things that happened
90. 2:57in the days after the shooting down of
91. 2:59mh17 was the russian defense ministry
92. 3:01published satellite images which it said
93. 3:03showed that ukraine
94. 3:05had had anti-aircraft units on the spot
95. 3:07at the time
96. 3:08and therefore it must be ukraine's fault
97. 3:11however forensic analysts
98. 3:13went over these satellite images
99. 3:16and discovered that they've been edited
100. 3:18and the areas of the photo which had
101. 3:20been most edited were the areas which
102. 3:21allegedly showed
103. 3:23the ukrainian weapons in in the place at
104. 3:25the time so it looks very like russia
105. 3:27had simply photoshopped images
106. 3:29to try and fake evidence that ukraine
107. 3:31was to blame
108. 3:32rather than russia it's distorting the
109. 3:34evidence so the second
110. 3:35is distort if the evidence doesn't suit
111. 3:38your story
112. 3:39you make up your own evidence the third
113. 3:41one is distract
114. 3:43if the conversation is getting
115. 3:44uncomfortable if it's focusing on
116. 3:46something that's unfavorable to you
117. 3:48change the subject accuse somebody else
118. 3:50of the same thing
119. 3:52there's a couple of ways to do that one
120. 3:53is simply starting to talk about
121. 3:54something else
122. 3:56the more targeted one is to accuse your
123. 3:58accuser of the same thing so
124. 4:00for example when uh nato states accused
125. 4:03russia of bombing civilian targets
126. 4:05in syria during the the war there some
127. 4:08of the responses included well
128. 4:10you bombed civilians in yugoslavia in
129. 4:131999
130. 4:14and even look what you did in vietnam
131. 4:17it's not timely it's not relevant it
132. 4:19isn't meant to be it's meant to draw a
133. 4:21false comparison between
134. 4:23the the critic and the one they're
135. 4:26criticizing
136. 4:27and it's also meant to change the
137. 4:28subject as soon as you start arguing
138. 4:30about what nato did in 1999
139. 4:32you're not talking about what russia was
140. 4:34doing in syria in 2016.
141. 4:38in the same way when the u.s earlier
142. 4:40this year was criticizing china for its
143. 4:42treatment of the hong kong protesters
144. 4:44one of the chinese responses was to say
145. 4:46well look at what your police are doing
146. 4:48to the george floyd protesters it's
147. 4:50about changing the subject
148. 4:52it's about distracting from the thing
149. 4:54that is being criticized
150. 4:57to something else so dismiss distort and
151. 5:00distract
152. 5:01and the final d is dismay try and scare
153. 5:03people off
154. 5:04this is something that happens
155. 5:05particularly when there's a policy
156. 5:06debate going on
157. 5:08for example when denmark was discussing
158. 5:10contributing a
159. 5:11radar ship to nato's missile defense
160. 5:14system back in 2015 the russian
161. 5:17ambassador
162. 5:18to denmark did an interview where he
163. 5:20said well of course if you do this
164. 5:21we'll have to put you on the nuclear
165. 5:23strike list in the same way
166. 5:25after um syrian government forces used
167. 5:28chemical weapons against civilians
168. 5:30and the us was talking about launching
169. 5:33punitive strikes
170. 5:34one of the lines coming out of the
171. 5:35kremlin was if you do this you'll risk
172. 5:37triggering world war three
173. 5:38the world will come to an end it's
174. 5:40dismaying rhetoric
175. 5:42in a rhetorical sense it's literally
176. 5:43going nuclear what you're trying to do
177. 5:45is scare people off so much that they
178. 5:47will no longer think about doing
179. 5:49what they've been talking about so the
180. 5:51four ds dismiss
181. 5:52distort distract and dismay are the four
182. 5:56standard ways in which disinformation
183. 5:57actors will try to respond
184. 5:59to criticism and you can use that model
185. 6:01both to analyze what they're doing
186. 6:03and explain to people this is how this
187. 6:05works
188. 6:06and to predict what they might do next
189. 6:09so for any given set of circumstances
190. 6:12you can think about a particular piece
191. 6:13of bad news that which will come towards
192. 6:15a particular
193. 6:16problem actor threat actor and you can
194. 6:19use the 4d model
195. 6:20to try and predict what are they going
196. 6:22to say
197. 6:23and once you've predicted them then you
198. 6:25can start thinking about
199. 6:27how do you make sure that that
200. 6:28disinformation isn't going to work
201. 6:31because so much of our work is making
202. 6:34sure that people are able to analyze the
203. 6:36disinformation and
204. 6:38counter it or understand it
205. 6:41or explain it to people themselves and
206. 6:44using models like the 4ds you can think
207. 6:47ahead
208. 6:48what are the likely attacks going to be
209. 6:51and then how can you make sure they
210. 6:52don't work