Government Executive - Authors - Peter W. Singer

How Elon Musk’s Twitter Buy Raises Cybersecurity Risks For The Rest Of Us

Peter W. Singer — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 10:02:00 -0400

For all the worries that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter will roll back limits on hate speech and misinformation, the acquisition also presents major cybersecurity concerns. Now that a critical public communications network has become private property, there are five major cyber risks that have to be accounted for, both within the network and beyond.

1. Musk may own Twitter, but China and Saudi Arabia effectively own Musk. The transitive property matters in not just math, but business and politics. Elon Musk’s fortune comes from owning Tesla; he had to sell off some of his stock to gain the cash needed to complete the Twitter deal. However, Tesla depends on the Chinese Communist Party’s good graces not just for its manufacturing (its Gigafactory in Shanghai makes over 70,000 cars a month), but also 24% of its revenue and its primary growth market (sales jumped 65% in last year in China, amid tougher sales in the rest of the world). This means a crucial communications network is now owned by a man whose business and personal fortune are beholden to the whims of an authoritarian government, one that has proven perfectly happy to turn the screws on companies for its own political ends.

Other authoritarian regimes have a more direct hold on Twitter. To avoid tanking the stock by selling too many Tesla shares, the stock-rich, cash-poor Musk also needed help from other investors. After multiple traditional tech investor candidates declined to get involved in a deal with a questionable path to profit, several non-democratic regimes filled the gap. The second-largest chunk of Twitter now belongs to Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and the Saudi kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, which invested roughly $1.9 billion, followed by the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar at $375 million.

2. The troll in the henhouse. Twitter was once a "wild west," where threat actors who ranged from ISIS to Neo-Nazis to Russian info-warriors ran wild, easily pushing hate, calls for violence, and disinformation on topics ranging from elections to the pandemic. Over years of painful, and often deadly, lessons learned, Twitter developed ever-improving policies for user safety and content moderation. Not everyone agreed on them, but they definitely made the platform a less hateful place and its effect on the world less pernicious.

What happens when Twitter is run by someone who doesn’t just oppose the concept of content moderation, but is personally part of the problem? Musk delights in his persona as an internet troll. Even worse, he has a long record of pushing false information in his tweets, from Thai cave rescuers to a baseless conspiracy theory about a victim of a violent crime—and of knowingly violating rules of conduct in business and the internet, as he admitted in settling fraud charges. This was a major challenge to the network when he was among its most popular voices. Now he is the most powerful. His public statements, private texts (revealed during the Twitter sale lawsuit), and firings of key players in its legal, trust, and safety team (ironically after they had just beaten his lawyers in court), indicate that he wants to turn back the clock, and make it easier for purveyors of false information to go viral. This is bad, not just for those of us who like their conversations unpolluted with lies or threats from modern-day Nazis, but for entire countries targeted by Russia and others with hybrid attacks that combine social media campaigns and computer network attacks.

3. Musk’s lax cybersecurity history. A company’s cybersecurity is only as strong as its leaders’ attitude towards the issue. Do the people at the top take threats seriously, and therefore use organizational resources to limit risks, or do they wish away real problems? Musk’s track record on cybersecurity is worse than Tesla’s autopilot. Every major company faces cyber challenges, but hacking Teslas has become a rite of passage at hacker conventions for literally the last decade. Each time a new vulnerability is dramatically demonstrated, Musk says he will act, but only does so after the fact and after public displays. Tesla’s repeated problems with getting ahead of its cybersecurity vulnerabilities, year after year, inspire little confidence in how the boss will think about and act upon cyber threats in his new company.

4. Workforce cuts. Musk massively overpaid for Twitter. Even his most ardent fan would have to admit so, given his multiple attempts to extricate himself from the deal. As Bloomberg reported, “The value of the stakes rolled over from Twitter stock declined by about 40% since Musk made his offer in April.” Musk is banking on two primary means to amp up profitability and recoup his investment.

Unfortunately, each raises cyber threat concerns. One is to cut costs, largely by slashing the workforce, perhaps as much as 75 percent. Such massive layoffs are sure to affect security team numbers, capability, and quality (the best people are typically not the ones who will stick around amidst mass layoffs, all the more in a company whose value has sunk and shows no sign of recovering to its highs). The turmoil and turnover also throw blood in the water for both insider threats with diminished company loyalty and external forces looking for which firms to target.

5. Monetizing malpractice.

The other reported means by which Musk hopes to turn the business around is to sell verification status, perhaps for $20 a month or maybe just $8. This may or may not yield billions of dollars in revenue, but it will certainly open up new ways to game the system. In each case, threats will be able to bank on years of trust for a few dollars. First, if a user decides not to pay for what they have had for free, and exit the platform, as some of Twitter’s most valuable power users have already announced, a bad actor can spoof or even assume their identity. By squatting on the handle, the attacker can then leverage the trust and follower numbers that the real user has built up over the course of years. Secondly, for less than a billionth of what Musk paid for Twitter, a threat actor will be able to gain and use the value of verification badges, and thus the trust in the overall system that the prior Twitter leaders spent years in building up. This offers a new pathway for one-time hoaxes and exploits.

This combined cyber threats matter for the hundreds of millions of Twitter users, from celebrities to service members, whose personal information Elon Musk is now the steward. But this danger goes beyond due to the particular role Twitter plays in the social media ecosystem. It is not the most popular, nor the most profitable. It is, however, the go-to place for policymakers, media, and the public to find and share information on fast-moving topics of news, especially during crises and conflict.

This makes Twitter a new kind of critical infrastructure for the digital age. And like other forms of critical infrastructure, it also makes it a tempting target for malicious actors, ranging from governments to criminals, seeking to leverage its power manipulate the wider world, whether it be to shape markets or try to stoke false emergencies. Russia initially tested it out as far back as 2014, using it to push false information on a gas explosion, while as recently as last week, the NY Post lost control of its account, spewing out false stories and hate. Research has found false reports can cause billion dollar swings in the stock market, while studies of future warfare show that social networks will increasingly be weaponized not just against nations, but also individual citizens and soldiers.

The outcome is that any new cybersecurity weaknesses at Elon Musk’s new company are also now threats for the rest of us. This may be why some of the worst cyber threat actors in the world are celebrating Musk's purchase.

]]>

Superspreader Down: How Trump’s Exile from Social Media Alters the Future of Politics, Security, and Public Health

Peter W. Singer — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 12:34:44 -0500

By the numbers, no person in human history has shared more conspiracy theories with a greater number of people than Donald J. Trump. Among all the momentous events of the last week, the silencing of his social-media megaphones is a “yuge” moment not just for American politics but a host of issues from public health to national security.

In researching LikeWar, Emerson Brooking’s and my book on the weaponization of social media, I actually went back and read every single @realdonaldtrump tweet, going back to his very first: a May 4, 2009, announcement of his upcoming appearance on the Letterman show. As you sift through the more than 57,000 tweets that follow, the sheer scale of the lies and insults becomes mind-numbing. (I joke about my “information warfare PTSD.”) Yet what is also notable is how many conspiracy theories Trump both started or massively elevated long before becoming president. They ranged from well-known lies like birtherism to other ones that are even more despicable in retrospect, like fueling anti-vaccine myths.

Most importantly, we found that Trump was spectacularly effective in persuading others to spread his conspiracy theories. Our research showed that, just like in public health, superspreaders are the key to virality. The path to making the internet less toxic is placing limits on these superspreaders, be they ISIS propagandists or right-wing extremists. Instead of trying to police everyone, we must focus on key nodes that affect everyone.

Banning Trump is obviously the headline event for social media, but it reflects a larger policy shift by the companies that created and run these now-essential networks. These firms are now making content moderation decisions based increasingly not just on whether a user or a post violated their rules, but what effect these might have on people off the network. This was already shifting as firms adjusted to reduce COVID-19 misinformation, but hit its culmination in Trump’s ejection.

Over the last year, and seen most explosively in the violent seizing of the Capitol, the political context changed, both on social media and in the real world. But Trump didn’t seem to understand it. Or, maybe, having never been held accountable from birth onwards, the outgoing president thought he could keep on operating the same way: crossing a line, and getting away with it. Importantly, Twitter decided he had crossed a final line. He had not just repeatedly broken the platform’s rules on election-fraud claims. Now, even after all the events at the Capitol, he had used his return to Twitter after an initial suspension to immediately break the pledge of a “peaceful transition” that he had made in a stilted video released just the night before.

What too many in media and politics are missing, but what Twitter and the other platforms couldn’t ignore, was Trump’s announcement that he would not be participating in the Inaugural events. With that, he didn’t just go back on his pledge of peaceful transition, but threw gasoline on the fire yet again. There were already a series of extremist militia events planned for Jan. 17 in various state capitals. (The storming of the U.S. Capitol was not isolated; last week saw armed pro-Trump mobs also attempt or succeed in breaking into state legislatures and governors’ homes in Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah, and Washington state.) Even more worrisome, security analysts had picked up online discussion of a “Million Militia March” set for Jan. 20 in Washington, D.C. Its purpose, at least in the chatter, is not just to disrupt Biden’s inauguration, but also to seek violent payback on police for the supposed “martyrdom” of the rioter killed in the Capitol. Twitter officials concluded that Trump’s tweets “are likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021.”

Whether Trump intended the dual dog whistle or not, it was heard that way by both the “patriots” whom he’d told he “loved” even as they rampaged and chanted “Hang Mike Pence, Hang Mike Pence,” and by the platform companies that own the networks he needed for his rabble-rousing messages. And for them, as it should be for the rest of us, Trump had lost the benefit of the doubt.

The reverberations of Trump’s deplatforming as part of this larger shift will shake out for not just the coming days, but over the long term — and in everything from terrorism to public health. The reason is that it fundamentally alters the playing field.

Everything in the social media ecosystem was once tilted in the favor of toxic forces, from the algorithms that push our content feeds toward extremism to the companies’ longstanding reticence to admit it. Imagine a foosball game on a slanted table. Yes, the little soccer players could try to stop each rush of the rolling ball, but all their spinning wouldn’t matter in the end. Over the past few years, however, that table has started to be righted. Driven by outside pressure over election disinformation, mass killings, and COVID-19 striking close to home — and perhaps most significantly, internal employee revolts — the companies’ leaders have put into place a series of measures that make it harder for toxic forces. From banning certain types of ads to de-ranking certain lies, these safeguards built up, piece by piece, culminating in the deplatforming of the Internet’s loudest voice.

Of course, this shift is long overdue. Each new policy came after the fact. Those of us who work on this topic know that many horrible events fueled by social media could have been avoided or at least mitigated with such actions. For myself, the crystalizing moment was being told by a senior social-media executive after the mass killing in Pittsburgh that although his company had been able to limit ISIS’ use of their network, technical and legal reasons meant they couldn’t apply the very same measures to far-right extremists. But after several more social media-linked mass killings — Christchurch, El Paso, etc. — what he’d said was “impossible” suddenly became possible. As Internet wags have commented, the firms’ operating practices have been a bit like Calvinball from the Calvin and Hobbes comic, in which the rules are made up as they go.

Yet what often seems capricious and irresponsible is also understandable. The companies faced a rapidly changing business, technology, and battlefield. And making these kind of decisions is not what most people in tech firms planned on doing when they packed their bags for Silicon Valley. They want to build and profit, not police.

So where does this all leave us now? It certainly seems that the firms have finally come to the realization that they have a whole new set of responsibilities. They are not just tech creators or even the equivalent of news-media editors. After years of dodging it, they get that they are running information warzones. And there is a key change that comes from understanding that social media is not just a communication space but a conflict space. In Clausewitzian terms, the forces of toxicity now face a whole new type of “friction.”

Of course, Trump’s ban from platforms that range from Twitter to Pinterest won’t end the spread of conspiracy theories. For example, the lie that the Capitol riot was the work of antifa was pushed to over a half million engagements within its first day by lesser superspreaders like Rep. Matt Gaetz. Nor will Trump’s exile from social media end the risk of extremism. Already, we see extremists clustering in smaller, tighter nets, some out in the open on networks like Parler or Gab and some hidden from view. As with ISIS or Alex Jones, the faithful will follow, but into smaller rabbit holes.

Yet, in this new conflict space, the most important actor just got moved off the board. The raw numbers show that Trump is not just a key node, but the literal center of multiple overlapping universes of conspiracy theory and extremism, from far-right extremism to QAnon to anti-vaxxers. Now, there is a literal black hole in each.

And while nature may abhor a vacuum, these will not be easily filled. It isn’t that the man is unique. It is that the steps finally taken to rein in history’s greatest superspreader will made it harder for those who follow to have the same effect.

]]>

The Snake-And-Alligator Border Moat: A Budget Analysis

Peter W. Singer — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 19:00:00 -0400

President Donald Trump yet again has proven the so-called experts wrong with his “out of the box” thinking — this time with a plan to defend America’s borders with a moat filled with snakes and alligators. In support of the president’s visionary agenda, the following memo lays out the projected costs.

Scale of Project: The length of the U.S.-Mexico border mandates a snake and alligator-filled ditch of 1,954 miles. The Canadian border would add an additional 5525 miles, but it is clearly not those kind of people that the president intended.

While portions of the moat could utilize the Rio Grande, that river’s flow rate and exit into the Gulf of Mexico would mean we would lose a substantial portion of the guard force (the snakes and alligators) within 7 to 10 days.

The exact required density of snake and alligators per mile for border security has never been tested. Given their speed and coverage capabilities, it would seem necessary to have a minimum of 10 alligators and 1,000 snakes per mile. Lower amounts may not create the desired deterrent effect towards any individuals and/or families seeking refuge in America.

Workforce Costs: While there is no General Services Administration standard for alligators, preliminary research indicates a unit cost of approximately $150 for hatchlings and $2,000 for adults. We may be able to supplement this with lower-cost alligators sourced from police auctions. (Another idea: a gator bounty could have a positive ancillary effect on “Florida Man” turnout for the 2020 election.) For planning purposes, we should assume an initial Alligator Border Guard force of 19,540 alligators, sustainably split between adults and hatchlings, for an initial buy of $21,005,500. At roughly $6.80 in shipping costs per pound, transportation costs will require another roughly $40,447,800.

For the 1,954,000-member Snake Border Guard, the optimal force laydown should mix water moccasins (for maximum water effectiveness) and brightly colored coral snakes (for maximum visual deterrence). The present price per snake is approximately $350, generating a cost of $683,900,000. Unfortunately, snakes have a limited life span, meaning after the initial purchase, we will have to pay this same fee seven years from now. But that is a problem to be solved by another president, hopefully Ivanka.

Additional Cost Elements: One challenge of adding a dangerous animal-based border guard is that it introduces three additional cost elements. Snakes and alligators do not require a salary, but do require food. There is an argument that our new guard force will be able to subsist on the flesh of illegal immigrants, but there is no guarantee that we will have the proper distribution of family members of sufficient size and weight (especially problematic are the small children) to sustain the new border system.

Therefore, we should plan that each member of the Alligator Border Guard unit will require roughly 300 pounds of food a year. Gator food pellets price at approximately $13 per pound, costing $76,206,000 per year. The snakes can exist on smaller amounts of food. Frozen rats come in at roughly $149 per pack (available on Amazon, but not Amazon Prime, so we’ll have to wait a week), yielding a cost of $291,146,000 each year.

Unfortunately, for all its experience at holding children in cages, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, is not trained or equipped to maintain so many animals in cages. Care for the snake and alligator force will require at least one specialist per mile. Presently, the average starting salary of a zoologist is $38,212, which, adding in expected costs and benefits, comes to $130,665,934 per year.

Finally is the ever problematic health care issue, for which Obama is to blame. While many prospective illegal immigrants will be deterred by the snake-and-alligator moat, we should expect that the level of violence that they are fleeing and the prospect of joining the American dream will still induce some of the tired, poor, and yearning to be free to test the defense, even when faced by the prospect of death by bite or venom.

Each month there are roughly, 76,000 unauthorized border crossings. We can conservatively estimate that 10 percent might still try to make it. While the Alligator Border Guard likely will kill or at least maim any man, woman, or child, snake venom does not act immediately. Unfortunately, the liberal elite will likely force us to treat these wounded illegal immigrants before returning them to their homeland. Assuming another 10 percent are wounded, the $143,000 costs of treating venomous events yields an additional $1,304,160,000.

Summary: The sum total of President Trump’s Snake and Alligator Border Guard comes in at a highly reasonable cost of roughly $2.5 billion in set-up costs, plus annual operating costs of $1.8 billion.

This budget estimate, of course, does not include the cost of building the actual moat into which the guard force would be deployed. Here we can draw upon the past precedent of diverting $3.6 billion from the U.S. military construction budgets towards border wall repairs. While there has not been a single terrorist attack over the last 15 years linked to illegal immigrants, we can make the case that the alligator and snake moat is a far better national security investment than new military housing for our troops, repairs of base schools for their families, or training ranges and command and control facilities to allow them to win any future wars.

In conclusion, the multi-billion dollar costs of a snake-and-alligator filled moat along the U.S. border are a major commitment. But what better way to show President Trump’s own commitment to American values than by putting tens of thousands of dangerous animals right alongside its citizens?

P.W. Singer is strategist at New America and author of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media…and this is obviously a parody.

]]>