#BHUSA: How Nation States Hack Public Opinion

#BHUSA: How Nation States Hack Public Opinion

Nation state threat actors, including Russia and China, are using multiple techniques to effectively ‘hack’ public opinion around the world, according to Renée DiResta. DiResta expressed her views in a keynote session at the Black Hat USA 2020 virtual conference.





DiResta works at the Stanford Internet Observatory and has been actively researching how different nation states have attempted to influence policies and individuals. She explained how, over the last decade, state actors have recognized that they can advance their geopolitical goals with different types of misinformation, propaganda and influence campaigns that make use of social media platforms.





“As we move from just the idea of influence to the idea of information operations specifically, what you start to see is it goes from shaping public opinion to what we’re going to call hacking public opinion – using manipulative, misleading tactics,” DiResta said.





Distract, Persuade, Entrench and Divide



There are four primary approaches that nation state threat actors typically take to hack public opinion efforts including distraction, persuasion, entrenchment and division.





DiResta said a common goal is to have a distraction campaign, which is trying to make a target audience pay attention to something else. Another model is a persuasion campaign, which is trying to convince people to believe a certain fact, or feel a certain way. Entrenchment is another approach, and it is where the attackers create groups dedicated to particular types of identities in an attempt to advance a given position. Nation states are also often trying to highlight divisions between different groups of people, am ..

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