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The first half of Thursday\u2019s Senate Select Intelligence Committee\u2019s hearing on Russian disinformation campaigns<\/a>\u00a0wasn\u2019t quite as fun as watching James Comey squirm his way around classified intel in the House<\/a>, but it did provide some valuable context on Russian cyber methods and social media campaigns.<\/p>\n The morning hearing \u00a0lacked the big names that are a little further down the pike, including former Trump campaign members Paul Manfort and Roger Stone and Trump son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner, focusing instead on academics and researchers.<\/p>\n While most of the hearing was scene-setting, including a thorough Russian counterintelligence history lesson, some of its\u00a0more compelling insights came from Clint Watts, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute\u2019s program on national security. Watts, a former FBI special agent who specializes in terrorism and online influence campaigns, spelled out some of the methods Russia uses to create and optimize its disinformation efforts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first thing we need to understand is it\u2019s not all automated and it\u2019s not all human, it\u2019s a combination of the two,\u201d Watts explained to the committee. \u201cYou can have someone engaging with you as an individual and using a bot to amplify their message\u2026 or [they] can create more personas on Twitter, for example.\u201d This sort of thing saw an uptick in 2014, but Watts says it wasn\u2019t until 2015 that\u00a0\u201cthey tied hacking and influence together for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n He went on to explain how Russia state actors create believable sock puppet accounts by insinuating themselves into the middle of a demographic they wish to influence. Using Wisconsin as an example, Watts described how such an actor would first \u201cinhale\u201d all of the accounts from a given slice of the population, parsing out details so they can then replicate the prevailing qualities in an average account. \u201cThey look exactly like you. It looks like an American from the Midwest or the South.\u201d<\/p>\n They go on to build an audience within that target group, but they run into a bit of a problem when they wish to rebrand the sock puppet with a different identity. \u201cThey build an audience they don\u2019t want to get rid of it,\u201d Watts explained. \u201cThese accounts are reprogrammed strategically. Then when they play both sides the audience will go with them once they have them.\u201d<\/p>\n Those strategic accounts then work together to create the news of the day. Accounts associated with Russian intelligence \u201ctweet heavily at Trump during times they know he\u2019s online [in order] to push conspiracy theories.\u201d<\/p>\n After pushing coordinated waves of the propaganda du jour, such a high volume of content usually ends up trending.\u00a0\u201cOnce it pushes to the top of the feed, mainstream news pays attention.\u201d<\/p>\n When established news organizations must weigh in in order to debunk those fake news pushes, it still sets the national conversation for the day and distracts from other news that might work against Russia\u2019s interests, continuing the story\u2019s spread \u201corganically.\u201d<\/p>\n To combat this, Watts thinks that news stories need warning labels or certifications, not unlike nutrition labels on food, \u201ca trusted integer that you can go to\u201d so news consumers would know what they\u2019re getting.<\/p>\n The Senate committee stands in sharp contrast to the corresponding investigation in the House, which this week stalled after erratic behavior from its chair led to a full-fledged partisan meltdown. In the Senate, Republican Chairman Richard Burr and Democratic Vice Chairman Mark Warner appeared Wednesday to put their spirit of bipartisan cooperation on display, and led with opening remarks at Thursday\u2019s hearing that were friendly and collaborative.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Featured Image: SAUL LOEB\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/small><\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/LLq588oXN7w\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first half of Thursday\u2019s Senate Select Intelligence Committee\u2019s hearing on Russian disinformation campaigns\u00a0wasn\u2019t quite as fun as watching James Comey squirm his way around classified intel in the House, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-4432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t