The Cold War I grew up with pitted Western capitalist democracies, led by the United States,

against Communist dictatorships, led by the Soviet Union, in a contest for world domination.
Two worldviews competed against each other on a global stage. The contest was ultimately
won not on the battlefield, not by armies, but by the sheer productive capacity of the West.
Capitalism triumphed by providing TVs and cars and political freedoms to an expanding
middle class, while communism foundered on its inability to offer any such prizes. The
society that offered the most to its citizens ultimately won the day.

Combatants in the new Cold War are fighting over the currency of the modern age: personal
information. The battles are over who controls data.

Google processes around 22 Petabytes a day. Every day, around 204 million e-mails, 1.8
million Facebook likes, 278000 tweets are being generated. The US ARGUS ground
surveillance system collects more than 40 Gigabytes of information per second. Spy satellites
deployed by countries like US also generate gigabytes of geospatial data. It has become
increasingly important for military officials to make sense of the vast amount of data that
they are producing. This is where big data analytics comes into the picture. Information
gathered through internet platforms and through standard military operations can be put to
varied use.1

Modus Operandi, an analytics company has created an application called Wave Exploitation
network, which makes use of big data analytics to give frontline troops information about
how people, places, organisations and events are connected over time. 2  The software utilizes
technology such as Hadoop, graph databases, semantic triple-stores, and natural language
processing algorithms to deliver Facebook-like insights into the lives of the targets, with the
ease of a Google-like query interface. They also have a graph database that allows users to
make connections between people, organizations, events, and places that would otherwise be
difficult to make by hand. The US Marine Corps have been working with this company and
have been taking out data like who are the individuals in certain areas that they have to worry
about, who is expressing the most anti-American sentiment. Or where are the soft targets, the
market places and other places where somebody may decide pull an event that would do
harm to people.

1
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol50no2/
html_files/Intelligence_War_2.htm#_ftnref37
2
https://www.datanami.com/2014/02/03/how_analytics_is_driving_military_intelligence/
Social Media Monitoring:

Prime topics/concepts being discussed in the social media can be monitored and studied
specific to geography, person, and organisation, etc. Analytics of information sources, for
example, affinity of information sources to a specific user group, geography, etc will have
high intelligence value. The sentiments of people regarding a policy or concepts can be
known and proactive actions taken, as required.

Majority of Indian internet users use Chinese-brand smartphones such as Xiaomi, Oppo,
Vivo, OnePlus or Honor, and use many Chinese apps.

Being smartphone-oriented, the data generated by all of these apps is first-hand and gives a
collective picture of the Indian internet consumer, including but not limited to:

 The apps being used by Indians, including fintech apps and credit data through SMSes

 User behaviour and data consumption

 Product preference for Indian consumers

 Demographic data for any given area

 Location activity for any user and more

This would allow any authority with centralised access to this data the ability to create a
profile for each Indian user and then use it for advertising purposes, sales or for political
interests and control.

How does this ultimately help?

Frontline troops deployed in critical areas can receive quick and timely information about
targets allowing them to deploy minimum necessary force to neutralize it, aerial drones can
target militants without inflicting civilian causalities, Missiles can be made real time
smart(that which knows when and where to hit the enemy), Intelligence officials can thwart
terror attacks based on advance information, cyber-attacks from other countries (especially
Chinese attacks on Indian military networks) can be prevented by analysing the modus
operandi of enemy, terror promotion campaigns by organisations like the ISIS can be
countered online. Ultimately, this enables the military to save lives, of its soldiers, and its
people.

False Narratives on Social Media

Reasons why False Narrative can be more dangerous than fake news:

 False narratives linger in the public discourse for a long time horizon.

 Once in mind, you cannot change it.

 False narratives get solidified into commonly accepted truths due to the body of
knowledge that gets built up over time cross-referencing material based on false
narratives.

 False narrative has a larger audience than legitimate news. The corrected version has a
lesser audience than original misinformation.

 People read it incorrectly.

 Giving colour to the news when it actually is not there

 Ex: Bangalore riots reporting, Media houses adding a communal angle to crimes,
Gauri Lankesh Murder, Gorakhpur hospital death.

Today, in the age of TV & social media there is constant discussion of the narrative, no
matter how baseless is being stretched and twisted.  This may look entertaining but is very
harmful.
How China has been spreading false narratives on social media ?

Recent Harvard university data suggests that the Chinese government fabricates and posts
about 448 million social comments a year.3

On Twitter, Chinese diplomats have been promoting a conspiracy theory that the U.S. Army
brought COVID-19 to China. Trump responded by referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese
virus,” and the White House is reportedly mobilizing multiple federal agencies to mount a
communications plan that accuses Beijing of orchestrating a “cover-up” and creating the
global pandemic.

On Twitter, Chinese diplomats have been promoting a conspiracy theory that the U.S. Army
brought COVID-19 to China. Chinese diplomats “have tweeted lies that the Chinese
government has been completely transparent throughout the crisis and bought the world time
to prepare for the outbreak; a theory largely discredited and debunked by a recent study. with
an assist from perhaps thousands of fake or hacked Twitter accounts, according to the
investigative site ProPublica. The result was a coordinated campaign of attacks on the United
States, and the spread of disinformation

Twitter is well aware of China’s influence operations. In August and September, the platform
announced that it had suspended more than 5,000 suspected Chinese state-controlled accounts
and released data about them. Twitter also banned around 200,000 related accounts that had
been created but were not yet very active.

Thousands of fake accounts were automatically generated using a bank of fake profile photos
and usernames. There were computer programs that ensured interactions between thousands
of fake accounts. It was found a pattern of coordinated activity among the fake accounts that
appeared to be aimed at building momentum for particular storylines.  ProPublica uncovered
additional evidence that these accounts operated as part of a Chinese government influence
campaign. Posts in the network were often accompanied by a chorus of approving comments
from obviously fake accounts. The same comments were used over and over to create false

3
https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf?m=1463587807 (How the Chinese Government Fabricates
Social Media Posts)
engagement.4There were also many companies that were also assisting the Chinese
Government in their pursuit of spreading misinformation.5

Bloomberg reported last year, Twitter has been training Chinese officials in how amplify
their messages—giving them special insights into how to fully exploit a platform that is
blocked off to their own citizens. That help included Twitter employees assisting Chinese
diplomats “with support, like verifying their accounts and training them on how to amplify
messages, including with the use of hashtags,” Bloomberg reported.6

Increasingly, though, moderate Chinese voices are being hounded off the platform by the
Chinese Government by deleting twitter accounts of anyone who dissents to the views of
CCP, and the only ones left are diplomats and rabid nationalists who toe the party line and
attack anyone critical of the CCP. By refusing to flash a red card, the refs at Twitter are
enabling a very skewed view of Chinese public opinion. They’re enabling propaganda.7

4
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-china-built-a-twitter-propaganda-machine-then-let-it-loose-on-
coronavirus
5
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/26/virus-social-blame-dont-kick-chinas-propagandists-off-twitter/
6
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-21/chinese-censorship-allegedly-extends-to-twitter/10633850
7
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/china-disinformation-propaganda-united-states-xi-
jinping/612085/