War Is In The Cloud: Learning Is The Best Defense

By Heather McGowan & Chris Shipley

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the GI Bill into law in the Summer of 1944, he and Congress inexorably tied higher education to social stability and economic mobility. But what if now, nearly 75 years later, more and better education and continuous learning were a matter of national security? And not just for soldiers, but for all citizens. What if the GI Bill was among the nation’s most important military spending initiatives?

As the nature and objective of war moves from destruction of life and capture of property to the manipulation of hearts and minds to affect power, a radical shift in education and learning may well be this country’s very best defense.

To be sure, we will need to field an army of cyber security experts, and here we simply don’t have enough troops. Forbes Magazine, reporting on the non-profit information security advocacy group ISACA wrote that “there will be a global shortage of two million cyber security professionals by 2019”.

It will not be enough, however, to leave this new war to the professionals. In this battle, every American is on the front lines. We all interact with digital systems from our computers and mobile phones to ATM machines. Following security protocol and exercising good judgment is the responsibility of every citizen. London-based consultancy Willis Towers Watson found that about 90% of all cyber attacks stemmed from some type of human error or behavior. The hack of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email was, after all, no more than a failure to follow basic security protocols. And even still, digital diligence is not enough. As war moves from land to the cloud, we will be called upon to be a more critically-thinking citizenry.

Evolution of War

Early warfare, by today’s standards, was primitive. Fought on foot with crude weapons, success in battle was measured in human lives and the victor’s spoils. In time, warfare moved from land to sea and air. The vanquished were destroyed, their lands taken, their assets seized, their buildings and infrastructure left in rubble.

Modern war and weaponry continued this march of destruction and acquisition, but the spoils of war were as much political as they were tangible. Today, warfare is making the further shift from terrestrial battles to digital ones, and we barely notice. Cyber warriors hack critical infrastructure, steal classified information, and attack and take control of key systems. At stake in these quiet battles are digital assets and infrastructure that underpin our economy, and – more frighteningly – the public trust fundamental to our political, economic, and social systems.

Rather than lobbing bombs or stealing assets, state-sponsored actors create and insert false narratives into the social media stream to manipulate public opinion. Capture the human heart, the theory goes, and mind and body will follow. You know this new warfare by its common vernacular: fake news.Whether fabricated stories by geo-political foes or fabricated criticism by national leaders, fake news is propaganda designed to turn citizens against one another in pursuit of a political agenda. Fake news is amplified by the rise of fake accounts and bots that re-tweet and share messages. The New York Times recently published an in-depth analysis of the dark world of social media fraud. Identities stolen from real individuals are reconstructed as politically or culturally purposeful profiles to amplify messages in this is cyberwarfare. Some estimates suggest that as many as 48 million of Twitter’s reported active users — nearly 15 percent — are automated accounts crafted to simulate real people. Facebook recently acknowledged that of the 1 billion accounts on its platform, as many as 60 million are fake users. If you see a legitimate-looking news story posted by someone who seems familiar, you are more likely to trust that information. Now, however, we cannot simply accept what this information on face value.

Modern Warfare

The most insidious thing about this assault on truth is that our reactions to it serve to mask the real and present danger: the war in the cloud. When political actors create fake news and leverage Facebook and Twitter to insert those stories into the social stream, we are at war in the cloud. When state-sponsored hackers crack email servers and deliver a treasure trove of confidential information to Wikileaks, we are at war in the cloud. When terrorists leverage the dark web to exchange information, radicalize young people, and plan their attacks, we are at war in the cloud. When neighbor turns on neighbor in fact-less arguments and name-calling tirades in comment streams, we are at war in the cloud.

These wars may be bloodless so far, but they are every bit as dangerous and destructive as those fought with bombs and bullets on land and sea. Worse, because the enemy is invisible and too often unknown, we respond to these attacks by turning on one another, rather than uniting against the common enemy.

Combating Fake News

Today, two-thirds of Americans get at least some of their news from the social media platforms, according to an August 2017 study of the Pew Research Center. Much of that news is unqualified by professional journalists. Some stories are fabricated from whole cloth, and designed to look like the product of a legitimate news organization and then shared on social media by a seemingly trusted friend. Indeed, anyone with Internet access and a little imagination can create a “news” site and fill it with any sort of story. Some do this so well that even the most experienced and discerning news consumer is hard pressed to differentiate truth from fiction. Even seasoned and diligent professionals can be duped. Forged National Security Administration (NSA) documents were submitted to the Rachel Maddow Show and were almost convincing. But for extraordinary reporting, the story might have made it to broadcast. And when every correction by a legitimate news organization diminishes their credibility, faked documents are an effort to de-legitimize the mainstream media.

News has always demanded that we assess its veracity. For much of the last 150 years, venerable news brands served as a proxy for trust. If a story appeared in The New York Times, for example, we didn’t have to think much about whether it was true or accurate. The Times usually got it right, and when they didn’t, they corrected themselves. Although their perspective skews liberal, their facts are verified.

Now, a far more skeptical and discerning eye must accompany news consumption. The reader must question the plausibility and objective of every story. Often, the reader needs to confer with additional sources. Most certainly, readers need to get their facts straight before jumping into the social comment stream. With no Walter Cronkite to tells us “the way it is”, today’s news consumer must actively deploy critical thinking, research, and complex reasoning to the very act of being an engaged citizen. This Media Bias Chart generated by a patent attorney in Denver attempts to make sense of the media landscape. While elements of the chart are open for debate, the chart is a great first step in mapping fact from fiction and being explicit about the political and cultural biases.

Out-Thinking the Enemy

The shifting veracity of news sources suggests the underpinning of the cyber warrior’s strategy: We may not be out-smarted by cyber warriors, but they may be out-thinking us on a battlefield on which traditionally we didn’t have to do much thinking. News was once three TV channels, a few national papers, and your local paper. Then, we trusted news, and to a large degree, we trusted public officials. Partisan media, both liberal and conservative, began to shake that trust. Politicians took advantage of that partisanship to advance their agendas. The goal, of course, was to influence opinion and sway the vote. The unintended consequence, however, was a fertile field in which to sow the seeds of division, discontent, then ultimately, the false narratives that undermine confidence not just in government but in each other.

And to be clear, technology-fuel change and expansive globalization have left many people looking for a scapegoat. Consider the shocking statistic compiled by Oxfam last year: just eight men now hold as much wealth as 3.6 billion people – half the world’s population. Oxfam also reported that eighty-two percent of economic gains in the last year went to the top 1% of wealth holders, pushing U.S. income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. It’s no wonder, then, that those left behind are looking for a place to lay down their anger. That’s fertile ground for fake news to sow unrest.

While income inequality is a huge and systemic problem, we know that education and learning are the path to prosperity and security. Yet, the critical thinking skills we need are not necessarily the foundation of today’s baccalaureate degrees, which increasingly focus on the transfer of skills and information from teacher to student to prepare a graduate for work. Put another way, our institutions of learning focus on turning out workers, not thinkers.

We won’t work our way to victory in the war of the cloud. We’ll have to think our way to the win.

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Our ability to decipher fact from fiction or expertise from ignorance is directly correlated to our competence. In 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger published "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. In that paper, the authors described their now famous Dunning-Kruger effect. The lowest levels of competence project the highest levels of confidence.

Therein lies the fake news challenge. The less we know, the more tightly we embrace the facts we believe, even when those “fact” are not, in fact, factual. The more those fake news stories are shared by fake accounts that look like our trusted friends the more confused we become.

If we are to resist the manipulation by foreign actors in our national mindset, then, we must build competence in the very skills – reasoning, critical thinking, counter-argument – that destroy the false narratives.

We will become a stronger, more secure nation if we imbue our national defense with a national education steeped in the agency and mindset that demands we challenge assumptions and learn continuously.

Learning Is the Answer

We must learn again to rethink everything we ingest. A story presented as news may not be true. A story posted by a Facebook or Twitter profile that appears to be a friend may be fraudulent. The words of a politician must be parsed. Nothing can be taken at face value; everything must be questioned. Indeed, to do so will be a patriotic act.

Our model of knowledge transfer – ingest, internalize, playback – skips over the essential skills of scrutinizing, questioning, and validating. These skills are not limited to formal education, of course. There is no credential in healthy skepticism or challenging authority. If we are to win the war in the cloud, we’ll need to cross both an educational divide and, as Marina Corbis at the Institute for the Future of Work frames it, the “motivational divide”. We must be motivated to see the world in a new light. We must accept that we are not well armed to fight this modern war. And that might be the toughest battle of all.

Formal education gained through higher education (“college” or “university”) is one important path to create a more educated populace to, among other goals, build our cyber security defenses. Yet the Pew Research Center found that Republicans are more likely to see high education as a threat to the country, not an avenue to security. While the survey didn’t account for the drivers of this shifting perception, some might argue that the decidedly liberal bent of many colleges and universities spurs a backlash among conservatives. Our country’s need for an educated citizenry to face the Future of Work as well as our national security must transcend political party.

Because, what if learning is our best defense? What if more of our nation’s defense budget was spent on education and learning for everyone, along with targeted investments to increase the number of cyber security professionals? What if programs were developed to educate our children in the compulsory K-12 system to critically question information sources and recognize fake news? PBS reports such efforts are now underway in many states. What if a re-imagined GI Bill was among the nation’s most important military spending initiatives?

Because, in the end, education and learning are not only the future of work, but also the future of peace and security.

The Van Halen Rules

We welcome and value your considered comments, and to insure that commenting is productive, we invoke what we call our “Van Halen Rule.” As the story goes, Van Halen produced a seriously technical concert that required careful attention to details. To insure that the venues read the contract, the band added a provision requesting a bowl of M&M candies, from which the brown M&Ms had been removed. They had nothing against the brown candies; they just wanted to be sure the venue paid attention to the details. If the venue didn't get the M&Ms right, the band would know other, more important, details may have been missed, too.

Too often, our posts on work garnered comments based upon an opinion triggered by a headline or graphic and not the content of our article. So that we can focus our engagement on informed readers, we ask that you type "#" before your comment to signal that your comment is based upon consideration of all of our work rather than a knee jerk reaction to a headline. We look forward to learning from you.

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About the Authors

Heather McGowan, 2017 LinkedIn Top Voice for Education, and Chris Shipley formed Work to Learn in 2015 with the belief that we are leaving the paradigm in which we learned (in order) to work and we are now entering the paradigm in which we will need to work (in order) to learn (continuously). We work at the intersection of the future of work and the future of learning helping clients adapt to this new paradigm shift. More information about our work including keynote speaking requests can be found at www.futureislearning.com

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Further Reading

To learn more about efforts to combat fake news, we recommend considering some efforts already underway:

·     https://mashable.com/2017/10/19/italy-schools-fake-news-facebook-google/#Y..WztbS9sqo

·     https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/02/16/514364210/5-ways-teachers-are-fighting-fake-news

·     https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf

·     https://www.educationdive.com/news/schools-fight-spread-of-fake-news-through-news-literacy-lessons/507057/

Note: We will add to this list of resources so please suggest additions.

Article Data Sources:

1.    Willis Tower Watson Cyber Study: https://www.willistowerswatson.com/en/press/2017/03/when-it-comes-to-cyber-risk-businesses-are-missing-the-human-touch  

2.    ISACA 2016 Study: https://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/be4eaf1a-eea6-4b97-b36e-b62dfc8dcbae-original.jpeg

3.    Herjavek Group and Cyber security Ventures: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cybercrime-damages-are-predicted-to-cost-the-world-6-trillion-annually-by-2021-300540158.html

4.    Facebook Engagements of Election Stories: Buzzfeed: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook?utm_term=.jbA0QmJzB#.siADvRoq6

5.    Cybersecurity Attack Landscape: https://business.f-secure.com/report-cyber-attack-landscape-of-2017-so-far

6.    Media Bias Chart: https://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com

7.    Pew Research: Public Trust in Government: https://www.people-press.org/2017/05/03/public-trust-in-government-1958-2017/

8.    Pew Research: Fake News Creates Confusion: https://www.journalism.org/2016/12/15/many-americans-believe-fake-news-is-sowing-confusion/

9.    Dunning Kruger Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect