Ms. Bradshaw, I'm very interested in your analysis of junk news. You talk about “cyber troops”, psy-ops, the weaponization of AI.
In 2015, in my region, because I basically live on Facebook, according to my wife, I saw a completely different narrative than what was in the national media. I saw deeply racist posts, mostly from Britain First, anti-Muslim posts, posts attacking immigrants and attacking refugees. They were very targeted. They were targeting on Facebook in key areas of my region among key voters.
It was a completely different message than anything that was happening nationally. It wasn't really noticed, because we still pay attention to what Peter Mansbridge says at six o'clock.
I always felt that out of that there had to have been a better or clearer type of targeting, such that these Facebook users who were not normally political were suddenly repeating this type of message. This seemed to be what we saw out of Brexit, the idea that groups such as Cambridge Analytica can specifically target the poll voters, the voters who are actually going to be influencing, and going on and pushing this.
You talked about how this was used in swing states with certain swing voters. I'd like you to elaborate on that.
I'd also like you to elaborate...because we keep talking about the third party actors as though it's just the bad, hired mercenary guns. You talked about the political influencers who actually are in the parties. Can you talk about the connections between people in the parties, these third party operatives, and how they're using this misinformation online?