Death by a Thousand Algorithms
More than 1,100 years ago, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was developing the mathematical formulas that we know today as algorithms which now have become so intertwined with the business fortunes of global media giants and the very fabric of geopolitics. A series of recent high level international reports have revealed pockets of Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour (CIB) in the realm of social media and the cyber domain. While the international reports highlighted their existence, they stop short of explaining their impact on various populations. The rise of an even more sophisticated form of activity has emerged – cyber-social attacks which brings together a generation of knowledge in cyber incursions coupled with the latest developments in social media manipulation. These aggressive, malicious, and targeted attacks have left crisis response teams in the business and political worlds with their heads spinning. The Crisis Management Centre issued a report stating that there were massive [...]