disinformation campaign

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Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology

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

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 ability

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 Analytica scandal

EU’s efforts to fight online disinformation through digital regulation are particularly relevant in its quest to protect the integrity of political elections. Politically motivated disinformation campaigns, including interference by foreign governments, present a serious threat to democracy.93 One particularly disturbing example of such election meddling is Russia’s

disinformation campaign orchestrated to influence the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum,94 which further contributed to the EU’s resolve to address the problem with more

Roma groups in the suburbs of Paris.140 The European Parliament’s Special Committee found that the Roma people have been a target of multiple disinformation campaigns in Europe, and that online platforms led to the escalation of rumors and to the 2019 mob attack.141 Another prominent fake news story was

or disinformation presents a thorny challenge for the US platforms. According to research by the Oxford Internet Institute, governments in over 80 countries are pursuing disinformation campaigns.158 In 2021, Meta deactivated more than 20 Facebook accounts linked to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement party. The Ugandan president

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 limits of

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 in

-fake-news. 141.Judit Szakács & Éva Bognár, European Parliament Special Committee on Foreign Interference in All Democratic Processes in the European Union, the Impact of Disinformation Campaigns About Migrants and Minority Groups in the EU 14 (2021). 142.Jakub Janda & Ilyas Sharibzhanov, Six Outrageous Lies Russian Disinformation Peddled about Europe in 2016

and COVID-19 (2022), https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/FP_20220525_china_seo_v2.pdf. 157.Id. 158.Nina Otte-Witte, Disinformation Campaigns: “Lies Can Turn Deadly or Threaten the Stability of Societies,” Akademie (Sep. 24, 2021), https://www.dw.com/en/disinformation-campaignslies-can-turn-deadly-or

–302 digital protectionism, 72–77, 214 Digital Silk Road (DSR) initiative, 18, 20, 27–28, 294–97, 314, 316–17, 391–92 digital sovereignty, 215 disinformation campaigns, 282–83 dual circulation strategy, 206 e-commerce, 94–95, 155 Export Control Law (ECL), 200–3 exports, 290–323 Five-Year Plan (14th), 206

, 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, 134

–40, 377–78, 384–85 criticism of, 283–84, 384 criticism of China’s internet policies, 100 data privacy, 382 data transfer battles, 231–32 disinformation campaigns, 280–81 efforts to address societal harms they cause, 283–84 EU services, 19 fake accounts, 282–83 founding, 137–38 FTC fines, 139 global

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 attacks, 281

, 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, 309–10

–9, 87–88 social fairness, 124 social media, 41, 64–65, 215–16 Chinese platforms, 80, 82–83, 154–55, 166–67, 293, 312–13 disinformation campaigns, 280–81 role in Brexit, 280 role in January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, 141 role in terrorist attacks, 281–82 US platforms

–79, 80 compliance with EU laws and regulations, 116–17, 163 content moderation, 3, 7–8, 65–66, 337–38, 341, 377–78, 384–85 disinformation campaigns, 280–81 Disinformation Code, 120 employee walkout, 384–85 European headquarters, 142–43 fact checks, 49–50, 82–83, 277 global influence, 133–34, 257

Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare

by Thomas Rid

leaving behind. In early July, I decided to write up a first draft of this remarkable story. I published two investigative pieces on the ongoing disinformation campaign, the first in late July 2016, on the day of the Democratic Convention, and the second three weeks before the general election. But I noticed

successful. Twenty-first-century liberal democracies can no longer afford to neglect this past. Ignoring the rich and disturbing lessons of industrial-scale Cold War disinformation campaigns risks repeating mid-century errors that are already weakening liberal democracy in the digital age. Recognizing an active measure can be difficult. Disinformation, when done

accident that disinformation played out in shifting shadows, not in pitch-black darkness. Often, at least since the 1950s, the covert aspect of a given disinformation campaign was only a veneer, imperfect and temporary by design. Also, disinformation is not simply fake information—at least, not necessarily. Some of the most vicious

and criticism. This book will extract three main arguments from the history of disinformation over the past century. The first argument is conceptual. At-scale disinformation campaigns are attacks against a liberal epistemic order, or a political system that places its trust in essential custodians of factual authority. These institutions—law enforcement

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 individuals. Instead

graffiti daubed in red and black paint on the walls of the newly reopened synagogue in Cologne. The incident opened an extensive, global anti-Semitic disinformation campaign designed to harm West Germany. (Hansherbert Wirtz, Kölnische Rundschau) But the swift arrest of the two initial perpetrators did not stop the anti-Semitic incidents

from Russian into German in order to mail them to Jewish families in West Germany.41 One of the most noteworthy aspects of this spectacular disinformation campaign is the absence of the Stasi’s foreign intelligence arm, the HVA. The HVA was then headed by Markus Wolf, who had a Jewish father

,” one 1960s Cold War defector wrote, reasoning that blacks in the United States would rather turn to Africa than to the USSR.8 Accordingly, Russian disinformation campaigns would exploit America’s race problem by pulling in Africa, as they had with the UN forgery. The KGB’s Department D and its subsidiaries

” 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 as

did not have press freedom, we would have to invent it for them.”57 That same year, the KGB initiated and approved direct cooperation on disinformation campaigns between the humongous East German Stasi and the leaner but more agile StB. General Markus Wolf of the Stasi’s HVA and Colonel Josef Houska

. versus Soviet disinformation operations. Russia directly accused the CIA of running a disinformation operation against Moscow—or was the KGB by now engaged in a disinformation campaign of its own? It was impossible to judge. The Post understood this dilemma, and did something unexpected: it ran two remarkable articles in the following

minutes from meetings of minor West German peace groups. The early campaigns against budding peace activism foreshadowed by far the largest, longest, and most expensive disinformation campaign in intelligence history: the subversion of the peace movement in the West. Throughout the 1960s, annual Easter marches became a focal point of the West

so he thought. Brandt survived the vote, and Ostpolitik was saved. Two years after the HVA’s remarkable election interference, the X launched another timeless disinformation campaign: it manufactured far-right, neo-Fascist sentiments in West Germany in response to the government’s guest worker program of the 1970s. The operation, known

of an open society, sir,” responded McMahon. The CIA’s Directorate of Operations had understood perhaps one of the most insidious threats posed by successful disinformation campaigns: overreacting to active measures risked turning an open society into a more closed one. The more difficult question was how to draw the line between

.5 It was against this background of military escalation in Afghanistan and weapons of mass destruction in South Asia that one of the most infamous disinformation campaigns of the entire Cold War emerged: the story that AIDS was an American biological weapon developed at Fort Detrick, Maryland. “Rare Cancer Seen in 41

origin; the engineered virus had spread from there first to Haiti, he conjectured, and then to the United States. The moment was ideal for a disinformation campaign, as the marchers’ signs in New York made clear: there was yet little research into AIDS, and an abundance of hysteria. The CDC now counted

the potential of the escalating AIDS crisis in the United States and Europe itself. The AIDS article in Patriot was a continuation of the bioweapon disinformation campaign of the previous year, designed to distract from U.S. revelations on Soviet chemical warfare in Southeast Asia. Patriot noted that the United States was

as September 1989, just weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Department X argued in an internal meeting that the peak of the AIDS disinformation campaign had not yet been achieved.46 The X was right. Jakob Segal continued to spread the AIDS-was-made-in-the-USA theory until his

the AIDS campaign as a major success. In 1992, the head of Russian foreign intelligence, Yevgeny Primakov, confirmed the KGB’s role in the AIDS disinformation campaign during a talk at MGIMO, an academic institute affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow. Primakov revealed that the AIDS story was “created

the site could be used to spread disinformation,” Young recounted in 2004. “I can’t rule out that we are being subjected to a sophisticated disinformation campaign by government agencies.”4 He applied the same sunlight-is-the-best-disinfectant logic to potential abuses: “If it smells, then someone will point it

. 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 silent measures

, one of the best reporters at the technology-focused website Motherboard, was the first journalist to publish an investigative story calling the DNC hack “a disinformation campaign by Russian spies.”11 The same day, June 16, a private intelligence firm named Secureworks published a stunning finding. The firm had discovered what would

Jon Merritt tweeted.”17 The story in the Times harked back, without intending to do so, to the Times coverage of that big first American disinformation campaign from April 1930, the Grover Whalen forgeries. Then as now, press coverage of the fakes—and the subsequent congressional investigations—received far more public attention

. “Measuring the actual impact of trolling and online influence campaigns is probably impossible,” said Kate Starbird, one of the world’s leading researchers of online disinformation campaigns, who examined the influence of digital disinformation on the Black Lives Matter movement. “But the difficulty of measuring impact doesn’t mean that there isn

facts; it requires a judgment call, which in practice means a political decision, often a collective decision. Therefore, if a targeted community believes that a disinformation campaign was a major success, then it has made it a major success. Disinformation, finally, is itself disintegrating. Bureaucratically, this degeneration proceeded with the breakup of

challenges. For the offender, campaigns have become harder to control, harder to contain, harder to steer, harder to manage, and harder to assess. For victims, disinformation campaigns have also become more difficult to manage, more difficult to assess in impact, and more difficult to counter. At the beginning of the third decade

identity crises by the rise of the internet and its side effects, are both overstating and, more rarely, understating the threat and the potential of disinformation campaigns—and thus helping expand and escalate that very threat and its potential. This constructivist vortex is propelled by an unprecedented confluence of incentives that lead

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

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

, other papers quickly report on the fact that the first outlet broke the story. Be sure that those reporting on the story include reliable sources. Disinformation campaigns may plant multiple versions of the same false tale in unreliable outlets. Pay attention to where information comes from. If you find a piece of

Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

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

times. Much like the harassment campaigns inside Russia, sockpuppets also targeted Putin critics abroad. The most extreme efforts were reserved for those who investigated the disinformation campaigns themselves. After journalist Jessikka Aro published an exposé of the fake accounts, sockpuppets attacked her with everything from posts claiming she was a Nazi and

to be from her father, who had died twenty years earlier. When another group of Western foreign affairs specialists began to research the mechanics of disinformation campaigns, they found themselves quickly savaged on the professional networking site LinkedIn. One was labeled a “pornographer,” and another was accused of harassment. Such attacks can

Russian campaign that had unfolded on their platforms during the 2016 election. The numbers, once begrudgingly disclosed, were astounding. The bot accounts were putting the disinformation campaign on steroids, allowing it to reach a scale impossible with just humans at work. Twitter’s analysis found that bots under the control of the

disinformation department. In a 1985 book, he explained how “every disinformation message must at least partially correspond to reality or generally accepted views.” The AIDS disinformation campaign, for example, didn’t invent a new threat; instead, it leveraged people’s fears about a well-known but then mysterious disease. The internet, and

beginning that Facebook had been saturated not just with profit-motivated misinformation and “fake news” spun by Macedonian teenagers, but also with a pro-Trump disinformation campaign orchestrated by the Russian government. As stupefied liberals searched for someone or something to blame, Mark Zuckerberg could see the tidal wave coming. What followed

its ability to implement change when so motivated, however, Facebook expanded its cybersecurity efforts beyond regular hacking, turning its focus to the threat of organized disinformation campaigns. Where the company had studiously ignored the effects of disinformation during the 2016 U.S. election, it now cooperated closely with the French and German

, Twitter, and every other internet company of scale will use neural networks to police their platforms. Dirty pictures, state-sponsored botnets, terrorist propaganda, and sophisticated disinformation campaigns will be hunted by machine intelligences that dwarf any now in existence. But they will be battled by other machine intelligences that seek to obfuscate

information attacks, backed by the close proximity of Russian soldiers and tanks. Their inoculation efforts include citizen education programs, public tracking and notices of foreign disinformation campaigns, election protections and forced transparency of political campaign activities, and legal action to limit the effect of poisonous super-spreaders. In many ways, such holistic

’s unacceptable that social media firms took nearly a year after the 2016 U.S. election to release data showing definitive proof of a Russian disinformation campaign—and even then, only after repeated demands by Congress. It is perhaps especially troubling that, despite all the political and public pressure, most are still

ranging from hate groups to harassment, they were consistently ignored. Similarly, when outside researchers raised concerns about emerging problems like neo-Nazi trolling and Russian disinformation campaigns during the 2016 U.S. election, the firms essentially dismissed them. Changing to a proactive strategy will require the firms to alter their approach to

://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-trid-033017.pdf. 104 Operation INFEKTION: Thomas Boghardt, “Operation INFEKTION: Soviet Bloc Intelligence and Its AIDS Disinformation Campaign,” Studies in Intelligence 53, no. 4 (2009). 104 Indian newspaper Patriot: Ibid. 104 “well-known American scientist”: David Robert Grimes, “Russian Fake News Is Not

/tpartynews-twitter-russia-link/index.html. 112 seemingly trustworthy individuals: John D. Gallacher et al., “Junk News on Military Affairs and National Security: Social Media Disinformation Campaigns Against US Military Personnel and Veterans” (data memo 2017.9, Computational Propaganda Project, University of Oxford, October 9, 2017), http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk

, 236, 242 Active Measures Working Group, 263 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), 26–27 Advocates for Peace and Urban Unity, 14 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 60 AIDS disinformation campaign, 104, 208 Airbnb, 239 Al Qaeda, 54, 65, 79–80, 149, 234 Alabed, Bana, 214–16 al-Assad, Bashar, 9, 72, 88, 215 al-Awlaki

weapons tracking, 77 World War I, 182 U.S. National Intelligence Council, 51 U.S. presidential election (2016) authenticity in, 168–69 detox from, 222 disinformation campaigns, 241 fake accounts (botnets), 143 fake news, 131 Macedonian disinformation, 119 memetic warfare, 192 Pepe meme, 186–93 #Pizzagate incident, 127–28 real vs. fake

Four Battlegrounds

by Paul Scharre  · 18 Jan 2023

by requests that receiving governments praise China. Chinese officials convinced European Union lawmakers to tone down a report whose early drafts criticized China’s “global disinformation campaign.” When Australia called for an independent inquiry into the origins of the virus, China responded by restricting imports of Australian products into China. When Venezuelan

around America’s military and directly attack the nervous system of American democracy, the free and open exchange of ideas. In practice, the effects of disinformation campaigns were hard to measure and hotly debated, but even the perception of foreign influence in an election could—and did—polarize, divide, and paralyze the

did not feature heavily in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, but security researchers worry it won’t be long before they’re used in disinformation campaigns online, throwing gasoline on the already raging dumpster fire that is false information on social media. Manipulated media has already become a flashpoint in U

between global tech companies like Meta, Google, and Twitter and purveyors of disinformation, from neo-Nazis to authoritarian governments. While humans remain central to online disinformation campaigns, bots have played a role in amplifying content. In the wake of the Saudi government’s murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018

University in Doha, Qatar, suggested in 2017 that half of Twitter accounts in Saudi Arabia could be bots. Bots have also been used in foreign disinformation campaigns to disrupt democracies. China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela have all conducted influence operations targeted at other nations, in which bots can

Isn’t Working,” Business Insider, April 18, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/analysis-china-coronavirus-political-points-mostly-not-working-2020-4. 75China’s “global disinformation campaign”: Michael Peel and Tom Mitchell, “China Warned EU 3 Times over Virus Propaganda Report,” Financial Times, April 26, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/a2f66f6a

of Russian Disinformation,” Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, September 14, 2017, https://www.csce.gov/international-impact/events/scourge-russian-disinformation. 122effects of disinformation campaigns were hard to measure: Craig Timberg and Tony Romm, “Forget the Russians. On This Election Day, It’s Americans Peddling Disinformation and Hate Speech,” Washington

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

by Christopher Wylie  · 8 Oct 2019

-harvesting operation. This material demonstrated that the company had recruited hackers, hired personnel with known links to Russian intelligence, and engaged in bribery, extortion, and disinformation campaigns in elections around the world. There were confidential legal memos from lawyers warning Steve Bannon about Cambridge Analytica’s violations of the Foreign Agents Registration

How to Stand Up to a Dictator

by Maria Ressa  · 19 Oct 2022

United States in the 1990s—mostly by computer companies like IBM and Microsoft targeting their competitors—known as “fear, uncertainty, and doubt,” or FUD. The disinformation campaign spread negative information and lies to fuel fear. The conversation we mapped online reminded us of the Communist strategy “Surround the city from the countryside

The Defence of the Realm

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

group (in association with the FBI) to seek to identify high-level Soviet penetration in the West, especially of intelligence agencies, and to uncover Soviet disinformation campaigns.69 Angleton brought Golitsyn with him to Melbourne, where, according to Peter Wright, Golitsyn ‘laid special emphasis on Britain, and the many penetrations which, he

Near and Distant Neighbors: A New History of Soviet Intelligence

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

directive No. 41 on April 5, 1942, for an all-out attack on the Caucasus, code-named “Blau” (Blue.) As in 1940, he launched a disinformation campaign, this time to confuse Stalin with the idea that instead of heading south, the Germans would immediately head east, to Moscow. The Germans simultaneously moved

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire

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

this without firing a single shot. Former Director of the CIA, William Casey, was quoted as saying that they [the CIA] would know that their disinformation campaign was a success when everything that the American people believed was wrong. So this begs the question of why MSNBC would hire former CIA Director

Reset

by Ronald J. Deibert  · 14 Aug 2020

The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control

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

This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality

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

The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Amy B. Zegart  · 6 Nov 2021

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

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

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

The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991

by Robert Service  · 7 Oct 2015

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

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

Climate Change

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

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination

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

The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

by Christopher Andrew  · 27 Jun 2018

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

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

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

by Kelly Weill  · 22 Feb 2022

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

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

Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth

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

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

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

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists

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

Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter

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

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Ian Dunt  · 15 Oct 2020

Farewell

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

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

by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall  · 1 Jan 1991

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

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

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

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

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

by William Blum  · 15 Jan 2003

Necessary Illusions

by Noam Chomsky  · 1 Sep 1995

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

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

Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping

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

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

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

Turning the Tide

by Noam Chomsky  · 14 Sep 2015

Pirates and Emperors, Old and New

by Noam Chomsky  · 7 Apr 2015

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

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

Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Rory Cormac  · 14 Jun 2018  · 407pp

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

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

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

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

Judas Unchained

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Enemy Within

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facebook: The Inside Story

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

The Twittering Machine

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

Culture of Terrorism

by Noam Chomsky  · 19 Oct 2015

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

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

Inside British Intelligence

by Gordon Thomas

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

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

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

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

Europe: A History

by Norman Davies  · 1 Jan 1996

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

by William Blum  · 31 Mar 2002

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

The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything

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

On Power and Ideology

by Noam Chomsky  · 7 Jul 2015

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

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

The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence—Before It's Too Late

by Cory Doctorow  · 22 Jun 2026  · 175pp  · 51,295 words

The Future of War

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

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

by Brian Klaas  · 15 Mar 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World

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

Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut

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

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

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

Tunnel 29

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

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

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

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

Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine

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

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

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

One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution

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

Losing Earth: A Recent History

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

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

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

by Bill McKibben  · 15 Apr 2019

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

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

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

Wall Street: How It Works And for Whom

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

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

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

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

After the Cataclysm

by Noam Chomsky  · 17 Dec 2014

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

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

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

by Scott Anderson  · 5 Aug 2013

When Things Start to Think

by Neil A. Gershenfeld  · 15 Feb 1999  · 238pp  · 46 words

AI in Museums: Reflections, Perspectives and Applications

by Sonja Thiel and Johannes C. Bernhardt  · 31 Dec 2023  · 321pp  · 113,564 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

Everything Under the Sun: Toward a Brighter Future on a Small Blue Planet

by Ian Hanington  · 13 May 2012  · 258pp  · 77,601 words

Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment

by Lucas Chancel  · 15 Jan 2020  · 191pp  · 51,242 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

Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea

by Robert D. Kaplan  · 1 Jan 1988  · 233pp  · 75,477 words

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

by Jaron Lanier  · 28 May 2018  · 151pp  · 39,757 words

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

by Amy Webb  · 5 Mar 2019  · 340pp  · 97,723 words

A New History of the Future in 100 Objects: A Fiction

by Adrian Hon  · 5 Oct 2020  · 340pp  · 101,675 words

The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier

by Ian Urbina  · 19 Aug 2019

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

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs

by Kerry Howley  · 21 Mar 2023

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance

by Noam Chomsky  · 1 Jan 2003  · 351pp  · 96,780 words

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 Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy

by Seth Mnookin  · 3 Jan 2012  · 566pp  · 153,259 words

How the World Works

by Noam Chomsky, Arthur Naiman and David Barsamian  · 13 Sep 2011  · 489pp  · 111,305 words

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel  · 12 Aug 2020  · 286pp  · 87,168 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

Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic

by Scott Gottlieb  · 20 Sep 2021

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

by Michael Dobbs  · 3 Sep 2008  · 631pp  · 171,391 words

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace

by Ronald J. Deibert  · 13 May 2013  · 317pp  · 98,745 words

Economic Dignity

by Gene Sperling  · 14 Sep 2020  · 667pp  · 149,811 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

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

by Michael Wolff  · 5 Jan 2018  · 394pp  · 112,770 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

Behind the Berlin Wall: East Germany and the Frontiers of Power

by Patrick Major  · 5 Nov 2009  · 669pp  · 150,886 words

Diet for a New America

by John Robbins  · 566pp  · 151,193 words

The Chomsky Reader

by Noam Chomsky  · 11 Sep 1987

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

The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Metropolitan Elite

by Michael Lind  · 20 Feb 2020

Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear

by Dr. Frank Luntz  · 2 Jan 2007

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

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

by Henry Jenkins  · 31 Jul 2006

The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism

by Noam Chomsky  · 24 Oct 2014

What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way

by Nick Cohen  · 15 Jul 2015  · 414pp  · 121,243 words

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance

by Laurie Garrett  · 31 Oct 1994  · 1,293pp  · 357,735 words

Badvertising

by Andrew Simms  · 314pp  · 81,529 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