I follow Fareed Zakaria, the Indian-American journalist, political scientist, and author. He is the host of CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria GPS and writes a weekly column for The Washington Post. I find Zakaria’s reports to be information rich and one of the best sources of news & opinion available. Every time I watch or read one of his reports I learn something new. That is not true for most popular sources of news and information.
For example, on March 10, 2019 Zakaria interviewed Robert Sapolsky, a neuroendocrinologist and professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences and neurosurgery at Stanford University. In this interview Sapolsky informs us of the neurophysiological underpinnings of humans’ “Us vs Them” mentality. He details the actual physical part of the brain, the same part that is responsible for inhibiting us from eating poisonous foods by making them seem repulsive, as the physical hard-wired part of our brains that identifies the “Other” and makes that type of person seem repulsive and sub-human, enabling atrocities like the genocide of a neighboring tribe or the modern vilification of immigrants or various races.
The following week, March 17, 2019, Zakaria interviewed Jared Cohen, the CEO of Jigsaw, a technology incubator created by Google dedicated to understanding global challenges and applying technological solutions – from “countering extremism”, online censorship and cyber-attacks, to protecting access to information.
This brief interview is information dense. I hit pause and rewind several times to parse and reparse what Cohen was saying. Here is the transcript of the interview:
ZAKARIA: When Ukrainians go to elect their next president on March 31st, which is just two weeks from today, they will be faced with a list that started at 44 candidates and is now somewhere south of 40. The top contender is a comedian, and that is not a joke. The current president, Petro Poroshenko, is close behind, as is former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. There is also a candidate named Yuri Tymoshenko. And many observers believe the other Tymoshenko is there simply to siphon votes away from confused citizens who make the mistake between the two of them.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1903/17/fzgps.01.html
That is far from the only trick that is being played in Ukraine’s elections, and there are lessons to be learned as America prepares for its own presidential election next year.
Jared Cohen joins me now. He is a a former top State Department official who runs Jigsaw, which is Google’s sister company that, among other things, works to combat fake news and hack attacks.
So, Jared, Google Jigsaw is, sort of, like Google’s geostrategic arm. And you are the CEO. Why would you go to Ukraine, of all countries?
COHEN: Well, Fareed, first of all, thank you for having me. I think the question I would ask is why would I not go to Ukraine. Ukraine is an innovation hub for the most nefarious cyber activity happening in the world. It’s where you have innovation in disinformation, hacking of traditional systems and infrastructure, in addition to the deployment of these tactics in a military context.
ZAKARIA: Why? Why Ukraine? Why does it have all this?
COHEN: Well, because, right now, we’re all thinking about how do we protect democratic institutions? What do we do to make sure that there’s not a repeat of 2016 in 2020?
And my view there’s nothing that Russia will do to the U.S. that it won’t do to Ukraine first and worse. And we’re not going to solve the problem of how do we protect ourselves against hacking of the 2020 election by just analyzing the president or just looking backwards. We have to forecast what’s going to happen. And if I’m going to forecast what’s going to happen, my goal is to find the places that our adversaries are using as target practice.
ZAKARIA: So what did you learn? Because you went to Ukraine; you’ve been to the Donbass, to the part of eastern Ukraine that is, sort of, occupied by the Russians. What did you learn about what they’re doing?
COHEN: Well, first, we saw a number of tactics that we’ve never seen before. So we’re seeing the systematic and customized targeting of disinformation on messaging platforms. It’s very clear to me that the new front for disinformation is platforms where the barrier of entry is a phone number. It’s much more believable, if somebody is in your contacts list, and you get information from them, you’re much more likely to believe it.
We’re seeing the manipulation of audio and the spoofing the phone — spoofing of phone calls. We’re seeing manufactured revenge porn, manufactured hacking of e-mails that then get dumped onto the public domain. And we’re seeing a growing ecosystem of illicit merchants who are selling these capabilities to the highest bidder on the deep and dark web.
ZAKARIA: So when you — when I hear all this, it sounds very difficult to figure out how to counter it. Do you think the American government is on top of this? Do you think the Trump administration is sufficiently attentive to it?
COHEN: Well, I think they — what’s interesting about Ukraine is you have the convergence of foreign policy and domestic policy. From a domestic perspective in the U.S.., we care about protecting the election, but Ukraine is a very important foreign policy priority. If we connect the two, all of a sudden, we look at building resilience in Ukraine as a very effective way to protect our own election.
And Ukraine has something very interesting. It has some of the most robust civil society in the entire world, but it’s one of only two countries where it has world-class engineering talent who also understands geopolitics just because of where they live, Israel being the other example.
The problem is civil society doesn’t have the technology expertise, and all the engineers want to work in e-commerce, and they’re losing the commercial advantage to Belarus right next door. So if you look at what the U.S. government can do, the U.S. government has lots of mechanisms to support civil society, lots of resources to support civil society. And it does it all around the world. But the U.S. government can bring those two ecosystems together and build world- class companies, invest in world-class capabilities to fight disinformation in Ukraine.
This is already happening with cybersecurity. All of us rely on top, world-class talent for dealing with hacking and traditional cybersecurity issues in Ukraine because they’re the best in the world. The same, too, can be true for disinformation.
ZAKARIA: Do you think, though, that the — is the Trump administration, sort of, attentive enough to how — how malign Russia is?
Let me ask you, does it strike you that this is all coming out of Russia, out of the Kremlin, and the attempt is to delegitimize the Ukrainian election?
COHEN: There’s certainly an attempt to — to delegitimize the Ukrainian election, and particularly at a moment when the Russians don’t have a chance of having their candidate win, running too low in the polls.
You know, on the one hand, you have democracy working pretty well in Ukraine right now because nobody knows who’s going to get to the second round, let alone who’s going to win. On the other hand, that ambiguity makes it more of a target for Russia.
What we’re seeing also is the democratization of these capabilities. So the Iranians were all of a sudden, you know, making similar attempts in the U.S. midterm elections. We’ve seen other countries get into the game. So, you know, Russia has a particular focus on Ukraine. But the capabilities are going to be on full display for other countries to latch onto. And there are certainly plenty of countries out there that have an interest and an incentive to try to disrupt the U.S. presidential elections.
ZAKARIA: Let me switch tacks, finally, and just ask you, you watched the New Zealand attacks, of course, and you hear about how much of it was an online phenomenon. The — the terrorists were in some sense fed the stuff online. They posted online. And then they broadcast online. Does social media have a responsibility? How should we think about that online component?
COHEN: Well, of course — of course they have a responsibility. I mean, I think, as I look at the horrific attacks in New Zealand, there’s a long tradition of deeply disturbed people espousing hatred and then trying to engage in violent acts as a response. I think what’s different in the social media era is the access that they have to niche communities that aren’t constrained by geography and the access they have to instant superficial Internet fame. I think those two incentives are new in the era of social media.
ZAKARIA: And sometimes, some of those niches that the Internet has created are wonderful things. I mean, it allows all the stamp collectors of the world to, kind of, reinforce each other and gain camaraderie. But it also provides this dark side for people who are demented.
COHEN: Of course. And my view is, look, the Internet, to me, is still a — a net positive. I’m an optimist about it. And I think that there’s two things we have to be cautious about: one, not to neglect all of the benefits that come with the Internet, but at the same time I think that we need to be responsible and pay attention to these moments where we’re seeing a darker side.
ZAKARIA: Fascinating. Jared Cohen, pleasure to have you on.
COHEN: All right. Thank you, Fareed.
Manufactured revenge porn! Whoa. That’s news to me. Cohen is telling us that his research in the Ukraine has uncovered influence campaigns that target a person’s phone, access their contacts, and deliver “manufactured revenge porn” as a means of extorting influence. Wow!
These are just two recent examples of the information rich Sunday morning show hosted by Fareed Zakaria on CNN. I recommend it. Thanks Fareed!