disinformation

Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare

by Thomas Rid

is, and what it is not. First, and most important, active measures are not spontaneous lies by politicians, but the methodical output of large bureaucracies. Disinformation was, and in many ways continues to be, the domain of intelligence agencies—professionally run, continually improved, and usually employed against foreign adversaries. Second,

…

all active measures contain an element of disinformation: content may be forged, sourcing doctored, the method of acquisition covert; influence agents and cutouts may pretend to be something they are not, and

…

foreign intelligence.19 On January 11, 1923, a remarkable institutional innovation saw the light of day:20 Artuzov created an office for dezinformatsiya, or disinformation.21 The sheer volume of deceptive material that passed through these intelligence channels was large enough to trigger bureaucratic innovation in Russian foreign intelligence. The

…

GPU reportedly coordinated with the Revolutionary Military Council, Russia’s highest military authority, to set up a special bureau to “prepare disinformation for Western military intelligence services.”22 The goal, according to a GPU participant, was “to deter military intervention by the Western powers.”23 The GPU

…

was shot by the Germans in 1943. The actions of the Trust, more than any other event in the 1920s, would shape the future of disinformation. It was spectacularly successful. Polish intelligence later declared that—“without exaggeration”—Operation Trust had inflicted “incalculable damage” on the Russian émigrés, undercutting their political

…

States who were lobbying hard against recognizing the Soviet Union. America’s highly visible, ideologically motivated opposition to Marxism was practically an open invitation for disinformation and forgery. With his statements against Amtorg, Woll was broadcasting the establishment’s readiness to be tricked. Then, on March 4, about six weeks

…

the opening of the GDR Party Congress.23 The political warfare planners at Berlin Operations Base were careful to manage expectations at CIA headquarters. The disinformation campaign that Marbach and his team were designing and implementing was counterintuitive, neither wide nor narrow, designed neither for mass influence nor targeting of

…

strange, threatening letters. Henriette Trémeaud, wife of the prefect of Strasbourg, circa 1957. She died in a terrorist attack that was designed to be a disinformation operation. (Photograph by Keystone-France / Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images) “French Oppressors!” one such leaflet was titled. The pamphlet was addressed to the authorities

…

that the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA), the foreign intelligence branch of the Ministry of State Security—the Stasi—had already conducted active measures before 1957. But disinformation and “psychological warfare,” the defector said, had been officially announced within the HVA as a “major operational responsibility,” just as the cigar box bomb

…

weeks into his tenure. Department D pulled together various officers from different parts of the KGB’s vast First Chief Directorate to coordinate and direct disinformation operations. Shelepin’s most brilliant appointment was Ivan Ivanovich Agayants, a highly decorated career intelligence officer from Ganja (Gence) in Azerbaijan. Agayants was tall,

…

that sought to promote “division in the West.” Langley analysts pointed out that they observed “rather elaborate progressions in prolonged campaigns.”15 These anti-Western disinformation campaigns were aggressive, fast-paced, and used innovative methods that evolved quickly and in unexpected, frightening ways. One such measure exploited a military exercise known

…

for running espionage operations against the Christian Democrats in the Federal Republic. Heim, a Wehrmacht veteran, defected before the Stasi formed a specific unit for disinformation, but in his debriefings with West German security services, he was already able to detail what he called “intelligence work of corrosion,” or Zersetzungsarbeit.

…

, researchers, and specialists, usually not revealing their identity and purpose to these useful outsiders, although some were trusted agents. Not all were Russian. The disinformation division would commission these outside consultants, for a fee, to carry out research on issues of political, economic, historical, or cultural interest to the KGB

…

a detailed list of individual active measures, complete with specific objectives, targets, and assigned responsibilities, and are therefore an invaluable source for the historian of disinformation. Oral disinformation, as Ivanov outlined in his 1979 lecture, could be highly effective, even deadly, especially in developing countries. On November 20, 1979, a group of

…

had a deeper meaning. “After many years of practice and theoretical generalizations, the comrades from Service ‘A’ have brought some clarity to the concept of disinformation,” Ivanov explained, specifically on the “working methods that are widely used are exposing, compromising, and influencing governments, organizations, and individuals.” He cautioned against getting “

…

confidential ties, who will keep secret our involvement in these measures.” Ivanov explained that it was very important to understand the specific target of a disinformation operation. Diplomats were softer targets than intelligence officers, he said. “An intelligence officer will by default report data to the relevant agency, where serious

…

assessment. Service A had its own cipher clerks and two cipher machines to handle secure, encrypted communications, both outgoing and incoming, on disinformation in the making. The disinformation planners were supported by the KGB’s encryption service, which handed key material directly to Ivanov’s personal staff. Technology didn’t just

…

. New technologies created new forensic problems. Technology also created new targets. Not long after Ivanov’s presentation, his unit reportedly engaged in the first disinformation hack of a telecommunication system. In October 1981, a large Soviet nuclear-armed submarine ran aground near Sweden’s Karlskrona Naval Base, violating Swedish territorial

…

that AIDS conspiracy theories continued to fester at the far-left fringes of American civil rights activism, still, so far, without meaningful input from Soviet disinformation operators.18 American intelligence analysts, meanwhile, were investigating the reverse question: whether AIDS was a Soviet biological weapon. The CIA was aware that the

…

read and wrote, shared images and documents, socialized, consumed news, and spread rumors. The sprawling network, as became progressively clear, was practically optimized for disinformation, at least until the mid-2010s. Active measures operators two decades after Wagenbreth would frame his question differently: What would active measures be without the

…

culture of leaking when Schneier wrote these lines. The two-year period after the Snowden disclosures, in fact, was a short, modern golden age of disinformation. That period was characterized by the confluence of several developments that were, ultimately, all temporary afterglow effects of 1990s internet utopianism: the prevailing view,

…

agencies—both as a potential threat and as a potential cover for operations. CyberGuerrilla was a genuine Anonymous forum and preferred leak platform of Russian disinformation operators. (Internet Archive) “Anons,” as the activists called one another, ran social media accounts and blogs to foment unrest and advance the fight against

…

military personnel. Screenshots of the newly published cyb3rc site also appeared on Newsweek’s social media feed. CyberCaliphate bore all the hallmarks of a coordinated disinformation campaign: these actions were launched simultaneously, with consistent branding and language, and across various fronts and hacked social media sites, both publicly and as

…

forms of truth, of course, are exaggerations, ideals, clichés. This distinction is somewhat coarse and simplistic—nevertheless, it helps explain the logic of disinformation. The goal of disinformation is to engineer division by putting emotion over analysis, division over unity, conflict over consensus, the particular over the universal. For, after all,

…

—balloons launched, protesters counted, forgeries printed, packages mailed, letters received, press stories clipped, or downloads and shares and likes and page views logged. Some disinformers of old had long understood this problem: “I don’t think it’s possible to measure exactly, realistically, the impact of an active measure,” Bittman

…

in short, created a powerful illusion, an appealing mirage—the metrics created an opportunity for more, and more convincing, disinformation about disinformation. For willfully exaggerating the effects of disinformation means exaggerating the impact of disinformation. All this is bad news for future historians. Seminars, in-person discussions, and correspondence were always fleeting and rarely

…

transitioned into the SVR. The sweeping official history of Russian foreign intelligence acknowledges that over the past century the designations of the same operational activity—disinformation—came and went, from “operational games” to “active measures” to the blander, more recent “support measures.”13 Then came the rise of the internet,

…

leaked, compromising material of questionable provenance, and as publishers recycled unoriginal, repetitive content. The end effect was that a significant and large portion of the disinformation value-creation chain was outsourced to the victim society itself, to journalists, to activists, to freelance conspiracy theorists, and, to a lesser degree, to

…

by an unprecedented confluence of incentives that lead many victims—politicians, journalists, technologists, intelligence analysts, adversary operators, and most researchers—to highlight the potentials of disinformation over its limitations. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of this trend is the fantastic story of the Shadow Brokers—the devastating NSA leak with its

…

pp. 283–84. The other book was a Stasi memoir available only in German, Auftrag Irreführung, more on which below.   2.  Lawrence (Ladislav) Bittman, former disinformation officer, state security, Prague, interview with Thomas Rid, March 25, 2017, Rockport, MA; audio at https://archive.org/details/bittman-ridt. See Richard Sandomir, “

…

33, 2014.   6.  Less aggressive because the CIA mainly supported existing organizations and publications through covert funding, not by designing and delivering divisive and deceptive disinformation; see Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); see also Michael Warner’s review in

…

, 1930, p. 4. 28.  Spivak, A Man in His Time, p. 164. 29.  “Three Offer Proof Whalen Red Papers Were Forged Here.” 4. American Disinformation   1.  George Kennan, “The Inauguration of Political Warfare,” Draft, April, 30, 1948, NARA release, https://web.archive.org/web/20150123010608/http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document

…

Максимович Примаков, Очерки истории российской внешней разведки, Том 5, 1945–1965 годы (Москва: Международные отношения, 1997), p. 13.   2.  Ladislav Bittman, The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: An Insider’s View (Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1985), p. 39.   3.  CIA, “The Soviet and Communist Bloc Defamation Campaign,” CIA-RDP67B00446R000500070009-1,

…

Times, June 28, 1978, p. BR4.   2.  The sourcing on the Tupamaros’ motivation is not satisfactory, hence “reportedly.” See Fletcher Schoen and Christopher Lamb, “Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference,” Strategic Perspectives 11 (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 2012), p. 33.   3.  Anna Mudry

…

Its Secrets,” Associated Press, August 23, 2016. 48.  WikiSaudiLeaks, July 20, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20150810005744/http://www.wikisaleaks.com/. 49.  Thomas Rid, “Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns,” Testimony, United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Washington, DC, March 30, 2017. 50.  The leak

…

the reference by an obscure account, @LexingtonAl, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20190923140434/https:/twitter.com/Mao_Ware/status/1097891011202875392. A Century of Disinformation   1.  The full name is Bundesbehörde für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik.   2.  Jens Gieseke, Die Stasi (Munich: Pantheon, 2011),

…

; recognizing; Service A and; skill set for; Soviet budget for; Stasi’s history with; as support measures; the Trust’s success inspiring; see also disinformation Active Measures of Eastern Intelligence Services report activism; see also Anonymous; peacewar Adenauer, Konrad “Adventures of Mr. Hudson in Russia” Adzhubei, Alexei AEDEPOT Afghanistan AFL

…

and; Schneier on; of Shadow Brokers; Snowden and; Ukraine and Russian-orchestrated; WikiLeaks and; see also Anonymous; hacking operations Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI) disinformation: accurate information in; Artuzov and; Bittman on; Black Lives Matter movement and; data and; East and West divide on; election interference of 2016 and; emotion

…

Mark Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA); Active Measures of Eastern Intelligence Services report and; Arbeitskreis and; archival records of; DENVER operation and; Devil and His Dart and; disinformation focus of; effectiveness of; Fleissmann and; Generals for Peace and; Headquarters Germany and; Helms’s accusations against; Kampfverband für Unabhängiges Deutschland and; Die Neue Nachhut

…

All-German Affairs) Kalugin, Oleg Kämpfer, Der Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit (KgU); administrative harassment and; balloon distribution of; brochures of; CIA and; closure of; courage of; disinformation and; election interference of; Ford Foundation funding; forgery of; founding of; goals of; graffiti campaign of; hardware sabotage operations of; Hildebrandt’s removal from; operating

…

Agency nuclear disarmament nuclear war threats; see also neutron bomb Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign nuclear winter: Alexandrov and; CIA on; KGB and; scenarios of; self-disinformation and; TTAPS project and Nuland, Victoria O Obama, Barack Office of Strategic Services OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate) Olympic Games Operation GRAVEYARD Operations Plan (OPLAN

…

to; Johnson, R. L., leaking; nuclear war and; publication of; STORM operation and; target list of; Wendland’s suicide and Opperput, Edward #OpSaudi oral disinformation Organization Gehlen Orme, Stan Orwell, George Osborn, K. Barton O’Shaughnessy, Elim Ovchinnikov, Leonid P Paese Sera Pahl-Rugenstein Pakistan Panama Papers Pan-Pacific Worker

The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control

by Jacob Siegel  · 24 Mar 2026  · 348pp  · 103,246 words

the Internet has become a fetid swamp, overgrown with manipulative scams, malevolent propaganda, and parasitic bots. Misinformation, a term for unintentional falsehoods as distinguished from disinformation’s deliberate lies, is overflowing online, along with every other kind of information. Online echo chambers not only contribute to political polarization, they produce a

…

the press and sculpting of public opinion, and the recruitment of intellectuals, academics, and journalists to a totalizing crusade. * * * What lies beneath the specter of disinformation is the struggle for control. “It has become increasingly clear that information is one element, and perhaps the most important, of state power,” wrote the

…

the experience as rather more electrical than ethical. —Joan Didion, The White Album The concept of hybrid warfare, which foreshadowed the elite crusade against disinformation, was popularized in response to three events that took place over the course of 2014: the Euromaidan movement in Ukraine, which the United States backed

…

to counter misinformation or deception campaigns with truthful information.” The project’s description specified that part of the funding would go to automating its counter-disinformation and propaganda work—tasks that would get dramatically easier as artificial intelligence advanced over the next decade. Leaving aside the political and legal questions raised

…

processes.” The European Union, in partnership with NATO, opened its own “Centres of Excellence” for countering hybrid threats. The emergence of a continent-spanning counter-disinformation complex served multiple purposes, some clearly legitimate. Russian propaganda was neither benign nor a figment of the Western imagination. It is not an exaggeration to

…

measure, the EU conflated populist movements like Brexit, supported by a majority in England including most English socialist parties, with the “extreme right” and Russian disinformation. The claim went beyond a political judgment to make Europeans who advocated for national independence potential targets for NATO intelligence operations. In the United States

…

created an official government office for coordinating the resistance to Trump who, after all, stood accused of being the primary beneficiary and spreader of disinformation. Thus countering disinformation, while nominally concerned with foreign threats, marshalled the federal bureaucracies against the incoming administration. The government was not only divided but at war with

…

the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications that had been headed by Richard Stengel. Highlighting the continuities connecting counterterrorism, countering violent extremism, and the ascendant counter-disinformation establishment, the person picked to head the GEC was a former Navy SEAL with a counterterrorism background named Michael Lumpkin. Years later, in a State

…

everything but presented with new urgency. Instead of searching for terrorist needles hiding in haystacks of data, national security officials now confronted continuous waves of disinformation hordes streaming through America’s screens and colonizing the minds of its citizens on social media. Old-fashioned concepts of privacy and congressional oversight impeded

…

to flag or take down. Censorship became a routine and informal agreement between the various parties who had been brought together in the fight against disinformation. Fact-checkers, content moderators, nonprofit anti–hate speech representatives from groups like the Anti-Defamation League, counterterrorism veterans, trust and safety officials, countering violent

…

extremism experts, social scientists, political operatives, FBI agents, millennial journalists, and CIA officers all rubbed shoulders on the counter-disinformation party bus housed inside the social media companies. This information war was more than just a policy mandate; it was a sociological phenomenon with its

…

is precisely the gunshots and violence that distinguish wars from political debates and other contentious activities such as drinking and backgammon. But the war on disinformation, which became a war on incorrect ideas the moment its focus turned from foreign military operations to Americans’ political speech, eroded those essential distinctions.

…

that set the stage for the next four years and transformed the American political system. First, it launched the Global Engagement Center’s war against disinformation, which absorbed the apparatus of the war on terror. Next, it released the deceptive and politically motivated intelligence community assessment that popularized the claim that

…

. The claim that Russia hacked the 2016 vote allowed federal agencies to justify the new public-private censorship machinery as a necessary measure to fight disinformation and protect “election integrity.” People who expressed true and constitutionally protected opinions about the election (and later about issues ranging from the origins of

…

COVID-19 to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan) would be labeled conspiracists, spreaders of deadly disinformation, and stooges of Vladimir Putin, and they would be systematically removed from the public square. By an extremely conservative estimate based on public reporting, tens

…

mobilization used to fight past wars by “leveraging expertise from across government, tech and marketing sectors, academia, and NGOs.” As it evolved, the definition of disinformation rapidly expanded. “Real, total war has become information war,” Marshall McLuhan observed in 1967. “It is being fought by subtle electric informational media—under cold

…

academics affiliated with Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy published an influential report titled “Information Disorder.” Conceptually, the paper showed the disinformation field evolving from its military and intelligence origins into a generalized theory of society. The very term disorder, with its medical and therapeutic connotations, suggested

…

Twitter executive named Emily Horne. Twitter had a smoking gun showing that Hamilton 68 was guilty of exactly the charge it made against others: peddling disinformation that inflamed domestic political divisions and undermined democratic institutions. But that had to be weighed against other factors, Horne suggested, such as the need

…

late-night talk show hosts, racial equity consultants, and private equity consultants. Never-Trump Republicans joined forces with the Democratic National Committee, which declared online disinformation “a whole-of-society problem that requires a whole-of-society response.” Inevitably, the field attracted opportunists and people looking to capitalize on the cause

…

(England’s Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, would eventually join the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder). Yet most anti-disinformation crusaders were not cynical opportunists or power-mad schemers. Following the social and career incentives of the knowledge class, they became earnest believers in their

…

the Internet and worked to achieve nothing less than the eradication of harm and human error. * * * CISA’s mandate soon expanded from guarding against foreign disinformation to surveilling Americans’ speech for mis- and malinformation. The porousness of the labels and the inherently political nature of the field made its transition from

…

of it. At a structural level, this was a crucial capacity-building stage for the nascent information state. The fact-checking, election-integrity, and counter-disinformation fields—all straddling the public-private divide—formed the new infrastructure of governance. * * * On the eve of the 2020 presidential race, The New York

…

writer. That made her an ideally credentialed person to evangelize for the intelligentsia’s new article of faith, which held that civilization was imperiled by disinformation. The essay approvingly quoted a Yale philosophy professor: “Free speech threatens democracy as much as it also provides for its flourishing.” Only enlightened censorship

…

national security official named Andrew Grotto published a paper with Stanford University’s Information Warfare Working Group titled “How to Report Responsibly on Hacks and Disinformation.” Buried in its bland policy prescriptions, the authors advocated a radical change to the ethos of journalism. The report called on journalists to “break

…

under Biden. And the second was the decision to use the tools of counterinsurgency against American citizens. The pandemic dumped jet fuel into the counter-disinformation machine while extending its controls into the physical world. That brought the information state into people’s everyday lives. This was something different from Russiagate

…

privately acknowledged at the outset of the pandemic in a February 2020 email. Despite the inconsistencies of the public health authorities, experts from the disinformation field proved flexible enough to enforce every new pronouncement as if they were both moral imperatives and matters of settled science. When Arkansas Senator Tom

…

“extraordinary shadow effort.” Among the many accomplishments of the conspirators, Ball noted that they “successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation.” The outcome of the election proved something beyond the obvious point that many Americans were sick of the endless Trump drama. Biden’s victory demonstrated

…

citizens accused of extremism. Beyond merely defeating specific groups committed to violence, the government’s terrorism strategy aimed to “counter the polarization often fueled by disinformation, misinformation, and dangerous conspiracy theories online.” Yet the national strategy defined terrorism and extremism so broadly that they encompassed everything from neo-Nazi groups to

…

era ideological techniques. One called “attitudinal inoculation” proposed to build “psychological antibodies” in people deemed vulnerable to wrongthink in order to strengthen their defenses against disinformation. Even the Post Office got in on the action through a program called iCOP (the Internet Covert Operations Program) that collected Americans’ social media posts

…

argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important.” * * * At the same time as Biden was accusing social media companies of killing people with their supposedly lax misinformation

…

appeared to redouble their doubts. The same was true for efforts at deradicalizing Trump supporters. Perhaps it was not a coincidence that the crusaders against disinformation tended to come from fields like counterterrorism, journalism, academia, and epidemiology that shared records of failure in recent years. If information control failed to

…

October 10, 2022, https://cimsec.org/navy-information-warfares-road-to-serfdom. “information intended for foreign,” Information Operations Roadmap, 26. “an official program that uses disinformation” Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, “Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in a Broad Arena,” New York Times, December 13, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004

…

; and the allegation by a roster of former senior US intelligence officials that reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptops was likely tied to a Russian disinformation campaign. These claims were debunked in subsequent court proceedings (Cambridge Analytica), in reporting (trolls farms and the Steele dossier), by the release of internal

…

-industrial. “one man,” Hayden wrote Hayden, Assault on Intelligence, 111. “What makes this information war” Jankowicz, How to Lose the Information War, 3. 12: DISINFORMATION DISORDER tens of millions of public posts In just one month, April 2020, Facebook alone reported placing warning labels on 50 million posts. While the

…

along with co-chair Katie Couric and commissioners including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. “notifying social media platforms” “DHS Needs a Unified Strategy to Counter Disinformation Campaigns,” Office of Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security, August 10, 2022, https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2022-08/OIG-

…

22-58-Aug22.pdf. “metastasized into the nerve center” The Weaponization of CISA: How a “Cybersecurity” Agency Colluded with Big Tech and “Disinformation” Partners to Censor Americans, Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, US House of Representatives, 118th Congress

…

https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-online-misinformation-epidemic-with-renee-diresta/. video that was discovered Mike Benz, “Renée DiResta ‘Worked for the CIA’ Before Stanford Disinformation Role, According to Video Remarks from Her Supervisor Alex Stamos,” Foundation for Freedom Online, March 9, 2023, https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/renee-diresta-worked-for-the

…

-cia-before-stanford-disinformation-role-according-to-video-remarks-from-her-supervisor-alex-stamos/. “made unsubstantiated claims” The Censorship Industrial Complex: U.S. Government Support for Domestic Censorship and

…

White House, January 20, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-freedom-of-speech-and-ending-federal-censorship/. dismantled the enormous counter-disinformation machine Marco Rubio, “Protecting and Championing Free Speech at the State Department,” US Department of State press release, April 16, 2025, https://www.state.gov

…

Dialectic of Sex, The (Firestone) Didion, Joan digital counterinsurgency digital diplomacy digital journalism digital swarms digital technology, history of DiResta, Renée disinformation, use of the term. See also counter-disinformation industry Disinformation Governance Board DNA Doctorow, Cory Dorgan, Byron Dorsey, Jack Doughty, Terry Dowd, Maureen drone warfare dual use Du Bois, W. E

…

nihilism 1984 (Orwell) Nixon, Richard nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) Northrup Grumman Ntrepid nuclear arms race nuclear rationality Nunes, Devin Obama, Barack Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act “Disinformation Is a Threat to Our Democracy” Google and immigration policy open government initiative propaganda and Russiagate and Wilson administration compared with Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Office

…

Warfare 7: Total Information Awareness 8: The Silicon President 9: Whole of Society 10: Hybrid War, Hybrid Power PART III: REVOLT 11: Hacking Democracy 12: Disinformation Disorder 13: The Naked Emperor 14: Limits of Control NOTES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INDEX ABOUT THE AUTHOR COPYRIGHT THE INFORMATION STATE: POLITICS IN THE AGE OF TOTAL

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe

by Roger McNamee  · 1 Jan 2019  · 382pp  · 105,819 words

2018051479 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525561361 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525561354 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984877895 (export) Subjects: LCSH: Facebook (Electronic resource)—Social aspects. | Online social networks—Political aspects—United States. | Disinformation—United States. | Propaganda—Technological innovations. | Zuckerberg, Mark, 1984– —Influence. | United States—Politics and government. Classification: LCC HM743.F33 (ebook) | LCC HM743.F33 M347 2019 (print

…

. When content is coming from like-minded family, friends, or Groups, we tend to relax our vigilance, which is one of the reasons why disinformation spreads so effectively on Facebook. Giving users what they want sounds like a great idea, but it has at least one unfortunate by-product: filter

…

not create preference bubbles, but it is the ideal incubator for them. The algorithms ensure that users who like one piece of disinformation will be fed more disinformation. Fed enough disinformation, users will eventually wind up first in a filter bubble and then in a preference bubble. If you are a bad actor

…

them. Research suggests that people who accept one conspiracy theory have a high likelihood of accepting a second one. The same is true of inflammatory disinformation. None of this was known to me when I joined forces with Tristan. In combination with the events I had observed in 2016, Tristan’

…

many billion people have the critics connected?—much less to reconsider the way they do business. As a result, when confronted with evidence that disinformation and fake news spread over Facebook influenced the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and a presidential election in the United States, Facebook took steps

…

is that family, friends, and Groups are the foundational elements of filter and preference bubbles. Whether by design or by accident, they share the very disinformation and fake news that Facebook would like to suppress. * * * — AS TRISTAN DESCRIBES IT, and Fogg teaches it, there are ten tools that platforms use

…

each reflecting the unique architecture and culture of the platform. The interplay of platforms also favors bad actors. They can incubate pranks, conspiracy theories, and disinformation in fringe sites like 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, which are home to some of the most extreme voices on the internet, jump to Twitter to

…

were committed to polarizing Americans over social media. What else had the Russians done? What if Russia had run an entire campaign of discord and disinformation over social media? What would the goals have been of a Russian social media campaign? We hypothesized that the campaign must have started no

…

seemed likely to us that the Russian interference would have been most effective during the Republican primary. The Russians had been inflaming Groups and spreading disinformation about polarizing topics for more than a year when the candidates began running for president. All but one of the seventeen candidates ran on

…

There are millions of Groups on Facebook, for just about every organization, personality, politician, brand, sport, philosophy, and idea. The ones built around extreme ideas—disinformation, fake news, conspiracy theories, hate speech—become filter bubbles, reinforcing the shared value, intensifying emotional attachments to it. Thanks to Groups and filter bubbles, inflammatory

…

on how conspiracy theories spread over the internet. In her day job, as director of research at New Knowledge, Renée helps companies protect themselves from disinformation, character assassination, and smear attacks, the kind of tactics the Russians used in 2016. New Knowledge also created Hamilton 68, the public dashboard that

…

tracks Russian disinformation on Twitter. Sponsored by the German Marshall Fund and introduced on August 2, 2017, Hamilton 68 enables anyone to track what pro-Kremlin Twitter accounts

…

the Capitol. The conversation turned to our hypotheses and what they implied for future elections. Renée characterized techniques the Russians may have used to spread disinformation on social media. The Russians’ job was made easier by the thriving communities of libertarians and contrarians on the internet. They almost certainly focused on

…

stories in play at any time, a handful of which attract enough support to go viral. For the Russians, any time a piece of disinformation gained traction, they would seed one or more websites with a document that appeared to be a legitimate news story about the topic. Then they

…

share it. Recipients assume the story has been vetted by members of a shared political framework, so they share it, too. In this way, disinformation and conspiracy theories can gain traction quickly. The Russians used this technique to interfere in the 2016 election. They also organized events. A particularly well

…

vote for Clinton in 2016 may reflect to some degree the effectiveness of the Russian interference. How many of those stayed away because of Russian disinformation about Clinton’s email server, the Clinton Foundation, Pizzagate, and other issues? CNN reported that the Russians ran a number of Facebook Groups targeting

…

Media companies must work with them on their terms. Yet the internet monopolies do not acknowledge responsibility for the content on their site, which allows disinformation to flourish. Active users lose the ability to separate fact from fiction, making them vulnerable to manipulation. Soros emphasized the potential threat to democracy of

…

Facebook’s decision in May 2016 to replace human curators with algorithms proved to be a disaster. Far-right voices gamed the algorithm effectively, and disinformation dominated Trending Stories, just in time to amplify the Clinton email server story. Whether or not the changes to News Feed were another attempt to

…

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter by name and underscored the ease with which the Russians had exploited the architecture and algorithms of social platforms to spread disinformation and suppress votes. The story landed like a bombshell. As a bonus, the world got a peek into Facebook’s culture, thanks to a

…

user data in that country. Even when news reports dealt with another tech platform—as was the case when journalists revealed that Russian bots promoted disinformation on Twitter in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida—Facebook’s reputation took a hit. Finally, a virtual-reality shooting game

…

from social media. Science magazine published a study conducted by professors at MIT of every controversial story in English on Twitter. It revealed that disinformation and fake news are shared 70 percent more often than factual stories and spread roughly six times faster. The study noted that bots share facts

…

and disinformation roughly equally, suggesting that it is humans who prefer to share falsehoods. No one claimed that the problem might be confined to Twitter. The

…

side of social networks may be systemic, driven by design choices that favor some of the worst aspects of human behavior. As if on cue, disinformation spread by Infowars about bombing suspects in Austin, Texas, reached the top of the charts on YouTube. YouTube responded to this failure in moderation

…

by trying to pass the buck to Wikipedia, which it claimed would debunk disinformation. When I checked with Katherine Maher, the executive director of Wikipedia, that day, I learned that YouTube had made the announcement without first speaking

…

, they had little, if any, exposure to journalism and no preparation for social media. Their citizens did not have filters for the kind of disinformation shared on internet platforms. An idea that sounded worthy to people in the US, Free Basics has been more dangerous than I suspect its creators

…

well as a new initiative to anticipate interference rather than waiting for users to report it. While the announcement included a new program to target disinformation, the change to News Feed in January that reduced the weight of journalistic sources almost certainly made at least one aspect of preventing interference—

…

child pornography, Facebook has avoided judging the content on its site. This policy had the effect of enabling high-engagement content like conspiracy theories and disinformation to flourish, with significant benefits to profitability. A hypothesis emerged that Apple’s announcement—which had preceded the other two by a matter of hours

…

Dorsey, at a Congressional hearing. One might reasonably conclude that the internet platforms do not want to damage their business models by banning conspiracy theories, disinformation, and hate speech, unless it becomes politically impossible not to. Later in August, The New York Times reported that Facebook deleted more than 652 fake

…

advantage of that trust to surveil our every action online, to monetize personal data. In the process they have fostered hate speech, conspiracy theories, and disinformation, and enabled interference in elections. They have artificially inflated their profits by shirking civic responsibility. The platforms have damaged public health, undermined democracy, violated user

…

speech, in part because of constraints imposed by other corporate priorities. We have asked the platforms politely to fix their problems with hate speech and disinformation. Now is the time for stronger measures. I will go into this in depth in chapter 13. Eighth, the culture, business model, and practices

…

who to trust, or acting in their own interest. Bad actors have had a field day exploiting Google and Facebook, leveraging user trust to spread disinformation and hate speech, to suppress voting, and to polarize citizens in many countries. They will continue to do so until we, in our role

…

users and their friends but then magnified by algorithms to promote engagement. In the same vein, Facebook’s algorithms promote extreme messages over neutral ones, disinformation over information, conspiracy theories over facts. Every user has a unique News Feed and potentially a unique set of “facts.” Like-minded people can

…

mistakes. And then there is the impact of Truman Shows and filter bubbles, the primary consequence of which seems to be polarization. As amplifiers of disinformation and hate speech, Facebook, Google, and Twitter have effectively abridged the rights of the peaceful to benefit the angry. The persecution of the Rohingya

…

security consultant for the FBI, framed it this way in an email to me: “Many will project the past onto the future, expecting Russian disinformation to again seek to influence US elections. The Kremlin, rather than being the dominant social media manipulator globally, will be one of many seeking to

…

data to crush competitors. Google’s most glaring problems are in YouTube, which offers a triple-header of harm: the Kids channel, the promotion of disinformation, and the recruiting/training of extremists. For whatever reason, Google has not been able to fix any of these problems. Were it not for

…

to discourage new filter bubbles, what could it do about the ones that already exist? What can Facebook do about the fact that humans prefer disinformation to information? What can it do about the sorry state of civics education? It cannot solve all these problems, but it can reduce their

…

. Technology will continue to evolve, as will the tactics used by bad actors to exploit it. In particular, I worry about the spread of disinformation videos, including deep fakes. I worry about voter suppression of millennials over Instagram. The concern is magnified by the widespread misperception among users that Instagram

…

our democratic processes instead of undermining them. Revealing the sponsors for political ads was an important first step, and Facebook took it. Facebook then removed disinformation pages that appear to have been sponsored by Russia and Iran. It hired security experts. But so far Facebook has resisted fundamental change. The

…

company must do heavy lifting at the algorithm level to ensure that disinformation and fake news do not dominate the information sphere as they did in 2016. It owes the world its best effort to prioritize facts over

…

dividends in the future. I would spin off YouTube to shareholders, as that would create a more powerful incentive to reduce the threat from disinformation and extremism. Google does not seem to understand that the primary reason its users and policy makers are not up in arms is because Facebook

…

safe. Smartphones and internet platforms are designed to grab your attention and hold it. Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms are filled with conspiracy theories, disinformation, and fake news disguised as fact. Facebook and YouTube profit from outrage, and their algorithms are good at promoting it. Even if the outrage triggers

…

will test buyers’ trust in Facebook. In the two months before the midterms, Facebook ramped up its efforts to limit the impact of foreign interference, disinformation, and other forms of subterfuge. The company opened a “war room” to demonstrate its commitment and introduced tools to protect political campaigns and their

…

countries, 179–80, 233 Diamond, Larry, 243 Diana, Elisabeth, 231–32 Digital Equipment, 46, 152 DiResta, Renée, 92–93, 121–23, 127, 128, 146, 242 disinformation and fake news, 94–96, 117, 123, 173, 229, 233, 234, 237, 253, 257–58, 260, 274 on Facebook, 89, 94–96, 119, 159,

…

service, 207, 218 deactivating account, 99 decision making and organization of, 144–45, 154, 155, 160 democracy threatened by, 242–45, 258, 278, 280, 281 disinformation on, 89, 94–96, 119, 159, 165, 166, 208–9, 228, 243, 245, 258, 270, 281 early days of, 16–17 earnings in 2018,

…

Zuckerberg’s plan for addressing problems with, 158–59 Facemash, 53, 60 fact-checking, 103, 178, 179 Fair Housing Act, 11, 245 fake news, see disinformation and fake news FarmVille, 184, 195, 196 Fast Company, 53 FBI, 209, 252 fear of missing out (FOMO), 98, 99, 253, 269 Federal Communications

…

95, 102, 106, 110, 125, 183–84, 195, 233–35, 238–39, 243–45, 253, 256, 270, 278, 282, 283 Congress and, 122, 127–33 disinformation on, 177 fake accounts on, 265 Goldman’s tweets, 169–73 Jones and Infowars and, 228–29 Russia and, 121–24, 131, 169, 174 words

…

128, 156, 214, 223, 232, 235, 238–39, 242, 244, 260, 274, 279, 281 advertising and, 103, 283–84 algorithms of, 92–93, 139, 274 disinformation on, 177–78 Google and, 104, 139, 253, 261 Jones and Infowars and, 228–29 Zittrain, Jonathan, 226 Zuckerberg, Mark, 3, 16, 53–79, 141

We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News

by Eliot Higgins  · 2 Mar 2021  · 277pp  · 70,506 words

.4 At Bellingcat, we watched, awaiting a point of entry. Scattered around the globe, we are an online collective, investigating war crimes and picking apart disinformation, basing our findings on clues that are openly available on the internet – in social-media postings, in leaked databases, in free satellite maps. Paradoxically, in

…

this age of online disinformation, facts are easier to come by than ever. A core team of eighteen staffers works with scores of volunteers, producing reports seen by hundreds of

…

the downing of Flight MH17. We located ISIS supporters in Europe. We identified neo-Nazis rampaging through Charlottesville, Virginia. We helped quash the floods of disinformation spreading alongside Covid-19. And we exposed a Kremlin ‘kill team’. This discipline is so new that it lacks a single name. Most common is

…

with deep suspicion, each political tribe inside its own information bubble. There is the temptation to consider oneself – readers of books like this, opponents of disinformation – as a different grade of human from those who fall for deception and conspiracy theories. Yet much of what each of us believes is just

…

coming contest: the Information Wars. Repressive states, which had long faced bad press abroad, could now bypass independent journalists, injecting propaganda directly into foreign countries. Disinformation became a key lever of foreign policy. RT, established in 2005, has been among the most energetic purveyors. In its early incarnation, the Kremlin-funded

…

a bizarre defence, as if casting suspicion on a person who never touched the murder weapon but had touched a weapon that was different. But disinformation need not be rational. It is enough for the propagandist to accuse, then watch doubt seep into the discussion. In another peculiar incident, I received

…

, contradictory narratives about an event are useful, providing something concrete to either verify or debunk. As for the Kremlin, it had a long history with disinformation. Even the Russian word ‘dezinformatsiya’ was meant to deceive, coined by Stalin to sound like a French term, implying that capitalist countries had created this

…

easier. The West – still basking in post-Cold War primacy, preoccupied by terrorism and diverted by thrilling new technology – was unprepared. The Kremlin employs what disinformation expert Ben Nimmo has dubbed the 4D Approach: Dismiss, Distort, Distract, Dismay. First, Russian officials aggressively dismiss uncomfortable facts, perhaps insulting the sources themselves, deeming

…

in the mid-1990s, when espionage officials faced a question: try to dominate cyberspace, or to dominate the information sphere generally, including diplomacy, public affairs, disinformation, and more? ‘We had a sharp debate, and we finally decided that we’re probably in the cyber-dominance business,’ he recalled. ‘Now the important

…

went down, the Internet Research Agency – a notorious ‘troll factory’ based in St Petersburg, where desk workers are paid to spew out vast amounts of disinformation online – went to work. During those first three days, its Twitter accounts posted 111,486 times, a pace that it has never matched before or

…

that the culprits had been Ukrainian and had shot down a passenger plane to stir hatred against Russian-backed separatists. Additionally, the paid trolls posted disinformation on LiveJournal blogs, then shared this via Twitter, a classic recycling technique where one lie claims corroboration from another source that was itself planted. Catherine

…

a Ukrainian-controlled town. Next, identical fake posts turned up on Western social media, then Russian state TV and separatist websites. Last stop in the disinformation chain was the Russian Defence Ministry briefing of 21 July 2014. ‘This was a deliberate attempt to simulate “crowd-sourcing” of geolocation efforts,’26 she

…

own. When Timmi watched news reports of MH17, he thought of all the children on board. He also became incensed at the Russian response – Moscow disinformation methods had not changed, he saw. So he worked up that morphing video, using advanced photo-editing software to flatten the Paris Match video, calculating

…

believed to show the suspect missile launcher. Time and again, it matched. As we built up our evidence, the denialists were busy, too, with abundant disinformation from Kremlin sources. A state-funded TV channel, Russia-1, which enjoys a vast national audience, broadcast a special report on MH17. The presenter was

…

by people who, identified via Facebook, worked for the Russian Foreign Ministry. What we were witnessing – both at Bellingcat and in society – went beyond Russian disinformation, though. The effort to distort facts in the digital age implicated swarms of passionate amateurs, opportunistic grifters and violent extremists, too. The resulting ‘post-truth

…

organs. Accusations against the Syria Civil Defence, better known as the White Helmets, sounded absurd. But scrutiny showed that something sinister was afoot: a leaderless disinformation campaign, with claims leaping from conspiracy theorists to state propagandists to alternative-media outlets and back – an ecosystem I call the Counterfactual Community. The White

…

absurd it was to imagine this mess of competing groups all conspiring together.22 Professor Kate Starbird of the University of Washington, who studies how disinformation spreads on social media, conducted an insightful study on content about the White Helmets. In a previous study of conspiracy theories regarding mass shootings, she

…

, lying becomes a fool’s mission. In the early days of Bellingcat I met with executives from Google and Facebook about fact-finding and the disinformation spreading on their platforms. Google wanted to help our work and created a tool to add metadata to clips on YouTube, which it owns. But

…

arms used in Saudi airstrikes in Yemen? What a moderator must evaluate could be part of a disinformation campaign or part of a genuine public debate. It could be a genuine debate based on disinformation. The depth of this problem feeds into internet miserabilism, the dread that our tech future is an

…

to the identification of at least ten children and the prosecution of two offenders.84 In more countries than ever, citizens are mobilising to fight disinformation and push back against the Counterfactual Community. The Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – have been especially active. These three nations, sandwiched between Russia and the

…

Russians to justify military action, notably against Ukraine, so the Baltic states are tense about their powerful neighbour. They are also subjected to much Russian disinformation, via Kremlin-funded news operations and on social media. In response to Russian trolls, they came up with ‘the elves’, volunteers who combat falsehoods online

…

. After the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, the Finnish government stepped up its defences against false news reports and online manipulation, establishing courses on disinformation for members of the public. In the first few years, thousands attended.87 Sweden, too, launched campaigns to tackle

…

has worked on a new government agency for the psychological defence of the country.88 We all need to stay alert to disinformation techniques. If you imagine that digital natives, those who grew up with the internet, are equipped to handle this environment, you are wrong. A Stanford

…

at spotting fake news.90 In Denmark, ‘Trolls in Your Feed’ is a publication for high-school kids, part of a push there against Russian disinformation.91 Classes, including cautionary study of false news reports, are working their way into school curricula in parts of the United States.92 In parallel

…

to elections, leading projects from Brazil to the United States to Nigeria94 and beyond. Still, fact-checking projects are minuscule compared with the reach of disinformation. An intriguing essay, published by the British fact-checking organisation Full Fact, contended that a first generation of online fact-checkers followed a ‘publish and

…

pandemic in March 2020, Bellingcat produced a range of material to involve citizens in online sleuthing on the subject, including a guide to debunking coronavirus disinformation; an article on scammers exploiting the disease on Facebook and YouTube; and a video segment on applying open-source tools to studying a world gone

…

have marked the story of Bellingcat: a chemical-weapons crime; an authoritarian government apparently lying to the world and expecting impunity; a campaign of online disinformation; the Counterfactual Community piling on; Western authorities struggling to solve the case; and citizen investigators stepping in, united by a conviction that facts still matter

…

their clues in public. We were ready to pick up the case. PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF OPEN SOURCE After the Skripal assassination attempt, the Kremlin disinformation apparatus kicked into action, with RT and Sputnik pumping out 735 articles in just four weeks, including a staggering 138 contradictory narratives with a range

…

to jump on the tried-and-true bandwagon: blame RT for journalistic audacity to demand facts and ask questions.’11 The Counterfactual Community amplified Kremlin disinformation, both parroting Russian talking points and supplying additional baseless claims. We just got down to work, especially after the British police released those images of

…

birthdate. Four matches came back. To see the dossiers themselves meant paying yet again, which Aric called ‘the nuclear option’. We hesitated. But the Kremlin disinformation machine provoked us – namely, that RT interview of the two supposed sports-nutrition salesmen, claiming rather stiltedly that they had visited Salisbury Cathedral to admire

…

discredit a conclusive open-source investigation than to claim that nothing is to be believed? I am certain this tactic will soon become routine in disinformation campaigns. I already see tweets dismissing videos from Syria, saying, But how do you know this isn’t a deepfake? The uninformed give this technology

…

organisation WITNESS, contends that we still have the chance to do better against this threat than we did in society’s recent online collision with disinformation. First, we must grasp what kinds of trickery are possible.33 You can already remove a person or an object from a video. You can

…

or audio samples that an algorithm needs to convincingly mimic something) keeps dropping. Fourth, we must beware that synthetic media will spread through the same disinformation routes that we are battling already, from microtargeting on social media, to mass-spamming, to dissemination through deceitful alternative-media outlets. Part of the response

…

the world to see. The blank zones are shrinking. WHERE WE GO FROM HERE The past, present and future of open-source investigation is collaboration. Disinformation operatives have greater tools than ever, and the aggressively misinformed find huge audiences online. Against this, we must act in numbers, and cooperatively, not with

…

been soldiers, and put seven from the video on trial. The BBC investigation won a Peabody Award. Elsewhere in the news world, verification teams and disinformation squads are increasingly common. The Wall Street Journal established a ‘deepfake’ committee of staffers from across the newsroom to help reporters judge whether content is

…

-source investigation. We will break major stories. We will present evidence and insist on the primacy of fact. We will act as a firewall against disinformation. And we will encourage as many people to join us as possible. I started off doing a blog in my spare time. Now we are

…

/372812134230806528 21 www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/04/13/doumafakenews/ 22 www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/12/18/chemical-weapons-and-absurdity-the-disinformation-campaign-against-the-white-helmets/ 23 faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/Alt_Narratives_ICWSM17-CameraReady.pdf 24 www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/10/16/why-assad

…

-pro-russian-trolls 87 www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-48401922/how-finland-fights-the-fake-news-trolls 88 disinfoportal.org/governments-countering-disinformation-the-case-of-sweden/ 89 stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:fv751yt5934/SHEG%20Evaluating%20Information%20Online.pdfamp.usatoday.com/amp/2769781002?__twitter_impression=true 90 www

…

, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and chemical attacks here, here, here, here, here, here and disinformation here, here Assange, Julian here Associated Press here, here, here, here Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Lab here, here Australian Financial Review here Averyanov, Andrey

…

here Deepfake Detection Challenge here ‘deepfakes’ here, here Democratic National Convention here Denmark here Detroit street gangs here ‘digilantism’ here DigitalGlobe here, here Discord here disinformation here, here, here, here resistance to here and Skripal poisoning here and social media here and Syrian conflict here, here, here see also Counterfactual Community

…

arms-smuggling here, here, here, here barrel bombs here, here ‘Caesar’ pictures here chemical attacks here, here, here, here, here, here, here cluster munitions here disinformation here, here, here documentation here, here, here, here, here, here, here pipe bombs here Syria Civil Defence (White Helmets) here, here, here Syrian Air Force

Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology

by Anu Bradford  · 25 Sep 2023  · 898pp  · 236,779 words

, it has also been a channel for exposing vast segments of society to different forms of harmful content. Internet sites often serve as platforms for disinformation, bullying, hatred, and repulsive content, undermining the safety and dignity of individuals while dividing societies and destabilizing democracies. Algorithms designed to tailor online content

…

other critics of the market-driven regulatory model can also point out how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms have repeatedly failed to remove dangerous disinformation on topics ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to democratic elections. And they can replay the images of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at

…

the US Capitol, which originated in a rampant social media–fueled disinformation campaign about a stolen election.31 Consequently, when looking strictly at innovation and economic growth, the American market-driven model can be praised for its

…

companies are navigating the Russian invasion of Ukraine, facing conflicting demands from Ukraine, Russia, the EU, and the US on how to handle the disinformation and propaganda on their platforms that are shaping the narrative about the war.63 US tech companies operating in China face a particularly difficult balancing

…

incident where Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, leaked documents to Congress that raised questions about the company’s handling of hate speech and disinformation.137 These tech companies have advanced in their defense various narratives when lobbying Congress. For example, in 2022, they argued that more robust antitrust

…

of an unregulated marketplace. It is also increasingly doubtful whether the market-driven model is delivering on its promise to enhance democracy as hatred and disinformation are often replacing the civic debates that were supposed to thrive online. Instead of nurturing inclusive democracy, online engagement has often increased societal polarization.

…

engagement means more advertising revenue, giving the platforms the incentive to amplify it. The digital public space is also increasingly compromised by rampant disinformation, in particular as disinformation gets disseminated more than truth online. A 2018 study examining news stories that were shared in Twitter from 2006 to 2017 reveals how

…

electoral process. There is no more vivid illustration of this than the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol following a rampant social media–fueled disinformation campaign about a stolen election. The unregulated digital economy is also rife with privacy scandals. This is exactly what happened in the infamous Cambridge

…

cyber operations. For example, the US government does not control social media and news outlets, making it easier for adversaries to infiltrate those outlets with disinformation operations. Such operations can be deployed to manipulate elections or otherwise undermine democratic institutions—as happened, for example, in 2016 when Russian hackers stole emails

…

of the European regulatory model. The EU has also developed regulatory instruments to preserve and strengthen democracy in the digital age, including by curtailing online disinformation and promoting a free and pluralistic media. The EU has further woven a commitment to fairness and redistribution into its regulatory model, as exemplified

…

freedom of expression is under threat when the platforms are permitted to moderate content. Yet the absence of such moderation practices would allow hate speech, disinformation, terrorist propaganda, and other harmful content to run rampant online. The line-drawing between permissible and impermissible speech is therefore complicated, and the key

…

a myriad of ways for technology to undermine democracy. Online communication channels have not only cultivated civic engagement; they have also facilitated the spread of disinformation, undermining public debate and the legitimacy of democratic elections.76 Apart from producing freedom and enhancing democracy, online platforms have also sowed discord and deepened

…

its belief in the role of regulation to preserve democratic processes, the EU has adopted a number of regulatory instruments, including measures aimed at countering disinformation and strengthening free and pluralistic media, both of which the EU sees as crucial for sustaining democratic discourse. Through these efforts, the EU is

…

elevating the preservation and strengthening of democracy as a central tenet of its rights-driven regulatory model. Fighting Disinformation and Other Harmful Content Online The European rights-driven regulatory agenda is anchored in the conviction that protecting citizens’ ability to express themselves freely online

…

is steadfast in its commitment to limit the dissemination of such information online. However, crafting a rights-preserving regulatory approach toward the removal of disinformation is complicated given the EU’s equally steadfast commitment to the freedom of expression online. The EU recognizes that freedom of expression is a fundamental

…

information sources and educating them to more critically evaluate the information they encounter online. As part of its regulatory efforts, the Commission developed a nonbinding Disinformation Code, which, in its updated 2022 version, has been signed by leading platforms including Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, and Twitter.83 These companies voluntarily

…

decisions.”98 The plan also holds that “by providing the public with reliable information, independent media play an important role in the fight against disinformation and the manipulation of democratic debate.”99 This view provides a policy rationale for the EU to leverage regulation with the goal of enhancing the

…

EU has been too lenient in tolerating harmful content online. While such regulation has led tech companies to take down considerable amounts of hate speech, disinformation, and terrorist content in the name of dignity, safety, and democracy, this kind of speech remains rampant online. Major platforms such as Facebook, YouTube,

…

with content that is harmful, dangerous, and often illegal. Few can dispute that these platforms have become go-to destinations for the spread of disinformation and the manipulation of public opinion on critical issues ranging from global pandemics to vaccines, and from migration to democratic elections. The role of social

…

content moderation. Europeans remain concerned about the ways US tech companies are shaping the European public discourse, often for worse, by allowing hate speech and disinformation to run rampant on their platforms. As a result, the EU has adopted regulations aimed at restricting illegal and harmful content online. In response,

…

social media.126 Instead of censoring conservative views, the right-wing media in the US often features conservative propaganda, cultivates conspiracy theories, and disseminates disinformation in the news media.127 This suggests that US news outlets have engaged in the kind of propaganda that the US government’s internet freedom

…

agenda for years sought to tackle abroad. The online disinformation surrounding the stolen 2020 presidential election—propagated most prominently by President Trump himself—provides perhaps the starkest evidence of how the US government has leveraged

…

his 2021 remarks, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stressed how the US was working to ensure that “the technology works for democracy, fighting back against disinformation, standing up for internet freedom, reducing the misuse of surveillance technology.”129 In April 2022, President Biden announced the establishment of the Bureau of

…

the Tanzanian human rights organization Fichua Tanzania and its founder.160 However, these deactivations catch only a fraction of the accounts that are deployed for disinformation or government propaganda. For example, Twitter reportedly deactivated only 11 percent of over 3,500 total accounts spreading pro-government propaganda worldwide.161 US platforms

…

cultural power, sparking significant concern among political leaders as these platforms continued to abuse their market power, infringe on user privacy, and circulate hate speech, disinformation, and other harmful content. In response, a countermovement to rein in these companies emerged, and foreign governments began to engage in efforts to repeal the

…

not simply produce freedom as the early American techno-optimist view had predicted—they also cultivated an online public square littered with hatred, violence, and disinformation. Societal harms associated with free speech online, as illustrated by many of the examples cited earlier in this chapter, cast doubt on the idea

…

has been, or is becoming, pertinent. The discussion reveals how the EU’s antitrust rules and content regulations, including norms covering online hate speech and disinformation, can similarly be externalized through the Brussels Effect, and how artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to be the next frontier of the EU’s

…

-driven model for inspiration in regulating their digital economies. Content Moderation The EU’s regulation of online content through its codes on hate speech and disinformation, discussed earlier in Chapter 3, is shaping the global policies of tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. When it comes to hate

…

where online content poses an “imminent and serious threat” to democratic, political, and policymaking processes, or public goods,117 whereas the EU Code bans disinformation, which “may cause public harm.”118 In explaining the departure from the EU standard, the ACCC noted that a lower threshold might be appropriate in

…

the EU, “in which multiple countries have already experienced harms including social media interference, and campaigns of disinformation and malinformation from external countries seeking to affect domestic political processes.”119 The Australian Communication and Media Authority will oversee the implementation of the Code

…

is also rethinking the US model’s traditionally inviolable commitment to free speech. Internet users are growing more concerned about harmful content online, including rife disinformation, terrorist propaganda, and foreign interference with elections. In recent years, the public has also become vehemently opposed to the misogyny and racism running rampant

…

the European model are increasingly seen as necessary building blocks of a more equitable and human-centric digital economy. Each additional privacy scandal and online disinformation campaign further vindicates the European model while revealing the limits of the American model. Even the US itself is now growing aware of the

…

the country’s own democratic institutions and wreaking havoc around the world. Many of the deeply disturbing examples described in this book—be it the disinformation-fueled US Capitol insurrection, the encouragement of illegal sex trafficking in the infamous Backpage case, or the hate speech–fueled genocide in Myanmar—have

…

in internet platforms as the guardians and amplifiers of democracy. Now this illusion has been shattered. The digital public space is frequently compromised by rampant disinformation, which interferes with elections and destabilizes democracies. America had a rude awakening on January 6, 2021, when President Trump’s loyalists stormed the US

…

handful of tech giants is hardly a reflection of economic freedom as conceived by early techno-libertarians. Similarly, recent scandals, including those revealing how online disinformation campaigns can undermine democratic elections, have shown that strong democracy does not necessarily flow from an unregulated digital marketplace. Consequently, a more regulated digital economy

…

Behind China’s Twitter Campaign, a Murky Supporting Chorus, N.Y. Times (June 8, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/technology/china-twitter-disinformation.html. 74.Zhao Lijian (@zlj517), Twitter (Mar. 12, 2020), https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1238111898828066823?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1238111898828066823%7Ctwgr%5E

…

Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives (2021), https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/bias-report-release-page. 127.Yochai Benkler, Robert Fairs, & Hal Roberts, Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics 354 (2018). 128.Freedom House, Freedom on the Net (2021), https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-states/freedom-net/2021. 129

…

/eu-referendum-analysis-2016/section-7-social-media/impact-of-social-media-on-the-outcome-of-the-eu-referendum/. 138.Digital, Culture, Media & Sport Committee, Disinformation and “Fake News”: Final Report, 2017–2019, HC 1791, § 6 (UK), https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/1791/1791.pdf. 139.Aurelien

…

Plan, 350–51 AI Ethics Framework, 350–51 anti-censorship principles, 267–68 antitrust regulation, 343–44, 345 Clean Network, 321 Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation, 341–42 content moderation, 341–42 digital trade agreements, 322 news industry regulation, 351–52, 383 nonregulation principle, 266–68 Privacy Act,

…

299–300 Europe. see also specific countries by name 5G networks, 301 Apple’s revenue, 261 Chinese influence in, 301 digital single market, 129–30 disinformation campaigns, 280–81 internet freedom initiatives, 272–73 national tax regimes, 142–43 search engine market, 260–61 smart cities, 296–97 European Battery Alliance

…

Haley, Nikki, 213–14 Halifax International Security Forum, 388–89 hard tech, 96–97 hardware companies, 73. see also specific companies by name harmful activity disinformation campaigns, 277–78, 280–81 fake news, 281–82 online content, 119–21, 141 protections against, 113–15 sanctions against, 134, 197–99 terrorist

…

compliance with EU laws and regulations, 163, 324–25 content moderation, 341 data centers, 154 data privacy policy, 324, 330 data transfer battles, 222–23 Disinformation Code, 120 European headquarters, 142–43 global influence, 133–34, 259–60, 261–62 global revenue, 154, 261–62 government battles, 13–14, 222

…

303 content controls, 180–81 cyberattacks, 134 data localization requirements, 330–31 demands on Meta, 338 digital authoritarianism, 135, 308–13 Digital Divide projects, 268 disinformation campaigns, 120–21 Federal Security Service, 312–13 hate speech law, 140–41 and international code of conduct for information security, 303 internet sovereignty, 309

…

of the European Union, 110, 118 Trip Advisor, 358 Truex, Rody, 197 Trump, Donald America First policy, 213 complaints against EU antitrust policy, 245 disinformation propagation, 277–78 efforts to ban Chinese tech companies, 102–3, 166–68 efforts to discipline social media companies, 49–50 efforts to restrict entry

Reset

by Ronald J. Deibert  · 14 Aug 2020

. The “gee whiz” factor has given way to a kind of dreadful ennui. Your daily news feeds fill with stories about data breaches, privacy infringements, disinformation, spying, and manipulation of political events. Social media executives have been dragged before congressional and parliamentary hearings to face the glare of the cameras and

…

designed to handle sensitive communications. In spite of efforts by social media platforms to remove misleading information and point their users to credible health sources, disinformation was everywhere, sometimes consumed with terrible effects. People perished drinking poisonous cocktails shared over social media (and endorsed by Donald Trump himself) in a desperate

…

institutions over others (both positively and negatively). Seen through this lens, social media do not generate practices, ideas, and institutions de novo. The spread of disinformation in the public realm is not something Facebook or Twitter alone is responsible for. The practice of deliberately spreading false information is as old as

…

humanity itself.20 However, social media’s algorithms create conditions ripe for its propagation today, and as a consequence, disinformation practices are proliferating, becoming more elaborate, backed up with more resources, and thus potentially have more damaging effects than would be the case in the

…

around any major news event, the circulation of information about the coronavirus on social media was flooded with conspiracy theories, misinformation (false or inaccurate information), disinformation (deliberately propagated false information), racist memes, chat censorship and surveillance, and even viruses of another kind.82 Official news, alerts, and health tips from groups

…

than thirty incidents of arson and vandalism as anti-5G activists set fire to base stations and cell towers and harassed telecommunications technicians.87 Alarmingly, disinformation spread through social media contributed directly to mob violence and armed clashes with police in Ukraine.88 An email designed to appear as though it

…

official government-related health information.92 Gradually, each of the platforms introduced measures to point users to credible health information, flag unverified information, and remove disinformation — but in an uncoordinated fashion and with questionable results.93 The platforms’ intrinsic bias towards speed and volume of posts made the measures inherently ineffective

…

caused massive devastation to property and wildlife, and even loss of life. But the crisis also provided an opportunity for climate change denialists to propagate disinformation, and for misinformed speculation to swarm and compete for people’s precious attention.97 Conspiracy theories circulated across social media, claiming bushfires were deliberately lit

…

it comes to capitalizing on the System 1 effects of social media. As a consequence, we are seeing an explosion of social media–enabled PR, disinformation, “psy-ops,” and “influence” operations — some open, commercial, and seemingly above board, but many others inhabiting a subterranean underworld of illicit acts, “dark money,” and

…

were executed as part of clandestine regime change and other military and intelligence programs throughout the Third World. As happens today, commercial and nation-state disinformation campaigns periodically overlapped. In the 1940s, the United Fruit Company hired Edward Bernays, who later used his public relations expertise to help foment a coup

…

in Guatemala after the election of a president who was unfavourable to the company. Bernays helped mount a multi-pronged disinformation campaign designed to discredit the democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, as a communist puppet and to motivate U.S. lawmakers and thought leaders to support

…

of a few whistleblowers. But countless other companies like it roll on, following variations on the same successful model. BuzzFeed News, which has studied online disinformation campaigns extensively, discovered that “since 2011, at least 27 online information operations have been partially or wholly attributed to PR or marketing firms.169 Of

…

censorship technologies) tried to prevent their citizens from accessing undesirable content. Now, thanks to social media, an environment of information abundance, and the opportunities for disinformation, these regimes are following a strategy that author and journalist Peter Pomerantsev, in his book This Is Not Propaganda, calls “censorship through noise.”171 If

…

you can’t beat them, join in and flood them. Of course any discussion of disinformation is not complete without mention of Russia. In Russian, “dezinformatsiya” refers to the manipulation of information in the service of propagation of falsehoods. It has

…

staying within the bounds of decency or the rule of law (and not necessarily in the sense of being tidier or more effective either). Russian disinformation is undertaken by organized criminal groups acting as proxies alongside independently operating, overlapping, and sometimes competing spy agencies and security services, all of which work

…

. But they enjoy it nonetheless, spending as much as ten hours per day online. Meanwhile, dozens of sketchy PR companies have sprouted up, openly advertising disinformation services barely disguised as benign-sounding “identity management” or “issue framing.” Political campaigns routinely make use of these consulting services, which in turn pay college

…

any topic she desired trend on Twitter in the Philippines. Her loyalists are paid in cash, cellphones, and other gifts. The rabid social media–fuelled disinformation wars are degrading the political environment in the Philippines, but since virtually everyone in a position of power has bought into it, there is little

…

for celebrities. Trolls for liberal opposition politicians and the government. Trolls trolling trolls.” The Post report, which profiled numerous companies that paid trolls to spread disinformation, also warned that what was happening in the Philippines would likely find its way abroad. “The same young, educated, English-speaking workforce that made the

…

North Africa — the same dynamics are playing themselves out, with a spice of local flavour and entrepreneurial variation. In Indonesia, low-level military personnel coordinate disinformation campaigns that include dozens of websites and social media accounts whose operators are paid a fee by the military, and whose posts routinely heap praise

…

tell whether they originate in Taiwan or in China, and whether they are the work of private provocateurs or of state agents.” In India, racist disinformation on WhatsApp groups and other social media platforms has incited mass outbreaks of ethnic violence and public lynchings, including the horrific “Delhi Riots” of February

…

payrolls.182 They have built entire organizations, think tanks, and other front organizations to generate scientific-looking but implausible reports, which are then seeded into disinformation campaigns and targeted advertisements meant to disorient and distract audiences from the real science of climate change.183 The consequences for global public safety are

…

to say the companies are sitting idle. They are feeling the pressure to react, and have taken several noteworthy steps to combat the plague of disinformation, including shutting down inauthentic accounts by the thousands, hiring more personnel to screen posts and investigate malpractice on their platforms, “down-ranking” clearly false information

…

before it gets better, as malicious actors are now using altered images and videos, called “deep fakes,” as well as large WhatsApp groups, to spread disinformation virally.196 These techniques are far more difficult for the platforms to combat and will almost certainly become a staple of discrediting and blackmail campaigns

…

. Under the reign of prime minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist right-wing party, the BJP, the country has rapidly descended into authoritarianism.282 Disinformation and misinformation run rampant through social media, sparking frequent outbreaks of mob violence and ethnic animosity — the most recent of which was horrific sectarian violence

…

end-to-end encrypted, making it more difficult for the platform to moderate content, are especially prone to these spikes of panic- or violence-inducing disinformation. Like those in many other countries, Indian authorities have rolled out technologically enhanced surveillance and other information controls. Upon arrival at the airport, I (along

…

or for worse. Detachment and retreat also ignore or at least slight the many positive uses of digital technologies, social media included. In spite of disinformation and overreaching surveillance, social media have proven highly useful for many problems. They have helped families, communities, and co-workers connect during the COVID crisis

…

’s no practical reason why not. Consider WhatsApp, whose platform’s “group chat” function was widely associated with inflaming ethnic animosity, inciting violence, and spreading disinformation around the world. Since its messages are end-to-end encrypted, which limits the platform’s ability to screen actual content, WhatsApp took steps to

…

, they all eventually decided to carry highly visible pointers to credible scientific content about the crisis at the top of their feeds, and actively removed disinformation when discovered (they even issued a rare joint statement in March 2020 saying they would elevate “authoritative content”).443 But as you might expect when

…

scramble to get inside our heads. Knopf. Chapter Two: Toxic Addiction Machines Commonplace around any major news event: For a discussion of the meanings of disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, etc., see Jack, C. (2017). Lexicon of lies: Terms for problematic information. Data & Society Research Institute. Retrieved from https://datasociety.net/library/lexicon

…

-of-lies/; Derakhshan, H., & Wardle, C. (2017). Information disorder: definitions. AA. VV., Understanding and addressing the disinformation ecosystem, 5-12. The WHO went so far as to label COVID-19 an “infodemic”: World Health Organization. (2020, February 2). Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV

…

, N. Middle East Twitter bots and the covid-19 infodemic. Retrieved from http://workshop-proceedings.icwsm.org/pdf/2020_17.pdf Russian propaganda outlets spread disinformation: Breland, A. (2020, February 3). Russian media outlets are blaming the coronavirus on the United States. Retrieved from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/02

…

/russian-disinformation-coronavirus/ Widely accepted throughout Chinese society: Gilbert, D. (2020, April 6). The Chinese government has convinced its citizens that the U.S. Army brought coronavirus

…

YouTube radicalized Brazil. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/americas/youtube-brazil.html An opportunity for climate change denialists to propagate disinformation: Ryan, H., & Wilson, C. (2020, January 22). As Australia burned, climate change denialism got a boost on Facebook. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahryan

…

. (2019). This is not propaganda: Adventures in the war against reality. Hachette UK. “Professional, organized lying”: Rid, T. (2020). Active measures: The secret history of disinformation and political warfare. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Rid combines his detailed historical analysis with some interesting observations about how democracies are particularly susceptible to active

…

measures. “Disinformation operations, in essence, erode the very foundation of open societies—not only for the victim but also for the perpetrator. When vast, secretive bureaucracies engage

…

of public administration at home. A society’s approach to active measures is a litmus test for its republican institutions. For liberal democracies in particular, disinformation represents a double threat: being at the receiving end of active measures will undermine democratic institutions—and giving in to the temptation to design and

…

deploy them will have the same result. It is impossible to excel at disinformation and at democracy at the same time.” (p. 11) “Third-generation” techniques: Deibert, R., & Rohozinski, R. (2010). Control and subversion in Russian cyberspace. In R

…

), 243–250; Freelon, D., Bossetta, M., Wells, C., Lukito, J., Xia, Y., & Adams, K. (2020). Black trolls matter: Racial and ideological asymmetries in social media disinformation. Social Science Computer Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439320914853 Take the Philippines, which is a good case study: Alba, D. (2019, March 19). Facebook

…

the Philippines. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/facebook-removes-inauthentic-engagement-philippines-nic; Ong, J. C., & Cabanes, J. (2018). Architects of networked disinformation: Behind the scenes of troll accounts and fake news production in the Philippines. Newton Tech4Dev Network. https://doi.org/10.7275/2cq4-5396 The Philippines

…

-may-be-coming-to-a-website-near-you/2019/07/25/c5d42ee2-5c53-11e9-98d4-844088d135f2_story.html In Indonesia, low-level military personnel coordinate disinformation campaigns: Allard, T., & Stubbs, J. (2020, January 7). Indonesian army wields internet ‘news’ as a weapon in Papua. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article

…

. (2016, August 29). A powerful Russian weapon: The spread of false stories. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html “A plurality of unreality … encourages the listener to doubt everything”: Zuckerman, E. (2019). QAnon and the emergence of the unreal. Journal of Design and

…

attacks on democracy. Berkman Klein Center Research Publication 2018-7. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3273111. Social media remain polluted by misinformation and disinformation: Lewis, P. (2018). “Fiction is outperforming reality”: How YouTube’s algorithm distorts truth. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/02/how-youtubes

…

, 170 Human Rights Watch, 165 Hungary, 193 ibm X-Force, 84 imsi catchers (cell site simulators), 190–191 India, 202–210 China and, 203–204 disinformation in, 127, 202–203 e-waste in, 242–246 pollution in, 206–208 Indonesia, 127, 225 information overload, 106–109, 129 InfoWars, 88–89 Innis

Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

by Amy B. Zegart  · 6 Nov 2021

through Gmail phishing schemes and Microsoft coding vulnerabilities, terrorists are livestreaming attacks, and malign actors have turned social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook into disinformation superhighways that undermine democracy from within.51 American intelligence agencies have to find better ways to access relevant threat information held by these and other

…

than a million YouTube subscribers.60 Meanwhile, intelligence itself became politicized, with Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe selectively using secrets and publicizing suspected Russian disinformation to support President Trump’s campaign. In the pages that follow, I hope to give readers a better understanding of intelligence as well as the

…

CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before a joint hearing of the Senate’s Commerce and Judiciary Committees in April 2018 to discuss privacy issues and Russian disinformation, it was a jaw-dropping moment revealing just how little senators knew about the products and companies that are transforming global politics, commerce, and civil

…

is far more elusive in cyberspace than anywhere else. The 2016 presidential election revealed something else: cyber warfare could hack minds, not just machines, spreading disinformation to degrade societies from within. “The immediate threat is more corrosive than explosive,” noted former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy and Defense Department

…

obscure Indian newspaper that the AIDS virus had been created by the U.S. military. It took years to gain international attention.108 Now, Russian disinformation is designed to flood the zone, reaching millions within hours across every format (text, video, audio, photos) and information channel imaginable—social media, Internet websites

…

more than fifty thousand automated accounts or bots to Tweet election-related content during the 2016 presidential campaign. Twitter and Facebook are the best-known disinformation superhighways, but there are many others. Russian officers have infiltrated everything from 4chan to Pinterest.110 Overt state-funded media outlets are used to amplify

…

not alone anymore. China’s operations grew more sophisticated during the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in Wuhan in late 2019. Within months, China’s disinformation campaigns to shift blame for the virus had grown so widespread, the European Union called it an “infodemic.”115 At the same time, the U

…

.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center warned that foreign countries—led by Russia, but now also including China and Iran—were using online disinformation to “sway U.S. voters’ preferences and perspectives, to shift U.S. policies, to increase discord, and to undermine confidence in our democratic process” before

…

Sowed Virus Panic in U.S., Officials Say,” New York Times, April 23, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/coronavirus-china-disinformation.html (accessed June 16, 2020). “When did patient zero begin in US?” wrote Zhao Lijian, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, on Twitter in English

…

’s Underground Great Wall.” 84. Sandalow, “Remote Sensing and Foreign Policy.” 85. Zegart and Morell, “Spies, lies, and algorithms.” 86. Mike Isaac, “Facebook Finds New Disinformation Campaigns and Braces for 2020 Torrent,” New York Times, October 21, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/technology/facebook

…

-disinformation-russia-iran.html. 87. Jessica Brandt and Torrey Taussig, “The Kremlin’s Disinformation Playbook Goes to Beijing,” Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/05/19/the-kremlins

…

-disinformation-playbook-goes-to-beijing/ (accessed September 26, 2020); Mark Scott, Laura Kayali, and Laurens Cerulus, “Brussels Accuses China of Peddling Disinformation,” Politico, June 10, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/10/brussels-accuses-china

…

-of-peddling-disinformation-311303 (accessed September 26, 2020). 88. Gwynne Roberts, “Was This Saddam’s Bomb?” Sunday Times, February

…

18, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/18/world/europe/russia-troll-factory.html. 10. Terms such as influence operations, information warfare, active measures, disinformation, and deception are often used interchangeably in both academic and popular discourse. The core idea is the intentional spread of false information to deceive. Senate

…

million. CNN and ABC News surpassed RT, with 6 million and 5.3 million subscribers, respectively. As a RAND report noted, Russia has created a “disinformation chain” that reaches deep within targeted societies and consists of four key, often overlapping, links: (1) leadership from the Kremlin; (2) organs and proxies such

…

10, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-10/eu-points-finger-at-china-russia-for-covid-19-disinformation. See also “EEAS Special Report Update: Short Assessment of Narratives and Disinformation Around the COVID-19 Pandemic,” EUvsDiSiNFO, May 20, 2020, https://euvsdisinfo.eu/eeas-special-report-update-short-assessment-of

…

-narratives-and-disinformation-around-the-covid19-pandemic-updated-23-april-18-may/; Kathy Gilsinian, “How China is planning to win back the world,” Atlantic, May 28, 2020, https://

…

www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/china-disinformation-propaganda-united-states-xi-jinping/612085/. 116. “Statement by NCSC Director William Evanina: 100 Days Until Election 2020,” press release, Office of the Director of

…

by CIA; drone strikes by CIA Chambliss, Saxby, 195, 220 Child, Julia, 62 China: and AI, 2, 141; censorship in, 85, 275–76; COVID-19 disinformation campaign, 243, 266; cyberattacks, 4, 261–62; destruction of U.S. spy network in, 166–68; domestic spying by, 83; establishment of Communist government in

…

, 112; and great power competition, 75, 177; intelligence cooperation with Russia, 166; Internet disinformation campaigns, 243; Internet influence campaigns, 266–67; Julia Child in, 62, 62f; monitoring of, 79, 80, 112; Nixon and, 157; and nuclear weapons, 227, 228

…

, 163, 189, 190, 202 Cold War: CIA covert action during, 174, 176, 180, 186; end of, and IC’s failure to adapt, 205–6; Soviet disinformation campaigns in, 266; and U.S. intelligence, 48 computer modeling, uses of, 236 computer systems, cyberattacks’ damage to trust in, 269–70 confirmation bias, 103

…

–3; usefulness of, 179–81; in Vietnam, 63; in Yemen, 31, 169–71, 175, 176–77. See also drone strikes by CIA COVID-19: Chinese disinformation campaign on, 243, 266; and Chinese espionage, 147; and increased use of technology, 3 crowdsourcing, uses of, 236 Cuba: covert action by CIA in, 63

…

of central intelligence, 65 Director of National Intelligence (DNI): creation of, 70–71; functions of, 72–73; Office of, 47, 49; weakness of, 71–72 disinformation campaigns online, 8, 265–69, 365n10, 373n113. See also deepfake audio and video; Russian interference in 2016 election DNI. See Director of National Intelligence domestic

…

1948, 111 election of 2016, 111. See also Russian interference in 2016 election election of 2020: disputed results of, 39; interference in, 11–12; online disinformation campaigns in, 266–67 employees of IC: on best and worst moments, 97–98; bond among, 156–60, 317n86; daily life of, 93–95; ethical

…

dilemmas, 95–97 Evanina, William, 12 Facebook: al Qaeda propaganda on, 170; and Americans’ ignorance about news, 21–22, 170; and big data, 8; and disinformation, 8; doctored videos on, 243–44, 267–68; failure to prevent misuse, 275; foreign influence campaigns on, 243, 251–53; influence on U.S. policy

…

Community, U.S. India: conflict with Pakistan, 227; and Korean War intelligence, 110; nuclear test (1998), U.S. failure to anticipate, 125, 228; and Russian disinformation, 266 information warfare: China and, 266–67; definition and terms for, 365n10; efforts to counter, 274; foreign influence campaigns on social media, 243, 251–53

…

. policy, 75; quantum computing research, 223; and vulnerabilities, 8, 271, 272 Military Intelligence Division (MID; G2), creation of, 57 mirror imaging, 124–26 misinformation. See disinformation campaigns online Mohammad, Khalid Sheikh, 100–101 Morell, Michael, 27, 67, 91, 93, 94, 105, 194, 199 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 29–30, 67 Mueller, Robert

…

of, 267; media’s failure to cover, 11; as one of biggest surprise attack in U.S. history, 12; ongoing investigation of, 269; spreading of disinformation, 259, 266–67; through social media, 251–54, 252f, 257, 266; Trump and, 38; U.S. failure to respond to, 12, 274 satellite imagery: history

…

, 120, 130 Silicon Valley–Washington divide, 9–10, 11, 221–23, 275–76 Snowden, Edward, 9, 20–21, 165, 211, 222 social media: foreign government disinformation campaigns on, 243; information warfare on, 4, 8; manipulation of information by, 3, 10; refusal to cooperate with government security efforts, 275; and Russian interference

…

, 40 Twitter: access to, 5; CIA public relations on, 197; CIA’s first Tweet on, 1–2; and civilian monitoring of nuclear programs, 226; and disinformation, 8; and hackers, 260–61; influence on U.S. policy, 75; and interference in 2016 election, 266; and killing of bin Laden, 5–6; and

…

, 20 Yemen: al Qaeda in, 170; covert action in, 31, 169–71, 175, 176–77 Yoo, John, 41 YouTube: al Qaeda propaganda on, 170; Russian disinformation on, 12, 252; volume of traffic on, 266; warning about election interference on, 12 Yugoslavia, Soviet invasion of, 127–28 Zero Dark Thirty (film), 27

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power

by Jacob Helberg  · 11 Oct 2021  · 521pp  · 118,183 words

the issue had to do with the epidemic of so-called fake news during the 2016 election. Although the press had reported on incidents of disinformation spreading online during the election, for much of 2017 most technologists in Silicon Valley still believed that assuming technology platforms influenced the electoral outcome in

…

later calculate that Russian propaganda was disseminated to users 454.7 million times.186 Ultimately, Facebook estimated that 126 million users were exposed to Russian disinformation and fake news throughout the 2016 election.187 It’s incredibly difficult—if not impossible—to measure the precise impact Putin’s interference had on

…

On Day 5, his psychiatrist came for a visit. The following morning, Shteyngart decided to start drinking after breakfast. As a satirical novelist, Shteyngart’s disinformation diary is intentionally over the top. But it captures a fundamental truth. “What a powerful weapon Putin’s television is,” Shteyngart muses. “How skillfully it

…

way on veracity. It didn’t aim to address all other types of domestically circulated inaccurate information about politics. If the Russian government aimed its disinformation at Ukraine, that could get its operatives removed from curated features that Google designates as “News.” A number of Googlers jokingly dubbed it “Jacobcare.”

…

government. Not everyone in Silicon Valley saw things the same way. Some questioned whether Google should be intervening at all. Others continued to doubt whether disinformation and foreign interference were much of a problem. There were substantive concerns, of course. In the wake of Twitter banning President Trump’s account, calls

…

fight. Let’s start with information laundering. “Just as ill-gotten money needs to be moved from an illegitimate source into an established financial institution, disinformation is most powerful when a façade of legitimacy is created,” note Kirill Meleshevich and Bret Schafer, of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing

…

of the coronavirus. As one former Russian troll described his job, “You have to write that white is black and black is white.”86 The disinformation can be completely fabricated, or, as with the 2016 election, it may originate with hacked or compromising information. Sophisticated algorithms are sometimes used to

…

into smaller amounts and deposited separately—a practice known as “smurfing.”93 Similarly, these shell accounts engage in “informational smurfing” to make the source of disinformation harder to trace. Many of the online voices amplifying false narratives are also engaged in layering, in which intermediaries are used to obscure the original

…

source of disinformation and spread propaganda far and wide. An intermediary can be an organization that purports to leak secrets for the public benefit, like WikiLeaks. Or intermediaries

…

can be unsuspecting users, serving as “useful idiots” parroting Kremlin propaganda. Either way, the additional layers complicate law enforcement and counterintelligence investigations, putting the disinformation further from its sketchy origins and closer to credible sources like your friends and favorite news sources. Finally, information laundering culminates in the integration of

…

of the Internet to the nightly news, legitimizing insidious narratives crafted to divide Americans and discredit democracy. It’s frightening to watch. Poisoned Another evolving disinformation tactic that I spent a significant amount of time battling is firehosing. Basically, malicious foreign governments spray so much information onto the Internet—as if

…

analysts get smarter and natural language processing algorithms improve, malign actors are increasingly spreading their falsehoods via screenshots. Images are less searchable than text, making disinformation harder to detect and trace back to its source.137 Trolls are also working harder to appear authentic, dropping many of the traits that made

…

trolls” may be an Internet axiom—but feed them or not, the trolls are growing up anyway. Russian propagandists are also finding new channels for disinformation. In a Russian effort called “Ghostwriter,” hackers breached legitimate news sites, planted fake stories (often attempting to undermine NATO), and then blasted them out

…

to “down-vote” negative stories about China in general and Huawei in particular.152 In June 2020, Twitter took down 150,000 accounts amplifying Chinese disinformation, including tweets touting Beijing’s response to COVID-19.153 Other tweets falsely warned of a nationwide American lockdown,154 while a doctored Facebook video

…

, taking the headlines of the day and adding a pro-Iranian spin.157 Countries from Turkey to Venezuela to Sudan are engaging in state-sponsored disinformation or “patriotic” trolling against internal and external critics.158 In India, President Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has established an IT cell that

…

responded well, and that the U.S. economy was collapsing. The report was not released publicly, but according to Politico, it argued “that propaganda and disinformation narratives from those country’s [sic] governments have converged as coronavirus has spread.” A few months later, representatives from the Chinese and Russian foreign ministries

…

the United States government has learned some important lessons from the previous presidential contest. Under Krebs, CISA launched a Rumor Control website to bat down disinformation circulating online.171 When voters in Florida and Alaska began receiving threatening emails, the FBI director and the director of National Intelligence held a primetime

…

on by Trump—indulged in unwarranted conspiracy theories claiming that Trump had in fact won. Mainstream platforms like Twitter and Facebook accelerated their crackdown on disinformation, but Parler—a social media platform that pitches itself as a freewheeling and unrestricted alternative to such sites—shot to the top of the Apple

…

officially projected the winner, more than three-quarters of Trump voters attributed his win to voter fraud.184 The shift from combating foreign to domestic disinformation poses real challenges, since it also implies a shift from targeting conduct (which is objective) to targeting content (which is more subjective). Back when

…

Google suspended Parler from their app stores, and Amazon kicked them off their popular cloud hosting service. Deciding where to draw the line on disinformation is a difficult and unenviable task—especially for unelected engineers in Silicon Valley. We still haven’t fully defined how to view social media platforms

…

caught between a desire to condemn domestic Chinese repression and their dependence on Chinese trade. Even Americans begin to feel the influence of AI-generated disinformation. Social media is flooded with contradictory and misleading accounts of what is really happening in China. Swarms of Russian government bots spread still greater confusion

…

—indistinguishable from established publications—to insidiously circulate stories based on forged synthetic content, sowing doubt about critical events or issues. We’ve already seen how disinformation upended our election in 2016, in part based on actual hacked content. Now imagine what might happen if fake audio “leaked” of a presidential

…

exactly like whatever they need to in order to persuade their targets. Advances in AI will make it increasingly possible to hyper-personalize and direct disinformation, exacerbating our echo chambers and further undermining social cohesion. We’ve already seen how much can be gleaned about someone from just a handful

…

-ever corporate boycott of a social media company, with brands ranging from Adidas to Verizon registering their disapproval of the platform’s role in spreading disinformation.33 Some lawmakers called for breaking up Silicon Valley’s tech giants. Republicans, convinced that tech was secretly censoring and “shadow banning” conservative voices,

…

committee chair may not understand every aspect of some newfangled technology, but those same chairs may be acutely conscious of the history behind Moscow’s disinformation campaigns or the risks of allowing concentrated economic power to grow unchecked. Age aside, few lawmakers are well equipped to understand the ins and outs

…

confusing terms of the deal.117 “This unique technology eliminates the risk of foreign governments spying on American users or trying to influence them with disinformation,” a draft Walmart press release stated. Then, as if the writer had mashed the keyboard over the frustration and complications of technological transactions during

…

effect of the initial assault. To its credit, NATO has established several “Centres of Excellence” and a Cyberspace Operations Centre to strengthen cybersecurity and combat disinformation. These efforts should be further expanded and better funded. Making meaningful progress will inevitably require a robust parallel engagement on these efforts with the leadership

…

foreign interference from outside the allied bloc. An American intelligence agency (perhaps alerted by a tech company) might determine that Russian intelligence operatives are spreading disinformation to influence an American election, with all of their posts across Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit coming from the same few IP addresses in St. Petersburg

…

a label that says “Russia state-affiliated media.” The Global Times is rightly tagged as “China state-affiliated media.” Platforms have moved, fitfully, toward labeling disinformation about critical subjects—like voting or the coronavirus pandemic—and directing users to accurate information. Google searches likewise bring up “Knowledge” panels offering high-level

…

d learned with another 90,000 people, spreading digital literacy among their family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors.100 Other countries have tried education to combat disinformation. Perhaps the most successful example is Finland, which has long been targeted by propaganda from its Russian neighbor. Ever since 2014, Finnish students have received

…

a remarkably thorough education in detecting and debunking disinformation. Math students learn how statistics can be manipulated. Art classes teach how images are used to deceive. History courses study the propaganda of the past

…

and incomplete. As part of prioritizing the defense of digital democracy, we need strong statewide standards across the nation to promote digital literacy and combat disinformation. These standards could be modeled on Finland’s comprehensive and integrated curriculum. A number of universities have likewise offered classes, such as the University of

…

Or is it an anonymous Twitter account started a week earlier? Check the source’s source. Sometimes even friends or verified accounts can credulously share disinformation. Take the time to see where they got their information before sharing it yourself. Compare with other sources. Cross-checking information is one of the

…

possible, rely on sources that uphold rigorous standards of accuracy. Check your own biases. Human beings seek out information that confirms what they already believe. Disinformation plays on that tendency. Before you share a seemingly outrageous article or tweet, take a beat and add a dose of skepticism. Don’ts Don

…

for determining the veracity of the information. Don’t trust something just because you see it repeated everywhere. Trolls and bots intentionally try to amplify disinformation as much as possible. “Trending” doesn’t necessarily mean truthful. Don’t believe your own eyes. With deepfakes and their low-budget cousins, “cheapfakes,”

…

agenda—is the same decentralized framework that empowered a handful of college dropouts to build an Internet empire. The open and pluralistic society that allows disinformation to take root is also what allows us to push our government to take the authoritarian threat more seriously. Welcoming strangers to our shores brings

…

also the cochair of the Brookings Institution China Strategy Initiative. From 2016 to 2020, he led Google’s internal global product policy efforts to combat disinformation and foreign interference, including policy and enforcement processes against state-backed foreign interference, misinformation, and actors undermining election integrity. Helberg studied international affairs at

…

2 Adrian Chen, “The Agency,” New York Times, June 2, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html. 3 “Security and disinformation in the U.S. 2016 election: What we found,” Google, October 30, 2017, https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/google_US2016election_findings

…

2020, https://www.newsweek.com/chinese-state-media-pushes-conspiracy-theory-coronavirus-escaped-maryland-military-base-1503345. 61 Rid, Active Measures, 313. 62 Thomas Rid, “Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns,” Senate Committee on Intelligence, March 30, 2017, https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents

…

Conspiracy Made in America May Have Been Spread by Russia,” New York Times, June 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/technology/coronavirus-disinformation-russia-iowa-caucus.html. 143 Joseph Menn, “Russian-backed organizations amplifying QAnon conspiracy theories, researchers say,” Reuters, August 24, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/

…

Alleged Chinese Trolls,” BuzzFeed News, March 14, 2019, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/reddit-coordinated-chinese-propaganda-trolls. 153 Kate Conger, “Twitter Removes Chinese Disinformation Campaign,” New York Times, June 11, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/technology/twitter-chinese-misinformation.html?action=click&module=Alert&pgtype=Homepage

…

. 154 Conger, “Twitter Removes Chinese Disinformation Campaign.” 155 Jeff Horwitz, “ ‘Live’ Facebook Protest Videos Drew Millions of Views, but Some Footage Was Years Old,” Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2020,

…

sponsored_trolling_report.pdf. 159 Ibid. 160 Ibid. 161 Ibid. 162 “Chinese and Russian Foreign Ministry Spokespersons Held Consultations and Agreed to Cooperate in Combating Disinformation,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/t1800619.shtml. 163 Joel Schectman, Raphael

…

strengthening, 259–66 Digital Connectivity and Cybersecurity Partnership, 220 digital defense of democracy, 206–10 digital Maginot lines, 79–83, 85 DiResta, Renee, 79–80 disinformation, ix, xiii, 19, 28, 72, 79, 129, 137, 142–43, 227, 267–68 digital citizenship strengthening and, 260–63, 265 digital Maginot lines and,

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists

by Julia Ebner  · 20 Feb 2020  · 309pp  · 79,414 words

works with cutting-edge technology partners and universities such as MIT to track and analyse harmful online content – ranging from extremist propaganda to pieces of disinformation. Based on this research, I advise governments, security forces, tech firms and activists on how to respond to extremist activities. There is no set recipe

…

personal research has taken me to some bizarre, at times dangerous places, both online and offline. I have watched extremist movements coordinate terrorist attacks, launch disinformation operations and plot intimidation campaigns. I was in the channels where the alt-right planned the lethal Charlottesville rally, ISIS plotted cyberattacks on American infrastructure

…

a result.28 Discrediting formerly respected news outlets and their reporters is just one part of the information battle. The other part consists in spreading disinformation. Disinformation doesn’t necessarily mean outright lying; it can also include information that is misleading.29 Inaccurate information, severe biases and logical fallacies often reinforce misleading

…

narratives. In the tradition of the Soviet strategic-deception technique of dezinformatsiya, modern-day disinformation campaigns seek to obfuscate, distort or conceal facts.30 The founding counter-intelligence chief of the CIA, James Jesus Angleton, claimed that their goal is

…

(DFR) Lab at the NATO StratCom Center of Excellence in Latvia exposes the tactics and narratives used to spread disinformation and follows influence campaigns in real time. ‘There are four tactics to spread disinformation,’ Donara explains to me ‘Dismiss the opponent, distort the facts, distract from the central issue and dismay the

…

outlets Sputnik and Russia Today (RT) frequently help far-right campaigners to spread their messages by amplifying their themes and hashtags.34 Some accounts pushing disinformation campaigns operate like cyborgs – semi-automated, human-operated accounts. For example, a Twitter account that operates under the handle @thebradfordfile tweets over 300 times per

…

social media successes.35 There are too many elections for the few people at the DFR Lab to monitor. ‘An estimated 100,000 websites spread disinformation,’ Donara tells me, ‘but there are only a few dozen fact-checker websites.’ In other words, we are constantly outnumbered. The Oxford Internet Institute found

…

-right trolls made plans to hijack the public narrative. ‘Start looking for [Jewish] numerology and crisis actors,’ one wrote on the image board 8chan. This disinformation and obfuscation technique is called ‘source hacking’.45 In December 2018, Der Spiegel revealed that one of their award-winning journalists, Claas Relotius, had freely

…

individuals and groups to create the impression of widespread public interest in a topic or content regardless of its accuracy or intent.12 By spreading disinformation and sowing discord, they were able to shift the online political discussions in favour of the far-right populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD). Seven

…

up disputes, create coteries, promote traitors and expel loyalists. Install levers to influence everything in your interest, outsource relevant structures, etc. And of course, spying, disinformation, lies, smear – the entire set of approaches. These are the tactics and mechanisms to sabotage and destroy a movement.23 Some of their activities draw

…

had been killed and that the victims had been trying to protect women from harassment. Far-right YouTubers livestreamed speculative rants, using these pieces of disinformation. The Identitarian rapper Chris Ares was the number-one trend on German YouTube for fourteen hours.33 The smartphone era has given rise to new

…

have been systematically used to hack people’s minds. Facebook failed to protect its users from personal data breaches and targeted manipulation, Twitter ignored the disinformation campaigns launched by fake profiles and bot nets on its platform and YouTube was reluctant to combat extremist and violence-inciting content. The Cambridge Analytica

…

up daily annoyances like buying groceries, paying bills or sending out party invites, it has also accelerated criminal activities: you can steal personal data, spread disinformation or blackmail other users in a matter of minutes. In coming years, newly released AI tools – so-called ‘deep fakes’ – could further enhance the professionalism

…

, their visions are rife with contradictions or what their favourite author, George Orwell, called ‘DoubleThink’: They prepare for race wars to preserve peace. They collect disinformation to find truth. They use women’s rights to promote misogyny. They exploit free speech to silence opponents. They build global communities to spread anti

…

. Beyond algorithmic transparency and hate-speech laws, the hosts of social media discussion forums and commentary sections should be encouraged to moderate hateful debates, debunk disinformation and remove harmful materials. Better moderation strategies will ensure that materials and messages that fall within the legal boundaries but can nevertheless harm the online

…

audiences illustrates the potential to further explore the use of social media analysis and messaging in deradicalisation programmes.3 Elves Versus Trolls Sharing pieces of disinformation or propaganda is not illegal but it doesn’t need to go unchallenged. The Baltics, where media manipulation by the Kremlin propaganda machine is a

…

major concern, are currently leading the way in countering disinformation. The so-called Baltic Elves are made up of thousands of voluntary activists who spend their spare time dismantling the

…

disinformation campaigns of Russian trolls – from exposing biased news pieces and misleading statistics to debunking fabricated stories and half-truths. Currently, Lithuania counts around 3,000

…

coalitions of fact finders and social media campaigners could be formed across Europe and the US to effectively debunk and counter online media manipulation and disinformation.4 Trolling the Trolls Who says you can’t troll the trolls? In April 2018 the German satirist Jan Böhmermann founded his own counter-troll

…

, 2017. 30Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible (Public Affairs, 2014), and John Pollock, ‘Russian Disinformation Technology’, MIT Technology Review, 13 April 2017. Available at https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604084/russian-disinformation-technology/. 31David Robarge, ‘Moles, Defectors, and Deceptions: James Angleton and CIA Counterintelligence’, Journal of Intelligence History 3

…

. 32Interview with Donara Barojan, deputy director of the NATO Digital Forensic Research Lab. 33Jon White, ‘Dismiss, Distort, Distract, and Dismay: Continuity and Change in Russian Disinformation’, IES Policy Brief, Issue 2016/13, May 2016. Available at https://www.ies.be/files/Policy%20Brief_Jon%20White.pdf. 34Chloe Colliver et al., ‘Smearing

…

, here Der Spiegel here Deutsche Bahn here Diana, Princess of Wales here, here Die Linke here Die Rechte here ‘digital dualism’ here digital education here disinformation here, here, here Disney here Domestic Discipline here, here Donovan, Joan here Doomsday preppers here doubling here Dox Squad here, here doxxing here, here, here

…

, here A Note on the Author Julia Ebner is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, where she leads projects on online extremism, disinformation and hate speech. She has given evidence to numerous governments and parliamentary working groups, and has acted as a consultant for the UN, NATO and

The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth

by Jonathan Rauch  · 21 Jun 2021  · 446pp  · 109,157 words

everyone to access, share, and learn from freely available information to the benefit and progress of all. Instead, an epistemic crisis supercharged by viral disinformation and indifference to truth has bred deep cynicism about the benefits of free speech and the liberal ideals that underpin this increasingly unpopular idea. In

…

into an epistemological crisis.”4 A Chill Wind The crisis had many elements, but two seemed central to its character. One was the deployment of disinformation on an unprecedented scale by Trump, his troll armies, foreign governments, conspiracy mongers, and a conservative media ecosystem which was increasingly detached from reality

…

well, could be strengthened by paying more attention to the institutional and communitarian foundations of collective inquiry. The sudden rise of industrial-scale trolling and disinformation made the institutional defense seem urgent. In this book I have supplemented “liberal science” with the term “reality-based community,” by which I mean

…

challenges, beginning with the most unpleasant epistemic surprise of the twenty-first century: digital media have turned out to be better attuned to outrage and disinformation than to conversation and knowledge. Truth-friendly digital architectures are possible and indeed are already emerging, as digital platforms begin to take on institutional responsibilities

…

to truth. Less fortunately, however, they—and we—are in for a fight against two insurgencies: the spread of viral disinformation and alternative realities, sometimes called troll culture, and the spread of enforced conformity and ideological blacklisting, sometimes called cancel culture. One is predominantly right-wing

…

continually evolves, requiring defenses to evolve, too. In the next chapters, we examine the latest challenges, beginning with the technological earthquake which enabled them. 5 Disinformation Technology: The Challenge of Digital Media Making the online world truth-friendly is difficult but doable The Declaration of Independence is history’s greatest summons

…

to outlets around the world. Economies of scale favored real news. Understandably, in the heyday of the Bigs, reality-based media became complacent about disinformation. There was not much demand for fake news and no business model for supplying it. Although the cost of disseminating information had fallen for centuries

…

the Constitution of Knowledge. Unfortunately, other innovators and organizations, also formidable, were bent on stymieing them. 6 Troll Epistemology: “Flood the Zone with Shit” Disinformation is an old enemy with new weapons and powerful friends On September, 11, 2014, social media erupted with reports of a toxic leak from the

…

, first abroad and then in the person of the president of the United States, troll epistemology—a disaggregated, digitized, and often demented form of disinformation—rose to power. Something New: Trolls and Shitlords At around the same time as that nonexistent chemical plant explosion, a tempest called Gamergate swirled through

…

landslide of anti-Hill[ary] sentiment that permeates through society.” The idea they had hit upon was one with deep roots in the science of disinformation. Firehose of Falsehood Around 2014 internet researchers began to notice patterns. The doings of troll swarms were apparently not as random and opportunistic as

…

. What trolls, unaffiliated and state-sponsored alike, had discovered was that because the internet was optimized for advertising, it was also ideally suited to disinformation campaigns on a previously impossible scale. “The entire toolbox of advertising technologies can be packaged together into coordinated campaigns that utilize both human and machine

…

opinion without regard for truth, often (but not always) conducted by a state actor seeking some political outcome. It can exploit misinformation (false information), disinformation (deliberate falsehoods), and what has recently been called mal-information (information which is true but used misleadingly). Although the means vary widely, the end is

…

this: to organize or manipulate the social and media environment to demoralize, deplatform, isolate, or intimidate an adversary. State actors have traditionally understood propaganda and disinformation as psychological or informational warfare against an adversarial regime. Modern trolls view it the same way. By exacerbating conflict and mistrust in the target society

…

web-surfer to know where consensus opinion actually lies. The point is not that the public is gullible and always falls for spoofing, trolling, and disinformation. The point is that by fouling and defrauding the information environment, troll epistemology could make it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction, to distinguish

…

no serious disputing that the volume and audacity of Trump’s mendacity had broken through American politics’ epistemic guardrails, such as they were. Like Russian disinformation, Trump’s untruths were not just false but blatantly, ridiculously false, intended not to persuade but to convey that normal rules had been suspended

…

seen in American civic life before. The point, by now, must be obvious: Trump and his enablers and allies were engaged in a classic disinformation campaign, the sort of campaign which Yuri Bezmenov would have recognized immediately. Instead of using a traditional government propaganda agency, they coordinated their campaign on

…

but not least, from an information-warfare point of view—further divide already polarized Americans. As Thomas Rid writes in his history of information warfare, disinformation campaigns have taken many forms, but “the goals were the same: to exacerbate existing tensions and contradictions within the adversary’s body politic, by

…

no left-right division, but rather a division between the right and the rest of the media ecosystem,” they wrote in Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics.60 In 2016, they found, conspiracy theories and fake news were widely available to Clinton voters and to Trump voters

…

, and both groups were comparably interested in hearing them. But the mainstream media ecosystem “was able to check disinformation and error on both sides, as mainstream and newer online media continuously checked each other’s worst impulses and corrected error and overreaching.” By contrast

…

. Blame Trump and his troll army and media enablers, to be sure; but remember that they could not have succeeded without their audiences’ help. Disinformation and conspiracism spread in advanced, individualistic democracies like the United States not because their targets are sheeplike but because, to the contrary, so many people

…

to sort it out.’ ”67 She felt she could trust nothing but believe anything: students of information warfare will recognize this as the state which disinformation campaigns seek to induce. By heightening political polarization, attacking established institutions, and fueling social mistrust, propagandists can make a portion of the public not

…

only receptive to disinformation but eager to pitch in and help manufacture it. “A great deal if not all the time,” writes the psychologist and law professor Dan Kahan

…

mischievous as underestimating them. The business plan of trolling, like that of terrorism, is to cause fear out of proportion to the actual threat. Hyping disinformation risked making disruptive actors like Putin and Trump seem ten feet tall, which was exactly their goal. Most people, during the 2016 presidential campaign,

…

the CDC.72 Conservative and mainstream media were drifting apart, not just ideologically but epistemically; but they were not disconnected altogether. In any case, disinformation seemed to have changed few people’s minds about politics (because minds are so difficult to change); its influence was more in the nature of

…

already preferred to believe, and confusing those who were unsure of what to believe, and, above all, normalizing political lying and the use of disinformation. Overstating the fragility of the Constitution of Knowledge is likewise a mistake. The reality-based community would not have endured and expanded for four centuries

…

bots to help Facebook and Twitter shut them down.”75 Journalists moved rapidly up the learning curve. They developed beats to cover, and uncover, disinformation campaigns. They became more sophisticated about adverting to conspiracy theories without always repeating them. They got smarter about inauthentic posts and deep fakes and algorithmic

…

Joe Biden’s son—where information came from and why it might be dicey. Although there were, and could be, no comprehensive solutions to the disinformation threat, the adjustments being made by myriad actors offered the prospect of something like a stronger immune system—not invulnerable, but certainly less vulnerable.

…

be mobilized globally to reach anyone anywhere, literally overnight. A generation later, digital technology would make thought vigilantism even easier and faster. Like trolls and disinformation campaigners, cancelers, as they came to be called, discovered in social media an ideal technology for their purposes; but where trolls sought to confuse

…

forms of information warfare, it seeks to organize and manipulate a social or media environment to demoralize, deplatform, isolate, or intimidate an adversary. Like disinformation and trolling, its interest is not in discovering knowledge but in shaping the information battlefield. In practice, the line between criticizing someone and canceling her

…

Still, in the end, although institutions and organizing are essential, it comes down to individuals. As different as their methods and politics may be, disinformation and coercive conformity are both forms of information warfare. Cancelers and trolls share the goal of dominating the information space by demoralizing their human targets

…

right as a deep-state conspiracy, the reality-based community feels besieged and looks fragile. Too many of its members may come to believe that disinformation is invincible, that objectivity is indefensible, that viewpoint diversity harms minorities, that words are violence, that canceling is merely criticism. When trolls and conspiracists

…

, Former CIA Director Says,” Dallas Morning News, May 3, 2018. 15. See Carly Nyst and Nick Monaco, “State-Sponsored Trolling: How Governments Are Deploying Disinformation as Part of Broader Digital Harassment Campaigns,” Institute for the Future, 2018. 16. Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, “#DigitalDeceit: The Technologies Behind Precision Propaganda on

…

the Internet,” New America Foundation, January 2018. 17. Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). 18. Claire Allbright, “A Russian Facebook Page Organized a Protest in Texas. A Different Russian Page Launched

…

2018; Alden Fletcher, “Is the Threat of ‘Fake Science’ Real?,” Lawfare, August 5, 2019. 22. Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts, Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 24. 23. Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political

…

Bubble,” Pew Research Center, March 4, 2020. 55. Robert M. Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler, Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election (Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society Research at Harvard University, 2017). 56. Andrew M. Guess, Brendan

…

Theory–Ridden Counterprogramming to Impeachment Is Working,” BuzzFeed News, November 20, 2019. See also Quinta Jurecic and Jacob Schulz, “How the Schiff Report Deals with Disinformation,” Lawfare, December 8, 2019. 64. David Weigel, “House Science Committee Chairman: Americans Should Get News from Trump, Not Media,” Washington Post, January 25, 2017.

…

Society,” Pew Research Center, February 12, 2020. 80. Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, “The Central Feature of Trump’s Presidency: False Claims and Disinformation,” Washington Post, June 2, 2020. Chapter 7 1. Daniel Pipes, The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West (Birch Lane, 1990), p.

…

attacks, 127, 134, 212, 219 Administrative Procedure Act (1946), 102 AdSense, 146 advertisers and advertising: bias exploited in, 28; digital shift of, 137–38, 149; disinformation campaigns and, 161–62; internet and, 125; Twitter and, 149; Wikipedia and, 139 algorithmic media filters, 124–26, 132–33, 145, 148, 152–53,

…

and, 198; student demographics and, 228; trolling and, 160 conspiracy theories: audience complicity in, 183–84; conservative media and, 177–79; digital media and, 135; disinformation campaigns and, 165, 166, 184; fallibilism and, 167; journalism and, 4; printing press and, 120; profitability of, 160; reality-based communities vs., 87; social

…

model for, 138–44, 146–48 DiResta, Renée, 161, 168 disagreement, 131–32, 133. See also contestation and contestability disconfirmation, 29, 58, 104, 143 disinformation: audience complicity with, 183–84; business model of, 135–38; conservative media and, 174–81; demobilization through, 166–69, 183–84, 247–51; design against

…

(2020), 238–39 fake news: conservative media and, 177–78; pre-digital, 136–37; proliferation of, 120, 185; Trump and, 6, 180. See also disinformation; misinformation; trolls and trolling fallibilism: conspiracy theories and, 167; falsification and, 58–60; knowledge and, 58–60, 88–89; marginalizing bad ideas under, 258–60

…

, Brent, 151 Harris, Sam, 120, 148, 150 Harvard University, 68, 123, 205–06 hate speech, 201, 229, 253 Hayden, Michael, 9, 101 helplessness and disinformation. See demoralization and demobilization Heterodox Academy, 13, 223, 228, 244 Hetherington, Marc, 178 heuristics, 27 Hitler, Adolf, 28, 159, 205 hive intelligence, 72 Hobbes, Thomas

…

Driftwood (online LGBT story archive), 256 inaccuracy in cancel culture, 220 Inbar, Yoel, 225 inflation, 118–19 information technology: checks and valences of, 120–24; disinformation campaigns and, 163; knowledge technology compared to, 125. See also digital media information warfare, 18, 163, 169, 173, 183–85, 218–20, 247, 258

…

of Science,” 71, 77 polarization: compromise and, 84; conservative media and, 176, 181; creed war and, 38, 40–41; digital media and, 132–34; disinformation campaigns and, 163, 184; identity and, 33; Trump and, 173 political correctness, 14, 231. See also canceling and cancel culture political parties, 81 PolitiFact, 152

The Age of AI: And Our Human Future

by Henry A Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher  · 2 Nov 2021  · 194pp  · 57,434 words

This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality

by Peter Pomerantsev  · 29 Jul 2019  · 240pp  · 74,182 words

Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

by Peter Warren Singer and Emerson T. Brooking  · 15 Mar 2018

How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations With Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason

by Lee McIntyre  · 14 Sep 2021  · 407pp  · 108,030 words

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt

by Sinan Aral  · 14 Sep 2020  · 475pp  · 134,707 words

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination

by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang  · 12 Jul 2021  · 372pp  · 100,947 words

Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind

by Annalee Newitz  · 3 Jun 2024  · 251pp  · 68,713 words

Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

by Christopher Wylie  · 8 Oct 2019

How to Be a Liberal: The Story of Liberalism and the Fight for Its Life

by Ian Dunt  · 15 Oct 2020

We Are as Gods: A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance

by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler  · 13 Apr 2026  · 225pp  · 76,418 words

Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order

by Colin Kahl and Thomas Wright  · 23 Aug 2021  · 652pp  · 172,428 words

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It

by Azeem Azhar  · 6 Sep 2021  · 447pp  · 111,991 words

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot

by Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein  · 6 Sep 2021

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything

by Kelly Weill  · 22 Feb 2022

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma

by Mustafa Suleyman  · 4 Sep 2023  · 444pp  · 117,770 words

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

by Shoshana Zuboff  · 15 Jan 2019  · 918pp  · 257,605 words

Messing With the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News

by Clint Watts  · 28 May 2018  · 324pp  · 96,491 words

The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family

by Jesselyn Cook  · 22 Jul 2024  · 321pp  · 95,778 words

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World

by James Ball  · 19 Jul 2023  · 317pp  · 87,048 words

Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections

by Mollie Hemingway  · 11 Oct 2021  · 595pp  · 143,394 words

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

by Nicole Perlroth  · 9 Feb 2021  · 651pp  · 186,130 words

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI

by Yuval Noah Harari  · 9 Sep 2024  · 566pp  · 169,013 words

Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age

by Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne  · 9 Sep 2019  · 482pp  · 121,173 words

After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made

by Ben Rhodes  · 1 Jun 2021  · 342pp  · 114,118 words

The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump

by Michiko Kakutani  · 17 Jul 2018  · 137pp  · 38,925 words

The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider

by Michiko Kakutani  · 20 Feb 2024  · 262pp  · 69,328 words

Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter

by Zoë Schiffer  · 13 Feb 2024  · 343pp  · 92,693 words

The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991

by Robert Service  · 7 Oct 2015

Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest

by Zeynep Tufekci  · 14 May 2017  · 444pp  · 130,646 words

Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth

by Elizabeth Williamson  · 8 Mar 2022  · 574pp  · 148,233 words

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World

by Naomi Klein  · 11 Sep 2023

Four Battlegrounds

by Paul Scharre  · 18 Jan 2023

How to Stand Up to a Dictator

by Maria Ressa  · 19 Oct 2022

The Science of Hate: How Prejudice Becomes Hate and What We Can Do to Stop It

by Matthew Williams  · 23 Mar 2021  · 592pp  · 125,186 words

The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again

by Richard Horton  · 31 May 2020  · 106pp  · 33,210 words

The Defence of the Realm

by Christopher Andrew  · 2 Aug 2010  · 1,744pp  · 458,385 words

The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House

by Ben Rhodes  · 4 Jun 2018  · 470pp  · 148,444 words

Climate Change

by Joseph Romm  · 3 Dec 2015  · 358pp  · 93,969 words

Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History

by Nellie Bowles  · 13 May 2024  · 207pp  · 62,397 words

Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics

by Peter Geoghegan  · 2 Jan 2020  · 388pp  · 111,099 words

The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

by Ben Shapiro  · 26 Jul 2021  · 309pp  · 81,243 words

Killing Hope: Us Military and Cia Interventions Since World War 2

by William Blum  · 15 Jan 2003

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire

by Jeff Berwick and Charlie Robinson  · 14 Apr 2020  · 491pp  · 141,690 words

Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West, From the Ancients to Fake News

by Eric Berkowitz  · 3 May 2021  · 412pp  · 115,048 words

There's a War Going on but No One Can See It

by Huib Modderkolk  · 1 Sep 2021  · 295pp  · 84,843 words

Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy

by Jamie Raskin  · 4 Jan 2022  · 450pp  · 144,939 words

From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds

by Daniel C. Dennett  · 7 Feb 2017  · 573pp  · 157,767 words

Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter

by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac  · 17 Sep 2024

My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous: A Memoir

by Barrett Brown  · 8 Jul 2024  · 332pp  · 110,397 words

The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

by Christopher Andrew  · 27 Jun 2018

Near and Distant Neighbors: A New History of Soviet Intelligence

by Jonathan Haslam  · 21 Sep 2015  · 525pp  · 131,496 words

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World

by Max Fisher  · 5 Sep 2022  · 439pp  · 131,081 words

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

by Tim O'Reilly  · 9 Oct 2017  · 561pp  · 157,589 words

Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy

by Rory Cormac  · 14 Jun 2018  · 407pp

Farewell

by Sergei Kostin and Eric Raynaud  · 14 Apr 2011  · 485pp  · 148,662 words

The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy

by David Hoffman  · 1 Jan 2009  · 719pp  · 209,224 words

Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth

by Mark Hertsgaard  · 15 Jan 2011  · 326pp  · 48,727 words

Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick

by J. David McSwane  · 11 Apr 2022  · 368pp  · 102,379 words

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World

by Jevin D. West and Carl T. Bergstrom  · 3 Aug 2020

Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations

by Ronen Bergman  · 30 Jan 2018  · 1,071pp  · 295,220 words

The Enemy Within

by Seumas Milne  · 1 Dec 1994  · 497pp  · 161,742 words

Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies

by Barry Meier  · 17 May 2021  · 319pp  · 89,192 words

In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us

by Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee  · 10 Mar 2025  · 393pp  · 146,371 words

Facebook: The Inside Story

by Steven Levy  · 25 Feb 2020  · 706pp  · 202,591 words

Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

by David Frum  · 25 May 2020  · 319pp  · 75,257 words

The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics

by Ben Buchanan  · 25 Feb 2020  · 443pp  · 116,832 words

Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath

by Bill Browder  · 11 Apr 2022  · 335pp  · 100,154 words

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

by Fiona Hill  · 4 Oct 2021  · 569pp  · 165,510 words

Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex

by Rupert Darwall  · 2 Oct 2017  · 451pp  · 115,720 words

Necessary Illusions

by Noam Chomsky  · 1 Sep 1995

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back

by Bruce Schneier  · 7 Feb 2023  · 306pp  · 82,909 words

Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

by Annie Jacobsen  · 16 May 2011  · 572pp  · 179,024 words

Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

by Jacob Silverman  · 9 Oct 2025  · 312pp  · 103,645 words

Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century

by W. David Marx  · 18 Nov 2025  · 642pp  · 142,332 words

News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World

by Alan Rusbridger  · 26 Nov 2020  · 371pp  · 109,320 words

New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI

by Frank Pasquale  · 14 May 2020  · 1,172pp  · 114,305 words

Turning the Tide

by Noam Chomsky  · 14 Sep 2015

Pirates and Emperors, Old and New

by Noam Chomsky  · 7 Apr 2015

Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

by Rick Perlstein  · 17 Aug 2020

Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write

by Dennis Yi Tenen  · 6 Feb 2024  · 169pp  · 41,887 words

Who Will Defend Europe?: An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent

by Keir Giles  · 24 Oct 2024  · 296pp  · 81,440 words

Judas Unchained

by Peter F. Hamilton  · 1 Jan 2006  · 1,386pp  · 379,115 words

Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition

by Robert N. Proctor  · 28 Feb 2012  · 1,199pp  · 332,563 words

American Marxism

by Mark R. Levin  · 12 Jul 2021  · 314pp  · 88,524 words

Thinking in Bets

by Annie Duke  · 6 Feb 2018  · 288pp  · 81,253 words

The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats

by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake  · 15 Jul 2019  · 409pp  · 112,055 words

Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping

by Roger Faligot  · 30 Jun 2019  · 615pp  · 187,426 words

The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West

by Shaun Walker  · 15 Apr 2025  · 465pp  · 155,902 words

Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles--And All of US

by Rana Foroohar  · 5 Nov 2019  · 380pp  · 109,724 words

Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist

by Alex Zevin  · 12 Nov 2019  · 767pp  · 208,933 words

The Twittering Machine

by Richard Seymour  · 20 Aug 2019  · 297pp  · 83,651 words

We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory

by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin  · 1 Oct 2018

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks

by Scott J. Shapiro  · 523pp  · 154,042 words

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil  · 25 Jun 2024

Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work

by Dr. Paul Babiak and Dr. Robert Hare  · 7 May 2007  · 345pp  · 100,135 words

Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

by Robert C. Martin  · 1 Jan 2007  · 462pp  · 172,671 words

Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris

by Richard Kluger  · 1 Jan 1996  · 1,157pp  · 379,558 words

Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America

by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall  · 1 Jan 1991

The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government

by David Talbot  · 5 Sep 2016  · 891pp  · 253,901 words

Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy

by Talia Lavin  · 14 Jul 2020  · 231pp  · 71,299 words

The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource

by Chris Hayes  · 28 Jan 2025  · 359pp  · 100,761 words

Understanding Power

by Noam Chomsky  · 26 Jul 2010

Operation Chaos: The Vietnam Deserters Who Fought the CIA, the Brainwashers, and Themselves

by Matthew Sweet  · 13 Feb 2018  · 493pp  · 136,235 words

The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder

by Sean McFate  · 22 Jan 2019  · 330pp  · 83,319 words

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

by Clive Thompson  · 26 Mar 2019  · 499pp  · 144,278 words

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

by Greta Thunberg  · 14 Feb 2023  · 651pp  · 162,060 words

This Is for Everyone: The Captivating Memoir From the Inventor of the World Wide Web

by Tim Berners-Lee  · 8 Sep 2025  · 347pp  · 100,038 words

The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America

by John Fabian Witt  · 14 Oct 2025  · 735pp  · 279,360 words

The Hunt for Red October

by Tom Clancy  · 2 Jan 1984  · 594pp  · 165,413 words

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future

by Ben Tarnoff  · 13 Jun 2022  · 234pp  · 67,589 words

Europe: A History

by Norman Davies  · 1 Jan 1996

Inside British Intelligence

by Gordon Thomas

Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy

by Jennifer Carlson  · 2 May 2023  · 279pp  · 100,877 words

The Cold War

by Robert Cowley  · 5 May 1992  · 546pp  · 176,169 words

The Wars of Afghanistan

by Peter Tomsen  · 30 May 2011  · 1,118pp  · 309,029 words

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2011

by Steve Coll  · 23 Feb 2004  · 956pp  · 288,981 words

Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy

by Eric O'Neill  · 1 Mar 2019  · 299pp  · 88,375 words

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

by Karen Hao  · 19 May 2025  · 660pp  · 179,531 words

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers

by Andy Greenberg  · 5 Nov 2019  · 363pp  · 105,039 words

This Machine Kills Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and Their Fight to Empower Whistleblowers

by Andy Greenberg  · 12 Sep 2012  · 461pp  · 125,845 words

Free Speech And Why It Matters

by Andrew Doyle  · 24 Feb 2021  · 137pp  · 35,041 words

The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

by David E. Hoffman  · 9 May 2016

Elon Musk

by Walter Isaacson  · 11 Sep 2023  · 562pp  · 201,502 words

Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World

by Anupreeta Das  · 12 Aug 2024  · 315pp  · 115,894 words

Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do About It

by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris  · 10 Jul 2023  · 338pp  · 104,815 words

Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America

by Shawn Lawrence Otto  · 10 Oct 2011  · 692pp  · 127,032 words

An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent

by Owen Matthews  · 21 Mar 2019  · 589pp  · 162,849 words

Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business

by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro  · 30 Aug 2021  · 345pp  · 92,063 words

Culture of Terrorism

by Noam Chomsky  · 19 Oct 2015

Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America

by Cass R. Sunstein  · 6 Mar 2018  · 434pp  · 117,327 words

1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink

by Taylor Downing  · 23 Apr 2018  · 400pp  · 121,708 words

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

by David Wallace-Wells  · 19 Feb 2019  · 343pp  · 101,563 words

Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World

by Tom Burgis  · 7 Sep 2020  · 476pp  · 139,761 words

The Disappearing Act

by Florence de Changy  · 24 Dec 2020

Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined--And Redefined--Nature

by Beth Shapiro  · 15 Dec 2021  · 338pp  · 105,112 words

The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey

by Emmanuel Goldstein  · 28 Jul 2008  · 889pp  · 433,897 words

Why We're Polarized

by Ezra Klein  · 28 Jan 2020  · 412pp  · 96,251 words

Stasiland: Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall

by Anna Funder  · 19 Sep 2011

The Last President of Europe: Emmanuel Macron's Race to Revive France and Save the World

by William Drozdiak  · 27 Apr 2020  · 241pp  · 75,417 words

Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History

by Ben Mezrich  · 6 Nov 2023  · 279pp  · 85,453 words

Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea's Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women's Rights Worldwide

by Hawon Jung  · 21 Mar 2023  · 401pp  · 112,589 words

Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle With Coronavirus

by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott  · 18 Mar 2021  · 432pp  · 143,491 words

The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last

by Jimmy Wales  · 28 Oct 2025  · 216pp  · 60,419 words

They Don't Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy

by Lawrence Lessig  · 5 Nov 2019  · 404pp  · 115,108 words

Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions

by Paul Mason  · 30 Sep 2013  · 357pp  · 99,684 words

Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

by Noam Chomsky  · 1 Jan 1974  · 56pp  · 17,340 words

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

by Steven Pinker  · 1 Jan 2002  · 901pp  · 234,905 words

Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (Updated Edition) (South End Press Classics Series)

by Noam Chomsky  · 1 Apr 1999

On Power and Ideology

by Noam Chomsky  · 7 Jul 2015

The Future of War

by Lawrence Freedman  · 9 Oct 2017  · 592pp  · 161,798 words

How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (Information Policy)

by Benjamin Peters  · 2 Jun 2016  · 518pp  · 107,836 words

The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything

by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey  · 27 Feb 2018  · 348pp  · 97,277 words

Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again

by Brittany Kaiser  · 21 Oct 2019  · 391pp  · 123,597 words

Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom

by Norman Finkelstein  · 9 Jan 2018  · 578pp  · 170,758 words

Gorbachev: His Life and Times

by William Taubman

Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking

by Mehdi Hasan  · 27 Feb 2023  · 307pp  · 93,073 words

The Long History of the Future: Why Tomorrow's Technology Still Isn't Here

by Nicole Kobie  · 3 Jul 2024  · 348pp  · 119,358 words

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

by Cory Doctorow  · 6 Oct 2025  · 313pp  · 94,415 words

These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means

by Christopher Summerfield  · 11 Mar 2025  · 412pp  · 122,298 words

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker

by Kevin Mitnick  · 14 Aug 2011

Doing Time Like a Spy

by John Kiriakou  · 11 May 2017  · 299pp  · 96,608 words

El Paso: Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory

by Jazmine Ulloa  · 3 Mar 2026  · 395pp  · 116,052 words

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East

by Robert Fisk  · 2 Jan 2005  · 1,800pp  · 596,972 words

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century

by Ronald Bailey  · 20 Jul 2015  · 417pp  · 109,367 words

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

by William Blum  · 31 Mar 2002

Information: A Very Short Introduction

by Luciano Floridi  · 25 Feb 2010  · 137pp  · 36,231 words

Chasing the Moon: The People, the Politics, and the Promise That Launched America Into the Space Age

by Robert Stone and Alan Andres  · 3 Jun 2019

Who’s Raising the Kids?: Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children

by Susan Linn  · 12 Sep 2022  · 415pp  · 102,982 words

Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories From the Frontline

by Steven K. Kapp  · 19 Nov 2019

Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World

by Joseph Menn  · 3 Jun 2019  · 302pp  · 85,877 words

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism

by Safiya Umoja Noble  · 8 Jan 2018  · 290pp  · 73,000 words

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning

by Justin E. H. Smith  · 22 Mar 2022  · 198pp  · 59,351 words

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

by Jane McGonigal  · 22 Mar 2022  · 420pp  · 135,569 words

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change

by George Marshall  · 18 Aug 2014  · 298pp  · 85,386 words

What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures

by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson  · 17 Sep 2024  · 588pp  · 160,825 words

Collaborative Society

by Dariusz Jemielniak and Aleksandra Przegalinska  · 18 Feb 2020  · 187pp  · 50,083 words

We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency

by Parmy Olson  · 5 Jun 2012  · 478pp  · 149,810 words

Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy

by Andrew Yang  · 15 Nov 2021

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

by Steven Pinker  · 14 Oct 2021  · 533pp  · 125,495 words

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

by Max Chafkin  · 14 Sep 2021  · 524pp  · 130,909 words

Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

by Romeo Dallaire and Brent Beardsley  · 9 Aug 2004  · 897pp  · 210,566 words

Political Ponerology (A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes)

by Andrew M. Lobaczewski  · 1 Jan 2006  · 396pp  · 116,332 words

Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us From Citizen Kings to Market Servants

by Maurice E. Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi  · 14 May 2020  · 511pp  · 132,682 words

Apple: The First 50 Years

by David Pogue  · 10 Mar 2026  · 686pp  · 216,944 words

Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul: How to Change the World in Quiet Ways

by Dorcas Cheng-Tozun  · 14 May 2023  · 217pp  · 61,247 words

How Africa Works: Success and Failure on the World’s Last Developmental Frontier

by Joe Studwell  · 6 Dec 2025  · 393pp  · 148,223 words

The Revolutionary Center: The Lost Genius of Liberalism

by Adrian Wooldridge  · 7 Apr 2026  · 342pp  · 129,097 words

Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

by Matt Taibbi  · 7 Oct 2019  · 357pp  · 99,456 words

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

by Neil Postman and Jeff Riggenbach Ph.  · 1 Apr 2013  · 204pp  · 61,491 words

The Despot's Accomplice: How the West Is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy

by Brian Klaas  · 15 Mar 2017

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age

by David E. Sanger  · 18 Jun 2018  · 394pp  · 117,982 words

People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent

by Joseph E. Stiglitz  · 22 Apr 2019  · 462pp  · 129,022 words

The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War

by Jeff Sharlet  · 21 Mar 2023  · 308pp  · 97,480 words

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America

by Sarah Kendzior  · 6 Apr 2020

Liar's Poker

by Michael Lewis  · 1 Jan 1989  · 314pp  · 101,452 words

The Light That Failed: A Reckoning

by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes  · 31 Oct 2019  · 300pp  · 87,374 words

The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism

by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias  · 19 Aug 2019  · 458pp  · 116,832 words

The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy

by Matthew Hindman  · 24 Sep 2018

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

by Scott Anderson  · 5 Aug 2013

Empire

by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri  · 9 Mar 2000  · 1,015pp  · 170,908 words

Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them

by Donovan Hohn  · 1 Jan 2010  · 473pp  · 154,182 words

One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution

by Nancy Stout  · 2 Feb 2013  · 519pp  · 160,846 words

Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut

by Mike Mullane  · 24 Jan 2006  · 506pp  · 167,034 words

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution

by Pieter Hintjens  · 11 Mar 2013  · 349pp  · 114,038 words

Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Story of Anonymous

by Gabriella Coleman  · 4 Nov 2014  · 457pp  · 126,996 words

Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance

by Julia Angwin  · 25 Feb 2014  · 422pp  · 104,457 words

Quarantine

by Greg Egan  · 13 Dec 1994  · 266pp  · 78,986 words

The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization

by Michael O’sullivan  · 28 May 2019  · 756pp  · 120,818 words

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It

by Yascha Mounk  · 15 Feb 2018  · 497pp  · 123,778 words

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

by Yuval Noah Harari  · 29 Aug 2018  · 389pp  · 119,487 words

The Profiteers

by Sally Denton  · 556pp  · 141,069 words

The Abandonment of the West

by Michael Kimmage  · 21 Apr 2020  · 378pp  · 121,495 words

How to Fix the Future: Staying Human in the Digital Age

by Andrew Keen  · 1 Mar 2018  · 308pp  · 85,880 words

Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond

by Tamara Kneese  · 14 Aug 2023  · 284pp  · 75,744 words

Fantasyland

by Kurt Andersen  · 5 Sep 2017

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It

by Kashmir Hill  · 19 Sep 2023  · 487pp  · 124,008 words

The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

by Yascha Mounk  · 26 Sep 2023

When Computers Can Think: The Artificial Intelligence Singularity

by Anthony Berglas, William Black, Samantha Thalind, Max Scratchmann and Michelle Estes  · 28 Feb 2015

The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

by Annie Jacobsen  · 14 Sep 2015  · 558pp  · 164,627 words

Wall Street: How It Works And for Whom

by Doug Henwood  · 30 Aug 1998  · 586pp  · 159,901 words

From Gutenberg to Google: electronic representations of literary texts

by Peter L. Shillingsburg  · 15 Jan 2006  · 224pp  · 12,941 words

Atrocity Archives

by Stross, Charles  · 13 Jan 2004  · 404pp  · 113,514 words

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

by Tim Wu  · 2 Nov 2010  · 418pp  · 128,965 words

The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives

by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen  · 22 Apr 2013  · 525pp  · 116,295 words

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

by Kurt Andersen  · 4 Sep 2017  · 522pp  · 162,310 words

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century

by Timothy Snyder  · 14 Sep 2017  · 69pp  · 15,637 words

Wanderers: A Novel

by Chuck Wendig  · 1 Jul 2019  · 1,028pp  · 267,392 words

Permanent Record

by Edward Snowden  · 16 Sep 2019  · 324pp  · 106,699 words

Lords of the Desert: The Battle Between the US and Great Britain for Supremacy in the Modern Middle East

by James Barr  · 8 Aug 2018  · 539pp  · 151,425 words

The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It)

by Jamie Bartlett  · 4 Apr 2018  · 170pp  · 49,193 words

If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities

by Benjamin R. Barber  · 5 Nov 2013  · 501pp  · 145,943 words

Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

by Noa Tishby  · 5 Apr 2021  · 338pp  · 101,967 words

Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness

by Simone Browne  · 1 Oct 2015  · 326pp  · 84,180 words

Nuclear War: A Scenario

by Annie Jacobsen  · 25 Mar 2024  · 444pp  · 105,807 words

The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine

by Christopher Miller  · 17 Jul 2023  · 469pp  · 149,526 words

Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War

by Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff  · 8 Jul 2024  · 272pp  · 103,638 words

Tunnel 29

by Helena Merriman  · 24 Aug 2021  · 333pp  · 101,677 words

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson  · 15 May 2023  · 619pp  · 177,548 words

Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017

by Ian Black  · 2 Nov 2017  · 674pp  · 201,633 words

When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World

by Jordan Thomas  · 27 May 2025  · 347pp  · 105,327 words

The Dreaming Void

by Peter F. Hamilton  · 1 Jan 2007  · 773pp  · 214,465 words

How the Mind Works

by Steven Pinker  · 1 Jan 1997  · 913pp  · 265,787 words

Rationality: From AI to Zombies

by Eliezer Yudkowsky  · 11 Mar 2015  · 1,737pp  · 491,616 words

Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives

by Satyajit Das  · 15 Nov 2006  · 349pp  · 134,041 words

Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield

by Jeremy Scahill  · 22 Apr 2013  · 1,117pp  · 305,620 words

Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945

by Leo Marks  · 1 Jan 1998  · 677pp  · 195,722 words

One Day in September

by Simon Reeve  · 404pp  · 119,055 words

Outnumbered: From Facebook and Google to Fake News and Filter-Bubbles – the Algorithms That Control Our Lives

by David Sumpter  · 18 Jun 2018  · 276pp  · 81,153 words

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order

by Rush Doshi  · 24 Jun 2021  · 816pp  · 191,889 words

The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit

by Aja Raden  · 10 May 2021  · 291pp  · 85,822 words

Dawn of the Code War: America's Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat

by John P. Carlin and Garrett M. Graff  · 15 Oct 2018  · 568pp  · 164,014 words

Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AI

by Ethan Mollick  · 2 Apr 2024  · 189pp  · 58,076 words

GCHQ

by Richard Aldrich  · 10 Jun 2010  · 826pp  · 231,966 words

Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander's War in Iraq

by Peter R. Mansoor, Donald Kagan and Frederick Kagan  · 31 Aug 2009  · 423pp  · 126,375 words

Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle

by Jeff Flake  · 31 Jul 2017  · 138pp  · 43,748 words

Howard Rheingold

by The Virtual Community Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier-Perseus Books (1993)  · 26 Apr 2012

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

by Sarah Frier  · 13 Apr 2020  · 484pp  · 114,613 words

A Short History of Russia

by Mark Galeotti  · 1 May 2020  · 163pp  · 47,912 words

Mastering Blockchain: Unlocking the Power of Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts

by Lorne Lantz and Daniel Cawrey  · 8 Dec 2020  · 434pp  · 77,974 words

This Is Not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain

by William Davies  · 28 Sep 2020  · 210pp  · 65,833 words

Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America

by William McGowan  · 16 Nov 2010  · 316pp  · 91,969 words

After the Cataclysm

by Noam Chomsky  · 17 Dec 2014

Ten Myths About Israel

by Ilan Pappe  · 1 May 2017  · 196pp  · 58,886 words

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

by Bill McKibben  · 15 Apr 2019

Losing Earth: A Recent History

by Nathaniel Rich  · 4 Aug 2018  · 148pp  · 45,249 words

The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

by Martin Gurri  · 13 Nov 2018  · 379pp  · 99,340 words

When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach

by Ashlee Vance  · 8 May 2023  · 558pp  · 175,965 words

The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics

by Christopher Lasch  · 16 Sep 1991  · 669pp  · 226,737 words

Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language

by Adam Aleksic  · 15 Jul 2025  · 278pp  · 71,701 words

QI: The Book of General Ignorance - The Noticeably Stouter Edition

by Lloyd, John and Mitchinson, John  · 7 Oct 2010  · 624pp  · 104,923 words

Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine

by Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh  · 17 Aug 2008  · 357pp  · 110,072 words

Red Storm Rising

by Tom Clancy  · 2 Jan 1986

Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America

by Annie Jacobsen  · 11 Feb 2014  · 612pp  · 181,985 words

God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

by Gerald Posner  · 3 Feb 2015  · 1,590pp  · 353,834 words

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer  · 19 Jan 2016  · 558pp  · 168,179 words

Islands in the Net

by Bruce Sterling  · 31 May 1988  · 509pp  · 137,315 words

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech

by Jamie Susskind  · 3 Sep 2018  · 533pp

How Democracy Ends

by David Runciman  · 9 May 2018  · 245pp  · 72,893 words

Walled Culture: How Big Content Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Keep Creators Poor

by Glyn Moody  · 26 Sep 2022  · 295pp  · 66,912 words

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination

by Mark Bergen  · 5 Sep 2022  · 642pp  · 141,888 words

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All

by Adrian Hon  · 14 Sep 2022  · 371pp  · 107,141 words

The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom

by Simon Winchester  · 1 Jan 2008  · 385pp  · 105,627 words

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

by Thomas L. Friedman  · 22 Nov 2016  · 602pp  · 177,874 words

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

by Cathy O'Neil  · 5 Sep 2016  · 252pp  · 72,473 words

Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment

by Lucas Chancel  · 15 Jan 2020  · 191pp  · 51,242 words

The Cold War: A World History

by Odd Arne Westad  · 4 Sep 2017  · 846pp  · 250,145 words

The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

by Tim Harford  · 2 Feb 2021  · 428pp  · 103,544 words

Public Places, Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design

by Matthew Carmona, Tim Heath, Steve Tiesdell and Taner Oc  · 15 Feb 2010  · 1,233pp  · 239,800 words

Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea

by Robert D. Kaplan  · 1 Jan 1988  · 233pp  · 75,477 words

Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism

by Stephen Graham  · 30 Oct 2009  · 717pp  · 150,288 words

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning

by James E. Lovelock  · 1 Jan 2009  · 239pp  · 68,598 words

Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History

by Antonio J. Mendez and Matt Baglio  · 14 Jun 2012  · 273pp  · 86,821 words

The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection

by Michael Harris  · 6 Aug 2014  · 259pp  · 73,193 words

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society

by Will Hutton  · 30 Sep 2010  · 543pp  · 147,357 words

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order

by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey  · 27 Jan 2015  · 457pp  · 128,838 words

The Behavioral Investor

by Daniel Crosby  · 15 Feb 2018  · 249pp  · 77,342 words

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

by John J. Mearsheimer  · 1 Jan 2001  · 637pp  · 199,158 words

The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches From the Forgotten America

by Sarah Kendzior  · 24 Apr 2015  · 172pp  · 48,747 words

There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years

by Mike Berners-Lee  · 27 Feb 2019

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel  · 12 Aug 2020  · 286pp  · 87,168 words

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

by Timothy Snyder  · 2 Apr 2018

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future

by Noreena Hertz  · 13 May 2020  · 506pp  · 133,134 words

Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy

by Wolfram Eilenberger  · 14 Sep 2020

Badvertising

by Andrew Simms  · 314pp  · 81,529 words

Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battle for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy

by Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin  · 7 Nov 2023  · 348pp  · 110,533 words

AI in Museums: Reflections, Perspectives and Applications

by Sonja Thiel and Johannes C. Bernhardt  · 31 Dec 2023  · 321pp  · 113,564 words

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again

by Johann Hari  · 25 Jan 2022  · 390pp  · 120,864 words

The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq

by Steve Coll  · 27 Feb 2024  · 738pp  · 196,803 words

The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be

by Moises Naim  · 5 Mar 2013  · 474pp  · 120,801 words

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri  · 1 Jan 2004  · 475pp  · 149,310 words

The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age

by Astra Taylor  · 4 Mar 2014  · 283pp  · 85,824 words

Digital Accounting: The Effects of the Internet and Erp on Accounting

by Ashutosh Deshmukh  · 13 Dec 2005

Ready Player One

by Ernest Cline  · 15 Feb 2011  · 458pp  · 137,960 words

Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw

by Mark Bowden  · 1 Dec 2007  · 193pp  · 55,721 words

Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future

by Robert Bryce  · 26 Apr 2011  · 520pp  · 129,887 words

The Oil Age Is Over: What to Expect as the World Runs Out of Cheap Oil, 2005-2050

by Matt Savinar  · 2 Jan 2004  · 127pp  · 51,083 words

Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future

by John Brockman  · 18 Jan 2011  · 379pp  · 109,612 words

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa

by Jason Stearns  · 29 Mar 2011  · 487pp  · 139,297 words

Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend

by Barbara Oakley Phd  · 20 Oct 2008

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

by Jaron Lanier  · 28 May 2018  · 151pp  · 39,757 words

Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age

by Steven Levy  · 15 Jan 2002  · 468pp  · 137,055 words

From Peoples into Nations

by John Connelly  · 11 Nov 2019

Lurking: How a Person Became a User

by Joanne McNeil  · 25 Feb 2020  · 239pp  · 80,319 words

Silk Road

by Eileen Ormsby  · 1 Nov 2014  · 269pp  · 79,285 words

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance

by Laurie Garrett  · 31 Oct 1994  · 1,293pp  · 357,735 words

Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health

by Laurie Garrett  · 15 Feb 2000

The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World

by Rahm Emanuel  · 25 Feb 2020  · 212pp  · 69,846 words

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

by Michael Shellenberger  · 28 Jun 2020

Strategy: A History

by Lawrence Freedman  · 31 Oct 2013  · 1,073pp  · 314,528 words

The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis

by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac  · 25 Feb 2020  · 197pp  · 49,296 words

Culture and Imperialism

by Edward W. Said  · 29 May 1994  · 549pp  · 170,495 words

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000

by Paul Kennedy  · 15 Jan 1989  · 1,477pp  · 311,310 words

Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

by John Markoff  · 22 Mar 2022  · 573pp  · 142,376 words

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic

by Bill Gates  · 2 May 2022  · 406pp  · 88,977 words

The Reluctant Carer: Dispatches From the Edge of Life

by The Reluctant Carer  · 22 Jun 2022  · 233pp  · 69,745 words

The Nature of Software Development: Keep It Simple, Make It Valuable, Build It Piece by Piece

by Ron Jeffries  · 14 Aug 2015  · 444pp  · 118,393 words

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning With the Myth of the Good Billionaire

by Tim Schwab  · 13 Nov 2023  · 618pp  · 179,407 words

It's Easier to Reach Heaven Than the End of the Street: A Jerusalem Memoir

by Emma Williams  · 7 Nov 2012  · 466pp  · 150,362 words

Common Knowledge?: An Ethnography of Wikipedia

by Dariusz Jemielniak  · 13 May 2014  · 312pp  · 93,504 words

Protocol: how control exists after decentralization

by Alexander R. Galloway  · 1 Apr 2004  · 287pp  · 86,919 words

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Peter Frankopan  · 26 Aug 2015  · 1,042pp  · 273,092 words

The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia

by Andrew Lih  · 5 Jul 2010  · 398pp  · 86,023 words

1946: The Making of the Modern World

by Victor Sebestyen  · 30 Sep 2014  · 476pp  · 144,288 words

The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth

by Nicolas Niarchos  · 20 Jan 2026  · 654pp  · 170,150 words

The Dream of Europe: Travels in the Twenty-First Century

by Geert Mak  · 27 Oct 2021  · 722pp  · 223,701 words

Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

by Ilan Pappé, Noam Chomsky and Frank Barat  · 9 Nov 2010  · 279pp  · 72,659 words

Gambling Man

by Lionel Barber  · 3 Oct 2024  · 424pp  · 123,730 words

Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile

by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek  · 21 Oct 2025  · 330pp  · 85,349 words

The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier

by Ian Urbina  · 19 Aug 2019

Can Democracy Work?: A Short History of a Radical Idea, From Ancient Athens to Our World

by James Miller  · 17 Sep 2018  · 370pp  · 99,312 words

Crucible: The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917-1924

by Charles Emmerson  · 14 Oct 2019  · 950pp  · 297,713 words

Ancestral Night

by Elizabeth Bear  · 5 Mar 2019  · 596pp  · 163,351 words

Money in the Metaverse: Digital Assets, Online Identities, Spatial Computing and Why Virtual Worlds Mean Real Business

by David G. W. Birch and Victoria Richardson  · 28 Apr 2024  · 249pp  · 74,201 words

Toast

by Stross, Charles  · 1 Jan 2002

Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, the Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet

by David Moon, Patrick Ruffini, David Segal, Aaron Swartz, Lawrence Lessig, Cory Doctorow, Zoe Lofgren, Jamie Laurie, Ron Paul, Mike Masnick, Kim Dotcom, Tiffiniy Cheng, Alexis Ohanian, Nicole Powers and Josh Levy  · 30 Apr 2013  · 452pp  · 134,502 words

Iron Sunrise

by Stross, Charles  · 28 Oct 2004  · 462pp  · 142,240 words

Jennifer Morgue

by Stross, Charles  · 12 Jan 2006

Merchants' War

by Stross, Charles  · 30 Sep 2007  · 414pp  · 123,666 words

The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008

by Thomas E. Ricks  · 14 Oct 2009  · 509pp  · 153,061 words

Singularity Sky

by Stross, Charles  · 28 Oct 2003  · 448pp  · 116,962 words

Accelerando

by Stross, Charles  · 22 Jan 2005  · 489pp  · 148,885 words

Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State

by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin  · 5 Sep 2011  · 328pp  · 100,381 words

Bad Science

by Ben Goldacre  · 1 Jan 2008  · 322pp  · 107,576 words

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance

by Noam Chomsky  · 1 Jan 2003  · 351pp  · 96,780 words

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques: Concepts and Techniques

by Jiawei Han, Micheline Kamber and Jian Pei  · 21 Jun 2011

The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia

by Peter Hopkirk  · 2 Jan 1991  · 580pp  · 194,144 words

What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way

by Nick Cohen  · 15 Jul 2015  · 414pp  · 121,243 words

The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H. W. Brands  · 1 Jan 2000  · 961pp  · 302,613 words

Strength in What Remains

by Tracy Kidder  · 29 Feb 2000  · 267pp  · 91,984 words

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It

by Marc Goodman  · 24 Feb 2015  · 677pp  · 206,548 words

Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve And/or Ruin Everything

by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith  · 16 Oct 2017  · 398pp  · 105,032 words

The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace

by H. W. Brands  · 1 Oct 2012  · 939pp  · 274,289 words

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

by Gretchen McCulloch  · 22 Jul 2019  · 413pp  · 106,479 words

Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms, and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of Us All

by Robert Elliott Smith  · 26 Jun 2019  · 370pp  · 107,983 words

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

by Brad Stone  · 10 May 2021  · 569pp  · 156,139 words

The Skripal Files

by Mark Urban  · 291pp  · 85,908 words

Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything

by Peter Morville  · 14 May 2014  · 165pp  · 50,798 words

Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain

by Robert Verkaik  · 14 Apr 2018  · 419pp  · 119,476 words

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

by Malcolm Gladwell  · 9 Sep 2019  · 328pp  · 97,711 words

Clean Agile: Back to Basics

by Robert C. Martin  · 13 Oct 2019  · 333pp  · 64,581 words

Live and Let Spy: BRIXMIS - the Last Cold War Mission

by Steve Gibson  · 2 Mar 2012  · 377pp  · 121,996 words

Next Stop Execution: The Autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky

by Oleg Gordievsky  · 13 Apr 2015  · 438pp  · 146,246 words

The Great Firewall of China

by James Griffiths;  · 15 Jan 2018  · 453pp  · 114,250 words

Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats

by Maya Goodfellow  · 5 Nov 2019  · 273pp  · 83,802 words

This Time We Went Too Far

by Norman G. Finkelstein  · 1 Jan 2010  · 184pp  · 55,923 words

Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World

by Nick Bostrom  · 26 Mar 2024  · 547pp  · 173,909 words

The Capitalist Manifesto

by Johan Norberg  · 14 Jun 2023  · 295pp  · 87,204 words

Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food

by Catherine Shanahan M. D.  · 2 Jan 2017  · 659pp  · 190,874 words

Vassal State

by Angus Hanton  · 25 Mar 2024  · 277pp  · 81,718 words

The Dark Cloud: How the Digital World Is Costing the Earth

by Guillaume Pitron  · 14 Jun 2023  · 271pp  · 79,355 words

Tory Nation: The Dark Legacy of the World's Most Successful Political Party

by Samuel Earle  · 3 May 2023  · 245pp  · 88,158 words

Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI

by Madhumita Murgia  · 20 Mar 2024  · 336pp  · 91,806 words

A New History of the Future in 100 Objects: A Fiction

by Adrian Hon  · 5 Oct 2020  · 340pp  · 101,675 words

Pandora's Star

by Peter F. Hamilton  · 2 Mar 2004  · 1,234pp  · 356,472 words

Victorian Internet

by Tom Standage  · 1 Jan 1998

Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

by E. Gabriella Coleman  · 25 Nov 2012  · 398pp  · 107,788 words

In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

by Seth G. Jones  · 12 Apr 2009  · 566pp  · 144,072 words

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power

by Daniel Yergin  · 23 Dec 2008  · 1,445pp  · 469,426 words

Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America

by Giles Slade  · 14 Apr 2006  · 384pp  · 89,250 words

How PowerPoint Makes You Stupid

by Franck Frommer  · 6 Oct 2010  · 255pp  · 68,829 words

Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine

by John Abramson  · 20 Sep 2004  · 436pp  · 123,488 words

Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth

by Frederick Kempe  · 30 Apr 2011  · 762pp  · 206,865 words

Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

by Sandy Tolan  · 1 Jan 2006  · 488pp  · 150,477 words

Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West--One Meal at a Time

by Stephen Fried  · 23 Mar 2010  · 603pp  · 186,210 words

The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It

by Owen Jones  · 3 Sep 2014  · 388pp  · 125,472 words

Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic

by John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H Naylor and David Horsey  · 1 Jan 2001  · 378pp  · 102,966 words

It's Our Turn to Eat

by Michela Wrong  · 9 Apr 2009  · 403pp  · 125,659 words

Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores

by Greg Palast  · 14 Nov 2011  · 493pp  · 132,290 words

The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

by Jacqueline Novogratz  · 15 Feb 2009  · 391pp  · 117,984 words

The Battle for Jerusalem, June 5-7, 1967

by Abraham Rabinovich  · 1 Jan 1987

The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A History of the Cold War

by Norman Stone  · 15 Feb 2010  · 851pp  · 247,711 words

The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

by David Abulafia  · 4 May 2011  · 1,002pp  · 276,865 words

Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work

by Alex Rosenblat  · 22 Oct 2018  · 343pp  · 91,080 words

Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World

by Bruce Schneier  · 3 Sep 2018  · 448pp  · 117,325 words

Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War

by Matti Friedman  · 2 May 2016  · 183pp  · 59,209 words

Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus

by Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green  · 7 Jul 2021  · 296pp  · 96,568 words

The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley

by Jimmy Soni  · 22 Feb 2022  · 505pp  · 161,581 words

The Rough Guide to Egypt (Rough Guide to...)

by Dan Richardson and Daniel Jacobs  · 1 Feb 2013

Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam

by Vivek Ramaswamy  · 16 Aug 2021  · 344pp  · 104,522 words

Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing

by Kevin Davies  · 5 Oct 2020  · 741pp  · 164,057 words

Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military

by Neil Degrasse Tyson and Avis Lang  · 10 Sep 2018  · 745pp  · 207,187 words

Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now

by Vincent Ialenti  · 22 Sep 2020  · 224pp  · 69,593 words

Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation

by Elandria Williams, Eli Feghali, Rachel Plattus and Nathan Schneider  · 15 Dec 2024  · 346pp  · 84,111 words

The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters

by Diane Coyle  · 15 Apr 2025  · 321pp  · 112,477 words

Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

by Ingrid Robeyns  · 16 Jan 2024  · 327pp  · 110,234 words

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

by Vauhini Vara  · 8 Apr 2025  · 301pp  · 105,209 words

Duty of Care: One NHS Doctor's Story of the Covid-19 Crisis

by Dr Dominic Pimenta  · 2 Sep 2020  · 304pp  · 95,306 words

Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays

by Phoebe Robinson  · 14 Oct 2021  · 265pp  · 93,354 words

Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident

by Donnie Eichar  · 20 Oct 2014  · 232pp  · 68,570 words

Risk: A User's Guide

by Stanley McChrystal and Anna Butrico  · 4 Oct 2021  · 489pp  · 106,008 words

Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic

by Scott Gottlieb  · 20 Sep 2021

The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future

by Alec Ross  · 13 Sep 2021  · 363pp  · 109,077 words

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America

by Victor Davis Hanson  · 15 Nov 2021  · 458pp  · 132,912 words

I, Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict

by Kenneth Payne  · 16 Jun 2021  · 339pp  · 92,785 words

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal

by George Packer  · 14 Jun 2021  · 173pp  · 55,328 words

The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World

by Tim Marshall  · 14 Oct 2021  · 383pp  · 105,387 words

The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe

by Mark Mazower  · 4 Nov 2021  · 887pp  · 242,125 words

Behind the Berlin Wall: East Germany and the Frontiers of Power

by Patrick Major  · 5 Nov 2009  · 669pp  · 150,886 words

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

by Michael Dobbs  · 3 Sep 2008  · 631pp  · 171,391 words

When Things Start to Think

by Neil A. Gershenfeld  · 15 Feb 1999  · 238pp  · 46 words

The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death

by John Gray  · 11 Apr 2011  · 232pp  · 67,934 words

Trend Commandments: Trading for Exceptional Returns

by Michael W. Covel  · 14 Jun 2011

A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption

by Steven Hiatt; John Perkins  · 1 Jan 2006  · 497pp  · 123,718 words

The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East

by Abraham Rabinovich  · 1 Jan 2004  · 722pp  · 225,235 words

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man

by Luke Harding  · 7 Feb 2014  · 266pp  · 80,018 words

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

by Henry Jenkins  · 31 Jul 2006

Other People's Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People?

by John Kay  · 2 Sep 2015  · 478pp  · 126,416 words

The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall

by Michael Meyer  · 7 Sep 2009  · 323pp  · 95,188 words

Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129

by Norman Polmar and Michael White  · 1 Dec 2010  · 241pp  · 64,424 words

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon

by Neil Sheehan  · 21 Sep 2009  · 589pp  · 197,971 words

House of Suns

by Alastair Reynolds  · 16 Apr 2008  · 635pp  · 186,208 words

The Rights of the People

by David K. Shipler  · 18 Apr 2011  · 495pp  · 154,046 words

Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton  · 26 Sep 2012  · 1,266pp  · 344,635 words

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

by Steve Coll  · 30 Apr 2012  · 944pp  · 243,883 words

Revolting!: How the Establishment Are Undermining Democracy and What They're Afraid Of

by Mick Hume  · 23 Feb 2017  · 228pp  · 68,880 words

The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Metropolitan Elite

by Michael Lind  · 20 Feb 2020

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

by Howard Rheingold  · 24 Dec 2011

We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent

by Nesrine Malik  · 4 Sep 2019

The Intelligence War Against the IRA

by Thomas Leahy  · 26 Mar 2020  · 1,149pp  · 141,412 words

On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey Into South Asia

by Steve Coll  · 29 Mar 2009  · 413pp  · 128,093 words

The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World―and Globalization Began

by Valerie Hansen  · 13 Apr 2020

Snowden's Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance

by Jessica Bruder and Dale Maharidge  · 29 Mar 2020  · 159pp  · 42,401 words

The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America

by Charlotte Alter  · 18 Feb 2020  · 504pp  · 129,087 words

The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness

by Suzanne O'Sullivan  · 31 Mar 2021  · 319pp  · 101,673 words

The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won

by Victor Davis Hanson  · 16 Oct 2017  · 908pp  · 262,808 words

Pure, White and Deadly: How Sugar Is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop It

by John Yudkin  · 1 Nov 2012  · 239pp  · 77,436 words

Rainbows End

by Vernor Vinge  · 1 May 2006

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

by Michael Wolff  · 5 Jan 2018  · 394pp  · 112,770 words

The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

by Max Boot  · 9 Jan 2018  · 972pp  · 259,764 words

Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live

by Nicholas A. Christakis  · 27 Oct 2020  · 475pp  · 127,389 words

1947: Where Now Begins

by Elisabeth Åsbrink  · 31 Jul 2016  · 215pp  · 60,489 words

Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

by Lesley M. M. Blume  · 3 Aug 2020

Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation

by Kevin Roose  · 9 Mar 2021  · 208pp  · 57,602 words

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

by Patrick Radden Keefe  · 12 Apr 2021  · 712pp  · 212,334 words

Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex

by Yasha Levine  · 6 Feb 2018  · 474pp  · 130,575 words

The Case for Israel

by Alan Dershowitz  · 31 Jul 2003

How the World Works

by Noam Chomsky, Arthur Naiman and David Barsamian  · 13 Sep 2011  · 489pp  · 111,305 words

Death of the Liberal Class

by Chris Hedges  · 14 May 2010  · 422pp  · 89,770 words

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

by Evgeny Morozov  · 16 Nov 2010  · 538pp  · 141,822 words

Virus of the Mind

by Richard Brodie  · 4 Jun 2009  · 289pp  · 22,394 words

QI: The Second Book of General Ignorance

by Lloyd, John and Mitchinson, John  · 7 Oct 2010  · 469pp  · 97,582 words

Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century

by Christian Caryl  · 30 Oct 2012  · 780pp  · 168,782 words

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

by Jon Ronson  · 12 May 2011  · 274pp  · 70,481 words

Clear and Present Danger

by Tom Clancy  · 2 Jan 1989  · 914pp  · 270,937 words

Debt of Honor

by Tom Clancy  · 2 Jan 1994

Executive Orders

by Tom Clancy  · 2 Jan 1996

Patriot Games

by Tom Clancy  · 2 Jan 1987

Red Rabbit

by Tom Clancy and Scott Brick  · 2 Jan 2002

The Sum of All Fears

by Tom Clancy  · 2 Jan 1989

Distrust That Particular Flavor

by William Gibson  · 3 Jan 2012  · 153pp  · 45,871 words

Cyclopedia

by William Fotheringham  · 22 Sep 2011  · 428pp  · 117,419 words

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?

by Thomas Geoghegan  · 20 Sep 2011  · 364pp  · 104,697 words

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-But Some Don't

by Nate Silver  · 31 Aug 2012  · 829pp  · 186,976 words

The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule

by Thomas Frank  · 5 Aug 2008  · 482pp  · 122,497 words

Diet for a New America

by John Robbins  · 566pp  · 151,193 words

Chomsky on Mis-Education

by Noam Chomsky  · 24 Mar 2000

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection

by Jacob Silverman  · 17 Mar 2015  · 527pp  · 147,690 words

The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism

by Noam Chomsky  · 24 Oct 2014

The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick

by Jonathan Littman  · 1 Jan 1996

On Nature and Language

by Noam Chomsky  · 16 Apr 2007

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

by Paul Mason  · 29 Jul 2015  · 378pp  · 110,518 words

The Full Catastrophe: Travels Among the New Greek Ruins

by James Angelos  · 1 Jun 2015  · 278pp  · 93,540 words

The Chomsky Reader

by Noam Chomsky  · 11 Sep 1987

The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy

by Seth Mnookin  · 3 Jan 2012  · 566pp  · 153,259 words

Everything Under the Sun: Toward a Brighter Future on a Small Blue Planet

by Ian Hanington  · 13 May 2012  · 258pp  · 77,601 words

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

by Michael E. Gerber  · 3 Mar 1995  · 251pp  · 66,396 words

The Martian

by Andy Weir  · 1 Jan 2011  · 410pp  · 103,421 words

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown

by Philip Mirowski  · 24 Jun 2013  · 662pp  · 180,546 words

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956

by Anne Applebaum  · 30 Oct 2012  · 934pp  · 232,651 words

Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth

by A. O. Scott  · 9 Feb 2016  · 218pp  · 65,422 words

The Retreat of Western Liberalism

by Edward Luce  · 20 Apr 2017  · 223pp  · 58,732 words

Autonomia: Post-Political Politics 2007

by Sylvere Lotringer, Christian Marazzi  · 2 Aug 2005

Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air

by Richard Holmes  · 24 Apr 2013  · 432pp  · 128,944 words

The Bend of the World: A Novel

by Jacob Bacharach  · 13 Apr 2014  · 266pp  · 77,045 words

Them: Adventures With Extremists

by Jon Ronson  · 1 Jan 2001  · 341pp  · 87,268 words

The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge

by Ilan Pappe  · 30 Apr 2012  · 387pp  · 120,092 words

The Way of the Gun: A Bloody Journey Into the World of Firearms

by Iain Overton  · 15 Apr 2015  · 436pp  · 125,809 words

Siege: Trump Under Fire

by Michael Wolff  · 3 Jun 2019  · 359pp  · 113,847 words

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future

by James Bridle  · 18 Jun 2018  · 301pp  · 85,263 words

Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire

by Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson  · 15 Jan 2019  · 502pp  · 128,126 words

Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry

by Peter Warren Singer  · 1 Jan 2003  · 482pp  · 161,169 words

On Her Majesty's Nuclear Service

by Eric Thompson  · 18 Apr 2018  · 379pp  · 118,576 words

The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind

by Raghuram Rajan  · 26 Feb 2019  · 596pp  · 163,682 words

Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

by Hamish McKenzie  · 30 Sep 2017  · 307pp  · 90,634 words

Arabs: A 3,000 Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires

by Tim Mackintosh-Smith  · 2 Mar 2019

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace

by Ronald J. Deibert  · 13 May 2013  · 317pp  · 98,745 words

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

by James Gleick  · 1 Jan 1992  · 795pp  · 215,529 words

The China Mission: George Marshall's Unfinished War, 1945-1947

by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan  · 9 Apr 2018

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

by Amy Webb  · 5 Mar 2019  · 340pp  · 97,723 words

The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970

by John Darwin  · 23 Sep 2009

Fred Schwed's Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: A Modern-Day Interpretation of an Investment Classic

by Leo Gough  · 22 Aug 2010  · 117pp  · 31,221 words

The Rise of Carry: The Dangerous Consequences of Volatility Suppression and the New Financial Order of Decaying Growth and Recurring Crisis

by Tim Lee, Jamie Lee and Kevin Coldiron  · 13 Dec 2019  · 241pp  · 81,805 words

Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War: 1938-1941

by Alan Allport  · 2 Sep 2020  · 1,520pp  · 221,543 words

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

by Timothy Egan  · 4 Apr 2023

The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

by Joseph Henrich  · 27 Oct 2015  · 631pp  · 177,227 words

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs

by Kerry Howley  · 21 Mar 2023

Economic Dignity

by Gene Sperling  · 14 Sep 2020  · 667pp  · 149,811 words

Deadly Quiet City: True Stories From Wuhan

by Murong Xuecun  · 7 Mar 2023  · 236pp  · 73,008 words

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin  · 18 Dec 2007  · 1,041pp  · 317,136 words

For Profit: A History of Corporations

by William Magnuson  · 8 Nov 2022  · 356pp  · 116,083 words

The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World

by Vincent Bevins  · 18 May 2020  · 393pp  · 115,178 words

Spike: The Virus vs The People - The Inside Story

by Jeremy Farrar and Anjana Ahuja  · 15 Jan 2021  · 245pp  · 71,886 words

The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris

by Mark Honigsbaum  · 8 Apr 2019  · 529pp  · 150,263 words

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017

by Rashid Khalidi  · 28 Jan 2020  · 413pp  · 120,506 words

The Ransomware Hunting Team: A Band of Misfits' Improbable Crusade to Save the World From Cybercrime

by Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden  · 24 Oct 2022  · 392pp  · 114,189 words

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis

by Scott Patterson  · 5 Jun 2023  · 289pp  · 95,046 words

Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age

by Robert D. Kaplan  · 11 Apr 2022  · 500pp  · 115,119 words

House of Huawei: The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company

by Eva Dou  · 14 Jan 2025  · 394pp  · 110,159 words

The Stolen Year

by Anya Kamenetz  · 23 Aug 2022  · 347pp  · 103,518 words

Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future

by Alan Weisman  · 21 Apr 2025  · 599pp  · 149,014 words

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 7 Sep 2022  · 205pp  · 61,903 words

The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians

by Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar  · 14 Oct 2024  · 175pp  · 46,192 words

Bad Company

by Megan Greenwell  · 18 Apr 2025  · 385pp  · 103,818 words

Tomorrow's Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business

by Alan Murray  · 15 Dec 2022  · 263pp  · 77,786 words

How the Railways Will Fix the Future: Rediscovering the Essential Brilliance of the Iron Road

by Gareth Dennis  · 12 Nov 2024  · 261pp  · 76,645 words

Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare

by Edward Fishman  · 25 Feb 2025  · 884pp  · 221,861 words

When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe  · 3 Oct 2022  · 689pp  · 134,457 words

Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate

by M. E. Sarotte  · 29 Nov 2021  · 791pp  · 222,536 words

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy

by David Gelles  · 30 May 2022  · 318pp  · 91,957 words

Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear

by Dr. Frank Luntz  · 2 Jan 2007

Open Space: From Earth to Eternity--the Global Race to Explore and Conquer the Cosmos

by David Ariosto  · 24 Mar 2026  · 433pp  · 116,344 words