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The one cyber threat that keeps the former NSA boss awake at night
By David Swan
The assassination attempts on former US president Donald Trump represent the growing threat of online extremism fuelled by ultra-partisan misinformation trending on social media, according to Admiral Mike Rogers, former director of the US National Security Agency and commander of the United States Cyber Command.
Rogers served in the US Navy for 37 years and is now in the private sector, on the advisory board of Australia’s largest cybersecurity firm, CyberCX. In his mind, he said in an interview in advance of the US election, one cyber threat loomed larger than hacking, malware or ransomware.
“If you ask me what cybersecurity issue concerns me the most, I’ll be honest with you, it’s misinformation and disinformation,” Rogers said.
He describes these as “the manipulation of opinion and perspective in a democratic, free and open society; where adversaries, both outside as well as inside, are turning our freedoms against us to keep us divided and to keep us fighting each other.”
According to Rogers, such heightened online misinformation, combined with both major parties framing the election in apocalyptic terms, can lead to real-world violence.
“One of the byproducts of framing the choice as almost apocalyptic, is it creates this impression of, ‘Ooh my God, if the world is ending, does that justify particular acts, like potentially taking a life?’ ”
Investigations into both assassination attempts are ongoing. Rogers said individuals who committed such crimes were, generally speaking, heavily engaged online.
“Often the social media they are paying most attention to is this very distorted, very extreme source of information and perspectives that create this justification in their mind for why they should do what they do,” he said.
“That is a terrible development for us as a nation.”
Rogers holds a relatively rare distinction, having worked under former presidents Barack Obama and Trump. He said they could not be more different in terms of working styles.
“President Obama was a lawyer by background and rapidly assimilated a lot of information. Voracious reader,” Rogers said. “I never had a session once with him where he wasn’t prepared.
“President Trump, on the other hand, he didn’t assimilate by reading. He liked interaction, he liked to talk. President Obama put great value in consensus, while Trump’s view was, ‘Hey, I’m a business leader. I’m not interested in a 30-year history that led up to this, let’s just make a decision.’
“One challenge was, he was often prone to putting great credence on the last person that he spoke to. You would watch people around him as they came to realise that, the way they tried to engineer their access to him.”
Regardless of the US election result, Australia’s leaders will be hoping to shore up support from the incoming administration for AUKUS, the trilateral security partnership widely viewed as a response to the perceived regional threat posed by China.
Rogers said not enough emphasis had been placed on its second pillar: advanced capabilities such as quantum computing and cybersecurity.
“The focus on AUKUS tends to be on the submarine,” he said. “As important as that is, to me, tier two offers the potential for even greater and broader benefit.”
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