Question

Why does the author refer to the 2016 US elections as the Pearl Harbour of the Social Media age? Explain.

Answer 1

• The author compares the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to Pearl Harbor.It was an act of cyberwar,attacking on the electoral system of U.S.
• Computers, unlike traditional weapons, are not designed for a single use. What was designed for civilian use is easily weaponized. And since the possibilities of software on networked computers are nearly endless, so are the possibilities for attack. This is why cyberwar has been applied to a broad range of acts.
• At one end of the spectrum are disinformation campaigns that, for example, manipulate social media in order to influence foreign elections. Russia’s infamous interventions during the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign are a prime example.
• The actors behind them frequently operate independently, at “arms-length distance,” in order to preserve deniability of state involvement. This means we could be attacked by actors who may in fact be funded or supported by a nation-state, but who have made efforts to obscure this connection. The Russian “troll farms” that aimed to affect the 2016 U.S. election are a perfect example of this.
• They were carrying out a Russian agenda with the governments support despite officially being independent of government operations.
• If war is indeed politics by other means, then Russian meddling through social media to spread fake news and influence the electorate could be considered an act of war.At the moment, all that’s clear is that Russia and the U.S. are encroaching on one another’s cyber territory.
• If we include social media as a domain of warfare we get a very different picture — one in which the 2016 election may very well be the invisible Pearl Harbor of the cyber age.