Diplomatist Magazine Diplomatist August 2018 | Page 54

BOOK SHELF
BOOK SUMMARY
LikeWar
The Weaponization
of Social Media
Social media are transforming war,
crime, and diplomacy. Terrorists can
broadcast attacks; “Twitter wars”
produce real-world casualties; and
enemy movements can be tracked
on social platforms. War, technology
and politics have blurred into a new
battle space that is as close as our own
phones. Two defense experts explore
the collision of war, politics, and social
media, where the most important
battles are now only a click away.
P
. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking in their new book
“LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media”, tackle
the mind-bending questions that arise when war goes
online and the online world goes to war. They explore how
terrorist group ISIS copies the Instagram tactics of singer
Taylor Swift; a former addict of online role-playing game
World of Warcraft foils war crimes thousands of miles away;
internet trolls shape elections; and China uses a smartphone
app to police the thoughts of 1.4 billion citizens. The book
also looks at whether anything can be kept secret in a world
of networks; does social media expose the truth or bury
it; how OSINT (open source intelligence) outpaces other
forms of espionage; and what role do ordinary people now
play in international confl icts? Finally, looking to the crucial
years ahead, LikeWar outlines a radical new paradigm for
understanding and defending against the unprecedented
threats of our networked world.
Over fi ve years, Singer and Brooking, studied what social
media has been doing to politics, news, and war around the
world, drawing upon everything from historic cases to the
latest in Artifi cial Intelligence and machine intelligence. At the
same time, they tracked dozens of confl icts and quasi confl icts
in every corner of the globe, all playing out simultaneously
online, scooping up everything from the spread of YouTube
battle clips to a plague of Nazi-sympathizing cartoon frogs.
They interviewed experts ranging from legendary internet
pioneers to infamous “reality stars,” weaving their insights
together with those of viral marketers and political hacks,
terrorist propagandists and preteen reporters, soldiers and
generals (including one who may have committed some light
treason). They visited the offi ces and bases of the US defense,
diplomatic, and intelligence communities; traveled overseas
to meet with foreign government operatives; and made trips
to both the brightly colored offi ces of social media companies
54 • Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 6 • Issue 8 • August 2018, Noida