29. NATO’s cyber defence policy, a key concept developed through Capstone, recognised something crucial: that international law, including international humanitarian law and the UN Charter, applies equally in cyberspace. According to the policy, a decision as to when a cyberattack would lead to the invocation of Article 5 would be taken by the North Atlantic Council on a case-by-case basis. “Cyberattacks can reach a threshold which threatens national and Euro-Atlantic prosperity, security, and stability,” the NATO leaders agreed, adding their impact could be as harmful to modern societies as a conventional attack, before confirming the provision of cyber defences as part of NATO's core task. This marked an extraordinary development in respect of the recognition of hybrid conflicts as the future battleground, making the internet inseparable from a traditional, hot war zone.
30. Article 5 of the Washington Treaty sets out the principle of collective defence – the very heart of NATO’s founding treaty signed in the ashes of World War 2. It remains, NATO says: “A unique and enduring principle,” which “binds its members together, committing them to protect each other.” Collective defence as a term means an attack against one NATO member is considered to be an attack against all and the response is subsequently a joint one. They invoked Article 5 for the first time since the treaty was formed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States.
31. In Wales, NATO made a clear commitment to developing national cyber defence capabilities, saying they would “enhance the cyber security of national networks upon which NATO depends for its core tasks, in order to help make the Alliance resilient and fully protected.” They identified bilateral and multinational cooperation played – and would continue to play – a central role in building the cyber defence capabilities of the organisation and its members. All the members also agreed to integrate cyber defence into NATO active operations and operational contingency planning, with enhanced information sharing and situational awareness as a focus. Other international organisations, including the EU, agreed and NATO also set out to intensify cooperation with private industry through the NATO Industry Cyber Partnership296 – having identified technological innovations and expertise from the private sector were crucial to achieving their objectives.
32. Currently, however, no specific international legal framework is in place to regulate hybrid warfare, despite the efforts of NATO and others, which creates a conflict between the ability to invoke Article 5 and compliance with the regulations and legalities established and monitored by the UN. Use of force in international relations is still catered for under the United Nations Charter, which states: “In the absence of an armed attack against a country or its allies, a member state can use force legally only if authorised by a United Nations Security Council resolution.”
33. The grey area, of sorts, arises in the definition of using force at Article 2 of the Charter, which reads: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Article 2(4) does not use the term “war", sticking to “the threat or use of force,” which creates an ambiguity as to whether the provision refers to pure military force or extends to incorporate “economic, political, ideological or psychological force.”
34. The Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations, signed in 1970, states: “No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all against its political, economic and cultural elements, are in violation of international law.” The absence of a specific provision for hybrid use of force clearly arises from the dated nature of the charter itself and, to muddy the waters further, while a number of developing nations continue to argue force includes non-military force, it is the well-established states within the UN who resist adaptation.
35. The charter also permits self-defence and first strike, but both fall foul of the elderly definition of force, which has doubtlessly caused some hand-wringing among the states wishing to openly respond to live hybrid threats. Of course, the secondary issue with the dated law, is the UN are subsequently hamstrung by the charter in identifying and dealing with those actively engaged in hybrid conflicts. In addition, while the rules regarding traditional armed conflict are firmly laid down in international humanitarian and human rights law, hybrid conflict and threats are only covered by a patchwork of legal instruments covering specific policy areas. These are the seas, counter-terrorism, money laundering, terrorist financing, and human rights.
36. The impact of this coalition of defects allowed the growth of complex hybrid conflict operations to run almost unchecked, despite the best efforts of parties such as NATO and the EU, leading the world almost inevitably to the precipice it now stands upon. Trump, Brexit, the attacks on the French and Dutch elections, the world cyber-attack on infrastructure and health organisations, even fake news – these are the multiple fronts in a very real conflict from which there may be no return unless a response begins. Yet, any such response is hampered at the outset by the very structure which has permitted the threat to grow – made it necessary, even, by leaving room for tactics to be developed which exploit the inherent weaknesses.
Recommendation 1:
1.1 A new Act of Parliament is prepared defining Hybrid Conflict and its components, setting out statutory obligations to publish a national alert state and enshrining in British a structure by which an Article 5 response is to be set in motion.
1.2 The establishment of a new national body specifically dedicated to Hybrid Threats, providing reports to the Houses and the Public on a quarterly basis, combined with the introduction of a specific position in Government – The Minister for Hybrid Warfare.
1.3 A national effort by the United Kingdom to secure the commitment of the United Nations to modernising the definitions and understanding of weapons and force.
Main Evidence:
The Impact of Social Media and Online News: A Discussion We Do Not Need To Have
1. We do not need to (and must not waste time upon) the discussion of whether or not social media and online news has the power to influence public opinion, discourse, and behaviour. We know as a matter of fact the online world and the social media platforms do have the power to influence millions of people. We know this because of the advertising revenues and share values of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and because of the significant shift in media outlets to online presence, notably including publications such as The Independent and The Daily Mail.
2. Using information provided by Statista297 we know, in the most recently reported year, the social network Facebook generated 26.89 billion U.S. dollars in advertising revenues and this accounts for the vast majority of Facebook's overall income.
3. In 2015, around 95% of Facebook's global revenue was generated from advertising, at the time totalling more than 17 billion U.S. dollars. In 2013, this amount was only 7 billion U.S. Dollars.
4. Facebook's average revenue per user also significantly increased during the same period, increasing from 6.81 U.S. dollars per capita in 2013 to 11.96 U.S. dollars per capita in 2015. The per capita averages are higher than globally in Europe, and significantly higher than globally in the United States.
5. Mobile advertising revenue already accounted for 77 percent of Facebook's total advertising revenue in 2015 and is projected to grow to a value of 60.68 billion U.S. dollars by 2021.
6. Twitter still holds a smaller market share however, since 2010, the number of Monthly Active Users has increased exponentially from 30 million to 330 million in the latest quarter of 2017.
7. In 2015, Twitter generated 1.99 billion U.S. dollars through global advertising and is expected to earn over 3.26 billion U.S. dollars in 2017.
8. During the same period, traditional advertising expenditure in print media has fallen significantly, and The Independent ceased paper cir
culation altogether in favour of becoming a digital platform.
9. The reason we do not have to have the circular discussion as to whether social media and online media has an impact on public behaviour is a simplistic one: it is already an industry worth billions of dollars and will overtake almost all other advertising in the next five years. Subsequently, if it was not effective, this would be not be reflected in financial growth and the buying decisions of companies which are based purely upon ROI (return on investment).
10. This is, however, also supported by a growing body of academic research, just a fragment of which can be found with little or no effort using search engines298.
11. The largest and one of the most well known studies was published in the journal Nature. Entitled “A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization299,” and dated 2012, the study suggested messages on Facebook feeds could significantly influence voting patterns.
12. The study data — produced and subject to analysis in collaboration with Facebook data scientists — implied certain messages promoted by “friends” had the effect of increasing “turnout directly by about 60,000 voters and indirectly through social contagion by another 280,000 voters, for a total of 340,000 additional votes.” Following the study, concerns were raised about the potential manipulation of users and “digital gerrymandering.”
13. While dissenting studies have also been produced, there is a distinct marriage between the estimated effect and revenue which cannot and should not be denied. To do so would be nonsensical. Not least to consider is the significant spend by the Trump Campaign on social media targeted activity by controversial firm Cambridge Analytica, which runs into millions of dollars – and the methods of which are subject to two UK inquiries by the ICO and Electoral Commission over their ties to Leave.EU during Brexit.
14. Further, social media was first identified as a weapon by U.S. Contractor HB Gary in 2010, resulting in talks with defence company Palantir.
14.1 Back in 2010, cyber security company HB Gary – who also worked on Federal contracts – were in friendly talks about integrating with Palantir on social media based products.
14.2 Under the subject heading “Social Media, Exploitation, and Persistent Internet Operations,” senior employees of both companies were discussing the opportunities and risks by email.
14.3 “The rise of the social web has created an entirely new set of useful technologies and security vulnerabilities. It is our experience that most individuals and organisations understand there are risks to using social media but don't understand the full extent, from what types of use, what the real risks are, or how the vulnerabilities can be fully exploited,” one exchange said.
14.4 The emails were dumped on the internet by Wikileaks after one HB Gary employee exposed alleged members of Anonymous to the authorities in 2011, in an event which ruined his career. Before infamy, however, Arron Barr set out in further emails just how significant the development of big data as a weapon would be. “There is an immense amount of information that can be aggregated from social media services to develop competitive intelligence against any target. Take any US defence contractor. If I could harvest a significant amount of data from sites such as FBO, Monster, LinkedIn, Input, Facebook, Twitter. What type of picture could I put together as far as company capabilities, future plans, contract wins, etc. From a targeting perspective could I identify information exposure points that lead to a defensive weakness…I spoke to INSCOM a few weeks ago about their desire to start to incorporate more social media reconnaissance and exploitation into their red team efforts. Such a capability has a broad applicability that will be more significantly needed in the future,” he wrote.
14.5 Barr was years ahead of his time in identifying threats which were subsequently exploited to successfully manipulate both British and American electorates. In one briefing email, he expanded, saying: “The explosive growth of social media has created a highly effective channel for the collection and aggregation of personal and organisational information for the purposes of tailoring content for users. To interact in a social media ecosystem requires some release of personally identifiable information (PII), in fact with most services the more information you provide the more tailored and beneficial the experience. In most cases, these are legitimate reasons for providing the information with tangible user benefits, whether it be to more personalise and localise advertising or tailored and real-time information delivery that increases personal productivity. Unfortunately, the same methods are being used to conduct information reconnaissance and exploitation. The most common current examples are spear-phishing attacks.”
14.6 “Future social media exploitation tactics will likely be applications and service that provide personal benefit or entertainment, but serving a dual purpose to collect information that can be used for more insidious purposes. This marks a new class of exploitation, vehicles directly targeting people rather than the machines they use,” he concluded.
15. Cambridge Analytica have since been touting for Pentagon contracts too.300 In fact, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, SCL, recently registered an entry in the US Foreign Agents (FARA) declarations for a specific $330,000 campaign on social media entitled “Blockade Qatar”301, which appeared to be supporting Russian interests – resulting in Qatar signing a defence and supply deal with the Kremlin - and came before the later Saudi crisis.
16. We also know that SCL Group was paid £190,000 by the UK Ministry of Defence between 2010 and 2015 for the provision of external training and the procurement of target audience analysis.
17. In short, we must not engage in a pointless debate as to whether social media and online platforms are influential, because sufficient evidence exists across a broad range of views to affirm that they are and also wield immense power.
Recommendation 2:
2.1 It is accepted as a national position that social media and online platforms are recognised as being capable of influencing public opinion and discourse.
2.2 It is accepted as a national position that social media and online platforms are recognised as being capable of being weaponised.
2.3 That social media and online platforms are specifically taken into the considerations around and definitions required under recommendation 1.
What Is The Purpose Of Fake News?:
17. Fake News makes disinformation sound relatively harmless, but it is not and we have also moved beyond debates about what Fake News is. It can be defined as: “disinformation or propaganda which is completely false or adapts partial truths to create a malignant narrative, in both instances designed to misinform the public and obfuscate the truth in order to sway public discourse and opinion to the advantage of the creator, often by creating mistrust, division, and chaos.”
18. Fake News is most prolifically spread through social media and online platforms as they circumvent the traditional checks and balances which are applied across most media organisations, providing unfettered access to the target audiences.
19. While propaganda is, in of itself, an old concept, current disinformation is far more sophisticated and falls squarely within the arena of hybrid threats. Not only does it provide direct access to members of the public, but it forms part of a wider military doctrine developed in the days of the former USSR which destabilises a target nation in layers over a set time-scale. The doctrine302 was set out most clearly by Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, a Soviet journalist for RIA Novosti and a former PGU KGB informant who defected to Canada and died in 1993.
20. However, one declassified CIA Report303 is instructive on the practical application of this doctrine through Russian state broadcaster, RT.
21. Even in 2012, the CIA captured the truth of RT's position. "In recent interviews, RT's leadership has candidly acknowledged its mission to expand its US audience and to expose it to Kremlin messaging," the report states. However, it notes the RT leadership "rejected claims that RT interferes in US domestic affairs."
; 22. The CIA meticulously document comments by RT Editor in Chief Margarita Simonyan, who claimed in popular arts magazine Afisha "It is important to have a channel that people get used to, and then, when needed, you show them what you need to show. In some sense, not having our own foreign broadcasting is the same as not having a ministry of defense. When there is no war, it looks like we don't need it. However, when there is a war, it is critical."
23. The report states, "according to Simonyan, "the word 'propaganda' has a very negative connotation, but indeed, there is not a single international foreign TV channel that is doing something other than promotion of the values of the country that it is broadcasting from." She added that "when Russia is at war, we are, of course, on Russia's side," adding that "RT's goal is "to make an alternative channel that shares information unavailable elsewhere in order to "conquer the audience" and expose it to Russian state messaging."
24. Simonyan, the CIA outline, has close ties to top Russian Government officials, especially Presidential Administration Deputy Chief of Staff Aleksey Gromov, who reportedly manages political TV coverage in Russia and is one of the founders of RT.
25. "Simonyan has claimed that Gromov shielded her from other officials and their requests to air certain reports. Russian media consider Simonyan to be Gromov's protege and Simonyan replaced Gromov on state-owned Channel One's Board of Directors. Government officials, including Gromov and Putin's Press Secretary Peskov, were involved in creating RT and appointing Simonyan. According to Simonyan, Gromov oversees political coverage on TV, and he has periodic meetings with media managers where he shares classified information and discusses their coverage plans. Some opposition journalists, including Andrey Loshak, claim that he also ordered media attacks on opposition figures," the report states.
Alternative War: Unabridged Page 37