usually). Most cyberwar looks like a crowd filling a public square to protest
vaccination because of a flood of targeted stories they’re receiving on Facebook. It looks like an outspoken female journalist getting dozens of death threats an hour from people with names like ‘Arsenal08721’ and ‘JonSmyth7777.’ It looks like someone posting inflammatory videos to private WhatsApp groups in the weeks leading up to an election.
Some commentators will file all this under “the culture wars”. But culture wars imply clashes over different group beliefs and ideas. In the current situation, beliefs and ideas are implanted from the outside – sometimes from a place far away from where the
and in some parts of the world, this happens at a massive scale, with citizens pulled from outrage to outrage so they have little time to launch any kind of productive counter-attack in their own interest. Cyberwar is often outsourced to private entities. When an organisation tries to create disruption domestically or abroad – influence an election, create civil unrest, rescue a toxic brand – it can be handed over to outside bodies with digital expertise. These can
groups actually live. So when someone says “culture war”, you can feel smug by knowing that they really mean cyberwar, even if they don’t know it. The purpose of warfare is to cripple the enemy, so they’ll eventually do what you want them to do. This can be done in all sorts of ways. You don’t always need to blow anything up. Often, just occupying someone’s attention is enough to do the job,
THIS PAST YEAR WAS NO PICNIC. IT WAS MORE LIKE A SANDWICH EATEN IN AN ABANDONED CAR PARK
@feedzinesocial
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