← Risky Bulletin
Loading summary
Transcript34 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hey, everyone, and welcome along to Seriously Risky Biz. This is our podcast, all about cyber security policy and intelligence. My name's Amberly Jack, and very shortly I'll bring in Tom Uren, our policy and intelligence editor, and we're going to have a bit of a chat about the Seriously Risky Business newsletter. Tom has written that up this week. You can read it and subscribe over at our website, Risky Biz. But. But first, I'd like to thank the sponsor for this week's show, which is Airlock Digital, and you can find them@airlockdigital.com G', Day, Tom. It's great to see you.
- [00:37]
B
G', day, Amberly. How are you?
- [00:38]
A
Yeah, really good, thanks. And Tom, let's chat about Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who wants the State Department to push back on disinformation, which kind of seems like a very sensible idea, but correct me if I'm wrong here, Tom, my understanding is that the Department's units that are designed specifically to counter disinformation have been shut down. So never fear, the answer here is apparently Community Notes on X. Tom, please explain.
- [01:13]
B
Yeah, so the story is that shortly after the Trump administration came into office, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio shut down. It's got a long name, basically their counter propaganda office. And also Pam Bondi, who was Attorney General at that time, shut down an FBI counter interference type office. And these were, in my view, shut down for political reasons, not because the problem didn't exist, it's just that we don't like these offices. And the Trump administration also then through doge, cut a whole lot of funding to, depending upon your point of view, independent overseas media or America's overseas propaganda apparatus. So things like Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Voice of Asia, these are all semi independent bodies. And although people describe them as propaganda, I think I would probably say that they're like the Australian abc. Like they're funded by the state, but they don't have any mechanism to deliberately enforce state views, so they project American values. So they basically disarmed from a propaganda and disinformation point of view.
- [02:44]
A
Right.
- [02:46]
B
For no good reason that I could see.
- [02:49]
A
So what's changed? Why. Why are they now turning back and saying, well, actually, because they're getting hammered.
- [02:56]
B
And I think there's two parts to that. One part is that what the US Government is doing is not popular overseas. And so there's a lot of material for propaganda and disinformation actors to use. Like. Like they're not helping themselves. And so I Guess there's a feeling that it's not us, it's the propaganda that's the problem. So. But I think that there is a real problem there. I think the US in the longer term does need an apparatus to push back. And I mean, the whole thing just strikes me as ridiculous that you had all this machinery to do this, you gutted it, and now you're asking your diplomats to do it. Like as, I don't know, as a side hustle, part of their, in addition to all the other work they've got to do. Like I said, you know, U.S. foreign policy isn't exactly popular right now. So I don't imagine that diplomats are. I think they're more in running around here on fire mode rather than, oh, I've got some free time to play around on X and speak truth.
- [04:11]
A
And just on that, Tom. So we've had the call out to the diplomats. Where does X come into this?
- [04:19]
B
So this was reported by the Guardian. So this memo went out to foreign posts. So embassies and consulates. So according to the Guardian, it instructs embassies and consulates to pursue five broad goals. Countering hostile messaging, expanding access to information, exposing adversary behavior, elevating local voices who support American interests, and promoting what it calls telling America's story. So the, like many of those goals, like I said, they had an apparatus to do that. And so all of a sudden you're saying to, I don't know, I mean, who in an embassy, is it a new job, like. And I think part of the problem is that they're asking individual embassies to do things that would be better done in a coordinated way.
- [05:10]
A
Yeah.
- [05:13]
B
One of the ways that the US government previously fought disinformation was actually by engaging in the platforms. And the platforms would do things like, look for the term of art was coordinated, inauthentic behavior. People who are pretending to be organic and acting in a coordinated way. And when that happens, it doesn't really matter what the message is. It's that you've got hundreds of thousands of bots pushing a message. Whatever that is, doesn't matter. It could be, you know, pro Republican, it could be pro Democrat, it could be anti climate change, whatever. They're, they're not real people. They're pushing an agenda in secret. And if they were up front, I'm a bot and I'm promoting this, that would be fine. And so they did a lot of work taking those things off the platform. Now, where Community Notes came in is that when Elon Musk took over X, he basically got rid of all of that trust and safety apparatus and replaced it with. With something called Community Notes, where it basically crowdsource air quotes. Truth. What is the truth of this matter? And so for many of the topics that are subject of disinformation or propaganda, there is no truth. America is better than Russia. China is better than America. Like, is there a truth there? I don't know that there is a truth, but that's, that's something that you would like a political message. Trump is terrible. Trump is wonderful. There is no ground truth for that. It's just opinions. And so for the most divisive things, Community Notes doesn't address that. And also, I mean, even when facts air quotes are divisive, it doesn't address that either because there is no consensus. And so it's a very, very poor way to try and fight back against propaganda, because that's not what propaganda is aimed at. And if they're pushing propaganda, they're going to contest it in Community Notes as well. And I mean, ironically, you're also asking diplomats to engage in coordinated. I guess it would be authentic behavior. We're diplomats and we're being paid to influence Community Notes. I haven't looked at Twitter X's terms of service, whether that would be allowed or not. Like, if, if the Chinese state said all our diplomats must engage in Community Notes and promote Chinese values there, I don't think that would be okay for X. So conversely, probably American diplomats shouldn't be allowed to do that anyway. It just seems like such a ridiculous idea that this is the solution to cutting funding for, like, organizations whose purpose was to do this.
- [08:12]
A
Yeah. Let's say, Tom, that the US Today kind of backtracked when, okay, we're not going to make our diplomats sit on Twitter and do their own thing. We are actually going to bring these, these very organized units with a specific purpose back. Is that going to make a lot of difference today?
- [08:30]
B
No, none at all. So I think, I think of this as one information operation, one influence campaign, one. You know, it doesn't make much difference, but I think over the longer term, it. It's like turning the Titanic. You know, you turn it a little bit today, you change a few opinions, and I think in the longer term, it can make a difference. And I feel like it's kind of like cyber security, and it's that a space that you need to contest all the time, otherwise you're going backwards. And I think that having campaigns outed and exposed as being state organized does Make a difference. That's why a lot of accounts on X are labeled as, you know, state based media. I think it does make a difference to know where the message is coming from. And so when organizations are hiding that and purporting to be something else, I think there's like actually tremendous value revealing that, like revealing one campaign, not so much of a difference, but doing it over a long period of time I do think makes a difference. Now the other thing is that what I'd call adversary states, Russia, China, even Iran investing in this in a big way. So China for example, has cgtn. Cgtn, China Global Television Network. Their explicit mandate is to tell China's story well. So I feel like, you know, even in this case Rubio's ripped off what China is doing just in a like cut rate, cheaper version.
- [10:09]
A
Yeah, right.
- [10:10]
B
And they've got cgtn plus they run organized inauthentic campaigns on Facebook, on X, on any social media you care to mention. You see that turn up in reports from OpenAI and Anthropic on what, what adversaries are doing with AI. And you know, regardless of whether you think those campaigns work or make a difference, I think it's worth investing resources to counter them and also research whether they work. I think there is a debate about how effective they are. But this was not. We've researched it and we figured out they're useless and we're better off spending our money somewhere else. It's like, oh, we just don't like these organization so we're going to get rid of them. And so there was a decision based on no evidence. I think the minimum would be is we should counter it and we should figure out what actually works and what doesn't work. So a kind of research based strategy.
- [11:18]
A
I want to move on Tom, to the FBI in China. So the recent FBI breach that we heard about not long ago has been designated a major incident by the FBI. And in the newsletter, Tom, you're saying that lawful intercept and surveillance systems are an ongoing target for China. So there really needs to be a concerted effort to protect them. So let's start off Tom, I guess why are these systems so valuable for China?
- [11:49]
B
So the reason they're valuable is that it lets you know what the US law enforcement and national security concerns are when it comes to individual people or I guess like technically it's devices because what you get is phone numbers and probably email addresses I'm guessing, and those kinds of what you'd call selectors. So that from a Chinese Point of view, if I got access, I'll put on my Chinese hat. If I got access to those systems, I'd look at all the numbers and go, who are the people? What overlap is there with my intelligence operations?
- [12:32]
A
Yep.
- [12:33]
B
And I would go, oh, here's the people that they're concerned about that are actually important to me and doing stuff for me. I should take countermeasures. And conversely, here's the set of people that the US does not appear to care about from a counterintelligence point of view. These people, I can go, hell for leather. We can accelerate what they're doing. The tradecraft is working for them so far. And if you've got continuous coverage, you would see when numbers appear and you would go, what have we done with those people recently? Was there a fault in our tradecraft? Is there something that tipped off the FBI or whoever, what was the thing that we do? And so it allows you to learn in real time what works and what doesn't work. So I think that that's the reason I believe that it's been classified as a major breach, because it is basically giving China insight into U.S. counterintelligence. Like, what's happening? What have they looked at in the past? What are they doing in real time? As long as you maintain access?
- [13:45]
A
Do we have specific details about the breach, or is it still quite.
- [13:49]
B
No, it's pretty vague. So Politico talked about a notice that had been sent to Congress. And so that talks about. Let me see, quotes from the notice, law enforcement sensitive information, including returns from legal process and personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of FBI investigations. So the article talks about perhaps it had call metadata, so numbers that had been called and had received calls and the targeted numbers. And so that would be who's being targeted? Who are they calling? Who are they receiving calls from? So I think that would be very, very useful. There was a previous set of breaches that were done by Salt Typhoon, where it appears that they got access to something like the portals that law enforcement sent tasking to lawful intercept. Are they providers, offices, organizations within telcos? So that's a similar kind of thing, like the details of what numbers, and if it's legal processes, it probably has some justification, I'm guessing a warrant maybe that. That says what the purpose is. So I think all that stuff is, like, really super valuable and came to
- [15:14]
A
light in late 24, didn't it?
- [15:16]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So this is not a new thing, I guess, at this point. So it appears that there has been consistent targeting over some years. As far as I can tell, the reaction has been like business as usual.
- [15:33]
A
Right.
- [15:33]
B
So the like Salt Typhoon, it was reported October 24th and so, aha, that tells you they've got an interest in these systems. Maybe we should lock them down. And that the FBI has reported this breach just this year kind of indicates that, well, maybe they did something. It clearly wasn't enough. It's not just suspicious behavior like some technical anomalies. Then we caught them before they caused some damage. It's a major incident because they've got to believe that something was stolen.
- [16:15]
A
Yeah. So I mean, clearly the best time to have done something would have been before China got there in the first place. Maybe the second best time to have done something would have been between Those salt typhoon 2024 hacks and this most recent FBI one. What should be happening now, Tom?
- [16:35]
B
Well, I guess you've got to take the third best time, which is to start now. And again, I think this is like, it reminds me kind of with the OPM breach where some Chinese hackers stole a whole lot of personal information of people in the US government who have clearances. So like again, that's tremendously useful, all sorts of purposes. Just because they've stolen it once doesn't mean that you give up and go, ah, well, there's no point ever securing that data. You try and fix it and move on. Like, so I think this is a case of trying to fix it, really lock it down and move on. I think that the domestic value you get from these systems outweighs the harms. Like in both cases, they weren't manipulated to enable Salt Typhoon. It was just information was stolen from them. And also in this FBI breach, it seems it was just information, not they didn't manipulate them to surveil other people. Like, it doesn't seem that you need to do that. You can just, if you're in the telco system, you can just surveil people anyway. And so I think they're worth having, but there needs to be a more concerted effort to lock them down. So my experience with telcos is that they do care about these systems, but I think they need to care perhaps a bit more and a bit more government or lawmaker pressure is probably the thing to apply here.
- [18:13]
A
And Tom, how hopeful are you that you and I won't be sitting and I won't be listening to you suggesting these things when we write about a similar story next year?
- [18:24]
B
Like, I'm optimistic more because I don't cover the same stories over and over again. Rather than it not happening, I think it'll be a shorter story and I'll cover it off quicker. So, you know, it's good news, I guess.
- [18:39]
A
Kind of optimistic, maybe in a roundabout way.
- [18:42]
B
AI is giving us plenty to talk
- [18:44]
A
about, basically, Tom, we might leave it there for now, but thank you so much as always for joining me. And you can read and subscribe to Tom's new that are over at our website, Risky Biz. But Tom, have a great rest of your week and I will see you the same time next week.
- [19:00]
B
Thanks, Amberly.