Inside the British Army's secret information warfare machine | Hacker News Reader

Inside the British Army's secret information warfare machine

wired.co.uk

Now how is this different from a Russian or Chinese troll factory? All these puppeteers playing political technologists, bother. Are they really thinking this stuff is changing hearts and minds over to the right cause?

It’s often not even a battle for hearts and minds en masse. Given the polarised state of many western democracies today it’s often just a few percent or less of the electorate one would need to influence to affect outcomes. Given this, with sufficient investment and scale, it seems alarmingly doable to me.

I think the dirty secret of all this is that it really doesn't matter much. I remember when Usenet was a thing; basically, nation states are acting like people did when they were first exposed to arguing on Usenet.

IT does if your caught up in a riot - you have heard of the lynching's in India caused by social media.

And a few years ago in the Rwandan genocide old school radio was a key instigator, 1 million dead in 100 days

Great explanation, now all this action seems to be targeted at young people between twenty and thirty (the older ones are watching TV)

Fascinating, correct me if I am wrong: so young people these days are no longer glued to the tube, so they do 'grassroot media' to attract them, but by doing so they now openly make propaganda for the state.

Or maybe it is because young people are no longer tied into the consensus (as memories of the new deal/welfare state are all gone by now), so they have to spend more effort to integrate them. Go figure.

(and i saw the movie 'Ralph Breaks the Internet' with my kids the other day, nice movie if you read between the lines)

We've actually come full circle from "ok Grandma, I won't believe everything I see on TV" to "grandma, stop sending me articles about how Hillary had Seth Rich murdered from totallynotfakenews.mk"

Another question: what will be the editorial slant/bias of these guys when a close election has to be decided? What kind of oversight exists for these guys? Are they only accountable to their managers at GHCQ ?

77 Brigade [0] would be operationally managed by military commanders (Joint Forces Command [1] for a specific op), not GCHQ.

[0] https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/formations-divisions-brig...

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/joint-forces-com...

I imagine they are semi open because maybe they exist only to counter things like for example:

Imagine we were using our armed services to provide purely humanitarian assistance in a theater(is that the right word?). And Russian troll farms are pumping out news saying we are invaders, and actually killing and kidnapping people who try to get help from them.

This directly puts our guys on the ground at even greater risk.

Even people at home and in allied countries start to believe it. It makes life harder for them in the future in many ways, politically and global politically.

It could be they exist purely to dispel actual myths/lies, and are kinda like the snopes of armed forces news.

At least this is what I hope the intention is..

The simultaneously flippant and serious answer is that the Queen sorts things out. For any one constituency, a dead heat will be decided by drawing the short straw, and then it's up to Parliament to come up with someone who can command a majority.

I don't think the Queen actually has any power to do anything anymore. She's more of a figurehead and I would guess is nowhere near deciding anyone's fate (if she ever was) much less deciding political races.

Same way all the other national security orgs are.

Depends on what you call the right cause. If you’ve joined the British army we can assume you think the UK’s interests are the right cause.

If everyone else is doing this they can’t very well not it too, it would be like not having an army when everyone else around you does.

From my perspective, as a British person, the difference is that this is being done by British people to support British interests. As a person who lives in Britain, and by extension the west, and who supports the general values on which my society is based, I'm not interested in relativist comparisons. If the information war must be fought, I'd like us to win it.

And as an American I’d rather the British be doing it than the Russians or Chinese.

As an american, I don't see a difference. The UK has been as blatantly evil as the rest. I would argue russians enjoy more freedom. I think this UK favoritism is simply racism by another name.

As a skeptic, I don't think any of you are real people. Just bots optimized to ddos my attention.

Why racist? Russia has interests and an agenda it pursues. The west including the US and UK have interests and an agenda they pursue. Conflict is all-but-inevitable. Choosing a side is not racist; it's rational. You can, of course, choose to support the other side because you think the West irredeemably evil and that Isis or Russia or China are morally superior. Many have taken that path. Most people, though, choose their communities, their families, their friends, and their country.

As another British person I'm unconvinced that "British interests" include the interests of most British voters.

Historically we've seen the British state infiltrate and influence organisations that it considers hostile to it.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2018/oct/...

What stands out is the trivial nature of most of these groups, which surely fall squarely within a general democratic right to assemble and protest.

What also stands out is that right-wing groups don't seem to have had anything like the same level of oversight.

So if - hypothetically - the military and/or GCHQ ran a campaign to influence a British election, or a public referendum, would that align with "British interests" or not?

This isn't a hypothetical. It's obvious from the comment sites of most newspapers and also from posts on FB interest groups that industrial-level opinion-shaping is being attempted.

If it's originating from hostile foreign powers, the UK's cyber response seems inexplicably ineffectual. If it's originating from closer to the home, that's clearly a non-trivial problem for our "general values."

Some of those are appalling, especially spying on the trade unions and having workers blackballed. But most of them are loonies of the left or right, animal rights extremists, or have connections to Irish terror orgainzations. Exactly the people the police should be infiltrating.

I'm not convinced "Britain" is in the interest of most voters.

That's a charming degree of trust you have in our intelligence services to be acting in your interests.

Their track record doesn't support it very well though, unless your interests happen to align with the economic elite and social conservatives.

I'm just a firm believer that falling short of perfection is not a reason for total condemnation. In general, over time, the intelligence services do act in the interests of the country. In specific cases, they may not, and in those cases, the organizations and individuals concerned should be properly punished.

And yes, I'm in favor of organizations that defend the nation's institutions, because without them we'd be fucked.

One difference is the Russians have massive malware networks available from their criminal operations they can use for certain information operations, e.g. https://www.trustwave.com/Resources/SpiderLabs-Blog/Bedep-tr.... I have not seen anything on western governments doing anything close to that sort of thing.

With the evidence pointing to vast numbers of state agencies around the world engaging in this type of information warfare, do you think it better that democratic nations do nothing in response?

What would be an alternative or more effective method of defending against the Russian and Chinese troll farms?

I'm not endorsing these tactics, and wonder if we are already in a situation where there is a threat of mutually assured destruction? Doing nothing in response seems to lead to even worse outcomes then the admittedly unsavory alternative.

>What would be an alternative or more effective method of defending against the Russian and Chinese troll farms?

Not believing everything you read on the internet.

Yes, indeed. It might also help to understand how the operation works.

The method seems to be, based on my understanding of analyses in the Finnish media about how the "troll factory of Saint Petersburg" operates: 1. amplify suitable existing events/movements with fake accounts spreading supporting posts, 2. use advertisements or rumors to create suitable new openings for 1, then do 1.

The main purpose is to amplify messages that are aligned with the political aspirations of the Russian Federation.

Further legitimacy is obtained when a "serious news site" (usually other Russia controlled media like RT) publishes something about the subject. The idea becomes something more legit and more plausible, even though it might have begun as an intentionally fabricated lie.

The rest is taken care of by gullible people who absorb the message without much thinking and then spread it further, especially when the message fits their image of or desired state of the world.

So basically the Russian troll factory is an astroturfing organization, but instead of pimping a product, they pimp emotionally loaded social media sentiments that support political goals.

that’s just media

'just media'?

Media is potentially the most valuable conduit for information for the human race currently. Newspapers, social media, news organizations, tv, apps, advertisements, and a million others. There isn't a 'just' related to media because it's so powerful and pervasive. It's a pipeline into 7 billion people's brains.

How exactly would that work for the general population ?

The Bruce Schneier article recently discussed on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18541886 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3273111&...) is the best answer I know. It is just a start - but at least it frames the problem in the right way.

Aren’t political campaigns information warfare? We’re just allowing the tumor to metastize to the brain and are claiming the growths on the head are a sign of increasing intelligence.

It seems we were the first to do it, the article says that they have tools to influence online polls and spam emails and SMS and were using them as far back as 2009 in the Falkland Islands and to push regime change in Zimbabwe. People have also said Arab Spring wasn't exactly organic as well.

They are hardly 'secret' - they have their own web site! [0]

[0] https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/formations-divisions-brig...

Yeah, but they are no longer on twitter...Well, that we know of.

I think the scary thing about nation states trying to covertly influence each other is that many of these states are supposed to be allies, or at least friendly. They certainly are not at war.

I naively believed the Cold War was over, obviously it has only changed its methods, to where influence over a countries people is the weapon and it's being used widely.

Why do you say ‘nation states’? The UK is the classic example of something which is not a nation state.

Give it a few years and the UK will no longer exist. The largest remainder will most likely be called England and the rest will have broken away.

That's possible, but I don't think it's likely. Scotland voted to stay in the UK when given the choice. That choice is not likely to be given again in the near future. Wales wouldn't flourish on its own. Northern Ireland, maybe, but also unlikely -- plenty of Unionists will fight to the death to remain part of the UK.

> Scotland voted to stay in the UK when given the choice.

That was before the 'leave' vote.

Yes, and Scotland may want to leave the UK and join the EU on its own terms, but that is almost certain to fail. Many EU countries, especially Spain, have regional nationalist movements. They do not want to encourage regional partitions by letting breakaway regions join the EU. Scotland is better off in the UK than outside on its own.

Is there an equivalent of the act of union in Spain which is the argument made by the SNP to justify independence.

Catalonia has been part of Spain since Aragon and Castile were united in the 1500s, longer ago than the Act of Union. But there has been consistent support for independence for centuries, including terrorist activity in recent decades. The Catalan independence movement has a lot of support in Catalan -- last year the Catalan regional government unilaterally held an illegal referendum on independence. The independence movement won, the Catalan executive declared independence, and Spain was forced to impose direct rule.

Catalan independence is a bigger headache for Madrid than Scottish independence is for London.

> The independence movement won

To provide more context for readers not familiarised with this: most of the people that would have voted “No” didn’t show up to vote because it was generally understood (by the noers at least) to be an illegal and non-legitimate vote and they did not want to legitimate it by voting. In those circumstances it is quite easy to get a “Yes”, but it is less clear that it is a “Win”.

Right, turnout for the referendum was very low. But I don't imagine Madrid wants to add fuel to the fire by encouraging other separatist movements, including Scottish Nationalism (unless they want to give the Brits a poke in the eye for Gibralter, which is unlikely). There's also the Basque region.

< That was before the 'leave' vote.

And more specifically, it meant that the decision was a Scotland in (pre-EU leave vote) the UK an EU member state, whereas a then vote to leave the Union of the UK would also have meant leaving the EU (and having to apply to rejoin, without any guarantees.) No wonder it was more attractive.

What then happened was that the UK (primarily, England) voted to "Brexit" leave the EU - so the very electoral calculation on which a "remain in the United Kingdom and EU" scottish vote was made, was turned on its head. If the UK does finally exit the EU, the Scots can very well say they were cheated and demand another vote.

Scottish Nationalists can demand another vote, but they won't get it as long as the Tories are in power. In as much as you can take Corbyn at his word, he is not in favour either, and nor are many in the Labour party. It might happen if the Scottish Parliament votes for it, but it's still not a sure thing to pass. Besides which, it isn't wise: Scotland can't pay its way and depends on EU and British (English) money. Out of the EU, Scotland would be in a worse economic position if it leaves the UK, and there's no guarantee that it would be allowed to join the EU in the near future: many EU members with a veto aren't keen to encourage separatist movements.

Interesting that this comes out at the same time that a Russian journalist triggers a security alert filming outside their base of operations:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46420486

OP article came out a couple weeks before that happened. It's likely they followed a Wired article to dig up some dirt, or to add 2 and 2 and get 999.

Given that it is very likely that the UK military seriously considered a coup in the seventies (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/mar/15/commen...) it seems foolish to place the job of political story placement and disinformation with them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com