>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington D.C.
>> John Haskell: So
welcome everybody
to the Coolidge Auditorium
here at the Library
and to conversation
about disinformation
and the threat to democracy.
This event is hosted by
the Kluge Center here
at the Library of Congress.
And many of you may not know
much about the Kluge Center,
so I'm going to give you
a one-seven synopsis.
It was created to reinvigorate
in the words of its charter,
to reinvigorate the inner
connection between thought
and action at a high level.
Conversations like these
addressing challenges facing
democracies in the 21st century
are a key part of that effort.
I'm going to introduce our
guest today, Anne Applebaum,
who as many of you
know is a columnist
for the Washington Post and
a prize-winning historian.
Her degrees are from at
the bachelor's level Yale.
She has a master's degree
in international relations
from the London School
of Economics,
and Georgetown granted
her an honorary doctorate.
She's a professor of practice at
the London School of Economics
where she runs Arena, a research
project on disinformation,
and she's the author of
Gulag, a History in 2004,
which won the Pulitzer's
Prize for nonfiction.
She won the Cundill Hisotry
Prize in 2013 for Iron Curtain,
the Crushing of Eastern
Europe 1944 to 1956.
And just this year she won
the Lionel Gelber Prize
for Red Famine, Stalin's
War on Ukraine.
We'll have a book signing
afterward next door
in the Woodall Pavilion
for Red Famine.
And I wanted to start out
to give you an opportunity
to tell us what that
book's about
and why it would
be relevant to us.
>> Anne Applebaum: Well
first of all, before that,
I should say thank you.
I'm really delighted to be
at the Library of Congress.
It's a place where I've
done research myself
for my book on the Gulag.
You have a pretty extensive
collection of dissident material
that I was able to use,
Russian dissident, I should say,
not American dissident.
Although you probably
have that too somewhere.
>> John Haskell: I think so.
>> Anne Applebaum:
Somewhere, American samizdat.
So thank you for
inviting me here.
Red Famine is a history
of the Ukrainian famine.
It's, and it's also an argument
about the Ukrainian
famine and why it happened.
And this was a famine that took
place in the years 1932-33,
and the book argues
that it was, well,
we've known for a long time that
it was not an accidental famine.
So it was not caused
by the weather.
It was not caused by bad crops.
It was not caused by insects.
It was caused by a deliberate
set of decisions taken
by Stalin designed to weaken
the Ukrainian peasantry,
and it result, and it
was literally caused
by confiscation of food.
So when you confiscate
people's food,
when you take their food away,
and then as the Soviet
Union did, you block roads
so that peasants can't
get to the cities,
and people couldn't leave
the Ukrainian public.
Then you have a lot
of people die.
So the book is an argument
about why that happened,
why Stalin did that, why
Ukraine, it's a little bit
of a potted history of Ukraine.
It explains what
Ukrainian nationalism was
with the Ukrainian
national movement was,
why Stalin disliked it.
And I suppose it leads into our,
into our current subject now
in ways too because one of the
reasons why it was possible,
one of the reasons why it
was possible to persuade
to confiscate the food
of starving people,
because of course, it's
required a massive operation,
was that it followed
a decade-long campaign
against both the so-called
Kulaks, which presence and also
against Ukraine and Ukrainians.
And one of the things you
learn when you study Stalinism,
I've now written three books
about, essentially about Stalin
and his way of thinking and
his way of occupying countries,
is that none of the violence
that is possible would have been
possible without the propaganda
that prepared the violence.
And so you immediately begin
to think about how it is
that you change people's
minds, how you prepare them
to do terrible things, how you
convince them to accept certain,
you know, a Stalinist
totalitarian structure
of the country.
And that gets you thinking a
lot about political language
and how it's used
and who's using it.
And that's, in my head,
one of the parallels
between studying the history
of the past and then trying
to understand the
politics of the present.
>> John Haskell: So, you
grew up in Washington D.C.
and became an expert
on the Soviet Union
and Russia and Eastern Europe.
How did that happen?
How did you get interested
in that, and how did --
>> Anne Applebaum: Bad luck.
I mean there are different
ways to answer that.
So I was at university
in the 1980s,
early 80s when it was
kind of the height
of what we call the new Cold
War as Reagan was president.
And the Soviet Union seemed
like this urgent problem
that had to be solved.
So like lots of people,
I studied Russian.
I had another idea which is was,
I had been a fairly
pretentious teenager,
and my favorite writer
was Nabokov,
and I had this idea I would be
able to read him in Russian.
And one of the horrible
ironies is
that although I do
speak Russian, I read it
and use it all the time,
and I can read Tolstoy.
He's pretty, he's a
very clear writer.
I have a lot of trouble
reading Nabokov.
So that was all, he
writes in a very --
>> John Haskell: You have
something to aspire to then.
>> Anne Applebaum: I can
still aspire to that.
But so that was another
side reason.
But no, I was drawn to it.
I studied it.
I was lucky enough to be a
student in Leningrad in 1984.
I spent a summer there when
it was still Leningrad.
And so I saw the end
of the Soviet Union
when it was still
the Soviet Union.
And I realized only
years late, I've written
about this recently, that
that was a stroke of luck
because a couple of years
later, if you went to Leningrad,
you would have been
there during [inaudible].
It all looked different.
So I was almost the last
generation of American students
who saw it when it
was still the USSR
and was still a totalitarian
state or aspired
to be a totalitarian state.
>> John Haskell: You ended
up in, or you were in Poland
when the Berlin Wall fell,
so you'd been working there.
>> Anne Applebaum: Right, so
then the second piece of luck,
good luck, bad luck, is
that I was in the interest
in the region led me to
become a freelance writer.
I was a stringer in Poland
in 1988-89, and I was there
when communism fell and
when the Berlin Wall fell.
And after that, you know, I
was stuck with that region.
I also married a Pole.
>> John Haskell: There we go.
>> Anne Applebaum: That was
another reason to stay there.
And I've actually been living in
Central Europe on and off since,
you know, for 20 years.
>> John Haskell: So at LSE you
have this research project,
Arena.
Tell us a little
bit more about that.
What are you doing with that?
>> Anne Applebaum: So
Arena evolved out of,
I run it with a colleague,
Peter Pomerantsev,
who is a British television
producer and journalist
who worked for ten
years for Russia
and wrote a very brilliant book
about the Russian, the creation
of the Putinist [phonetic]
propaganda state
and has a wonderful title.
The title is Nothing is True
and Everything is Possible.
So if you want background on
how, on the change in Russia,
it's a very good book to read.
He and I both at the same time
for slightly different reasons
got interested in the question
of how Russian attempts to use
the qualities of the internet
and the quality of
social media in order
to promote both true and false.
But pro-Russian narratives
was beginning to take off.
I was interested in it from
my perch in Central Europe.
I was watching Russian
political influence campaigns,
the attempt to influence
elections.
This, of course, all burst
into the open in 2014
when Russia invaded
Ukraine, and then,
I think that was the moment when
many people under, you know,
some more clearly
what they were doing.
Because, of course, the invasion
of Crimea, if you can remember,
that was accompanied by a
massive denial, you know.
We don't know who
these masked men are
who are walking through Crimea.
We have no idea where
they got their weapons.
I think the president
of Russia even said,
oh maybe they bought
them in a shop, you know.
You can buy, you know,
armed personnel carriers,
you know, in the safe way.
But it was actually a
very effective campaign,
because it confused,
certainly for long enough
for them to occupy Crimea.
And then it was followed
by a similar campaign
attempting to divide Ukraine.
And I think this was the moment
where people were oriented.
We saw it a little
bit earlier than that.
So we began by being interested
in this problem in trying
to define how the
authoritarian states
in the modern world
use language,
how they're using the internet.
I think one of the things
that happens when you study,
you know, the Russian
disinformation campaigns online
is pretty quickly you
begin to understand
that the problem
isn't really Russia.
The Russian state, for
historical reasons,
because they've been doing this
for many years is what the KGB
famously did, I mean this is
in all my books, was interested
in how to use language
to manipulate people
and was interested also
in trying to penetrate.
I mean we can remember,
you know, Soviet support
for the communist
parties all over the west.
Was interested in trying to get
political influence in the West.
This is a very old, you know.
But pretty, you know,
they were good at this
because they've been
thinking about it longer
because they saw the
possibilities first.
But really, anything
that they do now,
almost anybody else could do.
And there's no, you know,
the creation of a bot farm
or a trolling campaign, we
can talk about what that is
in a second if you want,
is something anyone can do.
You can do it in Russia.
You can do it in China.
You can do it in Texas.
I mean, it's not a, it
doesn't require any special
technological knowledge.
A little bit maybe, but
not that much investment.
And so it's really that, you get
really quickly to understanding
that this is to do with
the nature of how we get
and receive information
now more generally.
And so our project
does two things.
We study, we have done some
projects very specifically
on Russia, looking
at Russian attempts
to do political influence,
and we did one in Germany.
But also looking at, you know,
how might we rethink
what media does in order
to reach alienated audiences.
Are there ways to counter the
spread of falsehood online.
We've done these experiments.
We've only actually been in
existence for a year and a half.
Because we, we were both working
on the subject and
writing about it.
And then we decided it
deserved its little seed
at the university.
And we were, we made an
arrangement with LSE.
>> John Haskell: Okay, so
specifically to the topic
of the conversation here today.
How do you describe the threat
from disinformation broadly,
and does it constitute
a paradigm shift?
>> Anne Applebaum: So I think
the, I think that the way,
again, the way in which
we get and receive
and issue political information
has changed very fundamentally,
and I would say that
it is a paradigm shift.
And a good comparison is the
invention of the printing press.
You know, it seems like a long
time ago, but if you think
of what happened when, you know,
instead of language being
controlled by, you know,
monks and monasteries who copied
out manuscripts and handed them
out to specific people,
you know,
who then passed them
on more broadly.
You know, there was a very
severe system of gatekeeping
in terms of who controlled
information
up until the printing
press was invented.
And then once you had
the printing press,
you had this multiple, you had
exactly the same effect you have
now, which is suddenly all
kinds of people can read
and get access to information.
They can question what
the monks are doing.
And this has both positive
and negative effects.
It means that suddenly,
I mean it's what led
to the reformation.
It's what led to
the Protestantism.
And actually, I've talked
about this recently in Austria
and I could say, well, people
in this room might not
like Protestantism.
But maybe people in the
United States think it's okay.
Anyway, there's different
views about that.
But, you know, and there
are positive and negative.
But one of the things
that it did do is
that it then created
enormous political conflicts.
And there were religious
wars in Europe.
You know, well into
the next century.
And, you know, it created real
political division and change.
And again, in both a
positive and negative sense.
And I think that's what we're
seeing social media doing is
that it's given suddenly really
all of us are writers and all
of us are journalists and
all of us are publishers.
Anybody who writes something
on Facebook or Twitter
and then passes it on is
now functionally publishing.
And that means that
the, you know,
the way in which people
see things, what they trust
and don't trust, what they,
you know, the way they look
at news has changed
very fundamentally.
And really every time this has
happened in recent history,
it's been accompanied by
major political changes.
I mean you don't, you know,
you had religious wars
in the 16th and 17th century.
But actually after the
invention of radio,
who were the first real
beneficiaries of radio?
Who understood its power
better than anybody else,
and the answer is
Hitler and Stalin,
who were both obsessed
with the radio.
They both used it.
I mean, just as an example,
when Stalin arrived in,
when he invaded, when he
arrived in Berlin in May 1945,
the absolute first thing he did
before he did anything else was
take over the radio station.
I mean even before they
really finished fighting
in other parts of the city.
>> John Haskell: And we
had somebody who didn't
like the reformation,
Father Coughlin,
was also, he was a radio guy.
>> Anne Applebaum: Yes.
Yes, no, no,
I mean understanding
how to use radio was.
But then of course,
what was the reaction?
Well one was that Franklin
Roosevelt also learned
to use the radio.
The BBC in Britain is a
very interesting reaction
to the radio, because the
British state suddenly said
right, how do we channel
this in a positive way?
How do we bring people who
live in the Shetland Islands
and then Cornwall into
a national conversation?
And then they just, you know,
the BBC was partly a creation
of this fear that, of a social
breakdown that would be created
if we don't think, if we don't
find ways to use it positively.
And, you know, different
countries came
up with different answers to
the disorganization of radio.
But that's all a segue.
I didn't want to get too
much into the history
of saying I think we're
living through exactly
that same kind of moment.
And it has, again,
both very positive
and very negative effects.
I mean technology, the
technology itself is neutral.
I mean I'm not anti-internet
or anti-social media.
But neither am I a Utopian
who thinks that, you know,
now that we have social
media we're all connected.
Everything will be better
because clearly,
that's not the case.
I mean one of the
effects, for example,
is that we now have effectively
a global media space.
So whereas in the past, in
the Soviet era, if, you know,
the KGB wanted to try and
create a rumor, for example,
there's a wonderful
example in the 1980s.
The KGB staged this huge
operation designed to create
and push the rumor that
the CIA had created AIDS.
It was a famous story.
And they tried to plant
it in different presses,
and they found sympathetic
journalists
who would write about it.
And, you know, they
had different,
but this was very difficult
to spread this rumor.
They did it actually.
They succeeded in convincing
people in Malaysia or wherever.
But, you know, but it
was a tedious process,
and it took many months.
So now, you want
to create a rumor?
You know, you create, you know,
ten fake websites
that support it.
You, you know, have
them echo one another.
You create, you know, a bot farm
or a troll farm that
can push it out.
And you can do it in an hour.
>> John Haskell: Because
there are rumors about Zika
that could be analogous
to the one about --
>> Anne Applebaum: Right, I
mean there are lots of it.
I mean now that, now the
amount of rumor and falsehood
that we see, you know,
every day, is extraordinary.
This is not to say that
there were no problems
with the previous media model.
And I'm not here to, even though
I work for the Washington Post,
I don't advocate
returning to it.
I don't think we're going to
put it back together again.
I don't have any nostalgia
for Walter Cronkite.
But nevertheless, we
live in this new world,
and it's important to
understand, you know,
the positive and negative.
>> John Haskell: So do
the major media sources,
some people call them
mainstream media,
but the major media
sources, they're,
I don't know whether I want
to put intention into this,
but aren't they meant to be
a bull work against this?
Why aren't they serving
as a bull work against,
you know, fake news?
Or are they?
>> Anne Applebaum:
They try, you know.
There are lots of
people have experimented
with doing factchecking,
creating factchecking websites
or having special
factcheckers on the pages.
You know, but that, and
that works up to a point.
It works with those audiences
who trust the fact checkers
and who trust, I don't
know, the Washington Post.
But it does not work
with audiences
who don't trust the
Washington Post.
Which there are, you
know, very large numbers.
And so the problem can't really
be solved by institutions
that don't, you know, lots of
people don't read or don't see
or don't believe actually.
So, I don't think it's a problem
that the mainstream media,
so-called mainstream
media, can solve by itself.
>> John Haskell: And so is it,
are we at a point then where,
I don't know, objectivity is
a loaded term in some ways,
but where the concept
of objectivity
or at least evenhandedness, you
know, doesn't hold any sway?
Is it at that level
do you think?
>> Anne Applebaum: You know,
I think it's a little
bit different than that.
The problem is that there
is no public agreement
on what objectivity and
evenhandedness means.
And you know, there are
certainly still people working
in journalism who believe very
much that they can do that.
I mean I have colleagues
who, I'm myself a columnist.
And so this isn't my problem
as much as it is others.
But yes, certainly
there are people
that believe absolutely that,
you know, their function
in life is not to promote a
political, you know, narrative
or a political candidate.
But what they're supposed
to do is, you know,
tell you what happened
yesterday.
And that's very much for a
large piece of the press,
it motivates a lot of people to
go into journalism, you know.
People who want to look
for the truth and try
and bring honesty
into public life.
And if you ask people what their
motives are, that's often it.
So I don't think it's
dead as an ideal,
but I think you would find,
certainly in this country,
but also across Europe,
you know,
you would find differing views
about whether that's possible.
I actually had a conversation,
to me it was quite a
shocking conversation,
but it was with a Hungarian sort
of former colleague a few
weeks ago who just said
to me point blank, oh, you, you
know, you Americans who believe
in this nonsense about
objective journalism.
You know, we all know that
it's all one side or the other.
And, you know, stop pretending.
Which is interesting
because the, you know,
the attack on the
possibility of good journalism.
The attack on the
independence of the judiciary.
The attack on the, you know,
neutrality of civil servants.
All these kinds of attacks
are we have heard before,
and this is exactly.
I mean when you look at the
history of Soviet communism,
one of the, you know, you
would hear Lenin talk a lot
about bourgeois, so-called
bourgeois democracy
and its fake institutions
and its pretend media,
which is really in the
service of somebody or another.
And it's really all a reflection
of the power structure.
You know, and on the right,
you would have, you know,
this is very much how
fascists spoke as well.
You know, we don't believe
in these fake institutions.
So, these kinds of, this dislike
of any possibility of neutrality
or honesty in public life is
not new, and it certainly has,
you know, I do not believe
that we are now living
through the 1930s by any means.
But, you know, you can
certainly see the possibility,
the negative possibilities
that could come from this.
>> John Haskell: So I want
to move on to some of the,
a few of the mechanics
of disinformation.
Before we get there, I just
want to, is it possible
that we're overreacting, that
the discourse isn't really
as poisoned as what you
might be suggesting?
>> Anne Applebaum: I mean,
you know, it's always possible
that we're overreacting.
But it's, you know,
maybe better to see
and acknowledge the problems and
try and deal with them rather
than ignore them and
pretend they don't exist.
I mean I actually had
just with the narrow point
of Russian disinformation, I had
for a long time people saying
to me, oh, maybe this is
a problem for some people
in Poland or Ukraine, but
this isn't a real problem.
It doesn't really
exist anywhere else.
And it was a kind of, even
in this city when you talked
to people in Congress about
it, and you got a kind of well,
this is a sort of
third-rate issue.
And we're sort of interested
in it but not really.
I did find after the
last US election,
a major change in
how people see it.
And suddenly, people
understood okay,
this is what the Russians do.
They create Facebook
pages designed that we,
most people will have seen the
description of how that works.
And they create in
their, you know,
Black Lives Matter's
Facebook pages on the one hand
and anti-immigrant on the other.
And they try and stage
and create conflict.
And now that people have seen oh
yeah, that's how it worked here,
there's more interest
in understanding how it
works around the world.
But you, it's almost as if
people here had to experience it
or see it for themselves
before they believed
that it was a real problem.
>> John Haskell: But the Soviet
Union always propagandized.
>> Anne Applebaum: Sure.
>> John Haskell: Is this
different in some way?
>> Anne Applebaum: So, it's
only different in that the ease
and speed with which it
can be done is different.
It's different in that the
kinds of language they're using
and what they're working
with is different.
So when you look at, I
mean this is really not
about disinformation but more
about Russian political
influence campaigns.
For example, in Europe,
there, you know,
in the olden days the Soviet
Union looked for communists
and fellow travelers
that it could work
with in different countries.
And actually, the
modern Russian state is
in a certain sense
much less ideological.
They're not, you know,
they're not bound
to any particular ideology.
What they're looking for is
anybody on the far right,
anybody on the far left,
but even, you know,
they look for others as well
who serve their broader
strategy in Europe.
Which is kind of anti-European,
anti-European Union,
anti-NATO, anti-American.
I mean they seek to undermine
Western institutions.
And you know, what they do,
they don't actually create.
They don't, you know, they
didn't create Marine Le Pen,
for example, who's
the far-right leader
of the National Front in France.
She's an old, she's
been in politics
for decades, so was her father.
They didn't create her,
invent her, but they sought
to amplify her message.
And that's just something that's
easier to do than it used to be.
You can do it with, you
can do it by, you know,
you can do it with money.
They funded her political
campaign.
Or you can do it online with,
you know, with fake, you know,
internet users and fake
social media campaigns.
So it's simply working
with existing cleavages
in Western societies.
They can do quite a lot.
So it's not, no I don't think
it's fundamentally different,
but the ground is fertile,
and it's much easier
and much cheaper than it ever --
>> John Haskell: And they're
not promoting themselves.
I mean they're not
promoting communism.
>> Anne Applebaum: No, they
don't really care if we
like them or admire
them at all actually.
I mean, they don't, for
example, it's very different
from the Chinese who do
care, you know, whether --
>> John Haskell: So
are they doing any
self-promotion internally.
I mean, if they?
>> Anne Applebaum:
So that's different.
I mean Russian propaganda
campaigns inside Russia are
much, you know, really
are much more important.
And those are also, by the way,
very, the language that's used
in the Russian media, there was
recently a very good study done
of the three main Russian
television channels,
looking at what they,
you know, what they,
the stories that they wrote
and publicized about Europe.
And this was, and by the
way, the United States,
it's a very similar story.
And I can't remember off the
top of my head the numbers.
I just wrote about this
a couple of days ago.
But it's something like
17 times a day, you know,
certainly multiple times a
day you get negative stories
on Russian television
of all kinds.
And they fit into
particular narratives.
You know, Europe is weak.
Europe is disorganized.
Also, Europeans are, you
know, terrified by terrorism,
and they live at home in fear.
The European, you know, there's
a repeated stories, for example,
you know, if you live in Europe,
your children can be taken away
and given to gay families.
Because there's this terror,
they terrorize you
with homosexuality.
I mean I know it sounds absurd,
but that is actually stories
that you get on Russian
television.
And at the same time, Europe is
very aggressive and Russophobic.
And they're anti, yeah,
so it tries to show both.
I mean the purpose of that is to
make sure that no Russians think
that democracy or
European values are better,
that they don't find
it attractive
so that they don't try to
revolt against the authoritarian
and oligarchic system
that they have.
And also maybe to prepare,
you know, get people prepared
for some kind of conflict.
>> John Haskell: So
on to the mechanics,
what exactly are bots,
and for those of us
who are less technologically
savvy?
And what other specific methods
are being used to hack or troll?
>> Anne Applebaum: So somebody,
this is not my original,
I didn't make up this breakdown.
But one of the ways to think
about, you know, fakeness,
I really hate the
expression fake news
for all the obvious reasons,
one of the ways to think
about falsity or falsehood
on the internet is to think
about it in different
categories.
And so first of all, there's
the category fake identities.
There are, you know, people
who are pretending
to be someone else.
There are bots, which
are little pieces,
for those who don't do these
things, these are little pieces
of computer code that imitate
human social media behavior
so they can be automated.
You can create bot farms so that
you can create, I don't know,
10,000 bots, which
will retweet certain
or repost certain
kinds of messages.
And some of these
are pretty crude,
and you can actually
detect them pretty easily.
And some of them are quite
sophisticated, you know,
they'll respond to a particular
word or a particular idea,
and they'll immediately
create a response.
And so you can essentially
automate reaction.
So you have fake people,
fake websites, you know,
which pretend to be one thing
but are really something else.
And that's, by the
way, very easy to do.
And you know, lots of, anybody
in this room could have
a fake Facebook page
or a fake Twitter
page, Twitter account.
It's not difficult.
You might have to have some
technological capability
to create a bot, but even I,
apparently not even so hard.
Maybe for you and me, but --
>> John Haskell: So you're --
>> Anne Applebaum: No so anyway,
there's this level
of fake identity.
That's one thing.
And then there's a second
level which is fake audiences.
So you can create fake people.
And then you can
give the impression
that you have more
followers than you do.
Or you can, you know,
seek to show
that something is more popular.
You can seek to make something
more popular, as I say,
using automation or using
trolls, which are people
who are professionally
posting things on the internet.
And this is something
the Russians did before
anybody else.
They understood the
possibilities of that.
Then they created these troll
farms in Saint Petersburg,
which is actually a
wonderful image if you think
about little trolls,
you know, in a farm.
>> John Haskell: There's
no famine there right
now apparently.
>> Anne Applebaum: Right.
So these, and these
are different ways.
Then you have a third level,
which is actual fake stories,
you know, invented stories,
which can be then promoted
by these, you know, by the fake
people and the fake amplifiers.
And then there's a
fourth level which is sort
of entirely fake narratives.
So for example, this narrative
that I just mentioned in Russia
about the terrorism, you know,
the government is
terrorizing people
who are insufficiently pro-gay.
And I'm sorry to use that, but
that's part of the narrative.
So, and you know, that's
repeated again and again.
And it's shown in
different kind of stories.
And there are different ways
in which it's, you know,
there's a version of this
that's used quite a lot
in Western Europe which has to
do with immigrants, you know,
immigrants are coming.
They're going to
rape your daughters.
You know, pictures
and photographs are
shown in different ways.
During the German
election it was a big,
this was a big Russian theme
was an attempt to scare people
and worry people and make them,
so it's an attempt
to create fear.
Anyway, these are
different levels of ways
in which falsehood
exists on the internet.
And you know, it may be
that through controlling even
the problem of fake identities,
you could do quite a lot to
eliminate the problem of fake.
We need to begin breaking down
this problem, and if we want
to really think about stopping
it, start, one wants to start
with the narrative problem.
So how do we fight
back against Russia?
But maybe actually we should
go back further down and look
at how anonymity
works on the internet.
Ask whether we want there to be
that much anonymity and so on.
>> John Haskell: So do you know
of any specific examples of any
of those levels,
but say for example,
at the creating a
fake audience level
that Russia might be
doing now in the US?
>> Anne Applebaum: So
actually I haven't,
I mean we know what they were
doing during the US election.
>> John Haskell: Right.
>> Anne Applebaum: Because
that's now been published.
So for example, they
created fake,
I mean this was one
I was shown actually.
So they created, for example,
a fake Black lives Matter
Twitter account that looked
like a real one and
sought to obtain audiences.
And, you know, what is
the purpose of doing that?
Well, the purpose was that at
some point to use the trust
that people had in
that account in order
to get past a message
to that audience.
So they seek to create
false audiences.
And again, sometimes
using real causes.
I mean, of course, there's
a real Black Lives Matter.
It doesn't mean it's not real.
But in addition to that,
they seek to create copycat
or imitation ones that they can
get followers or get audiences
and then use that, the trust
that they gained
to pass messages.
Because one of the
important things now,
if you ask what's different
about now and the past,
is we have much more divided
audiences than we once did.
And people now are much more
likely to get their information,
they get it from
people they trust.
They get it from whatever
their friends on Facebook
or their cousins
who they follow.
And so the, you know, the
game is to build audiences
that trust you since, as we've
said, the markers of quality
or the markers of trust
that used to exist are gone.
I mean even somebody was
saying to me the other day,
if you think about even when
you used to read, for example,
mainstream newspaper, you
know, you had the front page,
you know, and then you
had the sports section.
And then you had the, you
know, the comics, you know,
and then you had
the opinion pages.
And even you would see those
visually and you would think
of them all a little
bit different.
Like you didn't think the
comic page was news, right.
I mean, presumably.
>> John Haskell: Right.
>> Anne Applebaum: And when
you looked at the opinion page,
the way it was structured,
I mean, for example --
>> John Haskell: That's before
Doonesbury is what you're
talking about pre-Doonesbury.
>> Anne Applebaum: Before
Doonesbury, that's right.
But if you looked
at the op ed page,
you knew these were
op eds, right.
There's the editorials
on the left
and then the opinions
on the right.
And this is different
from the news.
And so here you're
reading people's opinions
and interpretations and the
news is meant to be the news.
This is all completely
broken down.
You know, when you look at
the, you look at something
that says Washington
Post on the top,
you don't have any sense
immediately whether that's an op
ed or it's a news story or
it's a joke or it's a parody.
And so, you know, the
hierarchies are broken down,
and so people, you know, when
people decide what they're going
to trust, you know, they
often rely on their friends
or they rely on, you know,
certain kinds of, you know,
language that they trust
or certain kinds of
people and so on.
And this is what the
Russians tried to use.
And again, we're talking
about the Russians,
but really anybody could do it,
in order to build
particular audiences
that they could then message.
>> John Haskell: Is
China in this space then?
>> Anne Applebaum:
So yes and no.
They have a different
set of tactics.
I don't think the
Chinese are interested in,
for the most part, certainly in
European and American politics,
they're not seeking to, you
know, undermine democracy
or increase extremism or
elect particular candidates.
They don't have that
interest, and they don't seem
to be playing that at all.
In fact, I mean the
Chinese are not interested
in extremism at all.
They like the world
to be very stable.
They're actually
very happy with NATO.
They don't want it
to fall apart.
They don't want the
EU to fall apart.
They like dealing with, you
know, they have, you know,
the status quo suits
them in that way.
Russia is a revisionist
power that doesn't
like the way the
international system
and wants to undermine it.
So they have a different,
the Chinese are doing
different things though.
They are, they do seek to not
so much online but they seek
to use institution,
like Confucius centers
that they fund.
They seek to get influence
in American universities.
They have, you know,
through scholars.
There are some, in some European
countries, I mean, oddly,
you know, in some Central
European countries,
they've made kind of targeted
investments that they seek
to then use to get some.
But when they have
political influence,
what they're interested
in is, for example,
discouraging country X or Y
from having a relationship
with the Dalai Lama.
I mean they have particular
political goals that they care
about that are more
to do with them.
So it's more.
>> John Haskell: Right.
>> Anne Applebaum: And it's,
they don't have this, you know,
this Russian style
interest in kind
of upsetting the apple cart.
>> John Haskell: So as a
practical policy matter,
is the --
>> Anne Applebaum: I
think they're different.
>> John Haskell: Yeah,
but is the US government
tracking disinformation efforts
in our elections yet?
>> Anne Applebaum: No.
I mean, there are pieces of the
US government, I mean, actually,
a lot of pieces of the US
government understand this issue
quite well.
Certainly, people, you
know, at the Pentagon
and at the State Department,
they understand particularly
this Russian problem.
They, you know, for, you
know, if you're worried about,
for example, American
troops that are based
in the Baltic states, you think
about this problem every day.
You know, you're worried
about, you know, people trying
to hack your soldiers,
and at the same time,
you're worried about, I don't
know, a fake story saying
that American soldiers has
raped a Lithuanian girl,
and what are you going
to do about that?
So people are thinking about it
all the time, so very, very big
and important problem.
What we don't have yet is
a center in the government
or a place where you could
track and monitor these things
in a daily way and in
a comprehensive way.
Let me put it differently.
It isn't anybody's full-time
job to worry about this.
There are pockets of people
who are interested and care
about it, but I don't
know there's a center.
I mean, in terms of our
elections, there is,
I know that the state, kind of
state level, this is more to do
with the mechanics of elections.
State level, you know, election
offices, election commissions,
are worried about
it and do think
about it and talk about it.
There was recently
an interesting kind
of training exercises at
Harvard that was partly funded
by the media tech
companies which,
they did a kind of war game.
So imagine it's election day
and, you know, here, you know,
here are some attacks on
the system that are coming.
Someone's trying to
hack your system.
How do you react?
And so it was a kind of training
that they run like a war game
where they had, I think people
from all 50 states
participating.
>> John Haskell: Are
you aware of the status
of what academic
research is on this?
I know you're doing some
of this at LSE, but --
>> Anne Applebaum: So
there is academic research.
It's, again, it's
still pretty scattered.
This is a very new
subject and issue.
But there are some very good
people both in this country
and elsewhere who have begun
trying to analyze social media.
One of the problems
is that the some is,
so Twitter is quite
easy to analyze.
Facebook is very difficult.
Facebook has not made its
data accessible to academics.
I think they're under,
after the political pressure
of the last couple of
months they're talking
about in very controlled
ways, you know,
in ways so that your people,
academics, researchers are blind
to individuals and details and
so on, making data available
so that people can understand
how some of this works.
But the, you know,
look, it's a new field.
>> John Haskell: Right, yeah.
So ripe in other words.
So, I mean who could or
should be fighting back
against it then?
I mean the government's
not involved in it except
at the intel level perhaps.
You know, should it be, should
tech companies be relied upon?
I mean how are we, what would
make sense as a strategy,
as a society to fight
back, for instance.
>> Anne Applebaum: If
a difficult question.
I've been thinking about
this for a while now.
There's a, you can't, I think
it's impossible to look for sort
of a silver bullet strategy.
Now there's going
to be one answer,
and if we could just find this
then we're going to fix it.
I think there's going to
be a range of answers.
I mean some of the answers could
be found by the tech companies
if they wanted to find it.
And if they don't
want to find it,
we might have to
make them find it.
And this, again, this is this
problem of fake identities
and fake amplification.
I mean this is something
that could be fixed
technically or technologically.
So there's that piece of it.
There is a, you know, there's
clearly a role for media
and for journalists
to think differently.
How do we reach the
people who don't read us?
This is an interesting problem.
There is a role for civic
organizations for people who,
you know, who do online
investigations of this
and who do fact checking.
And funding for that
and activity
in that space has
bumped up a lot.
Even in the last year their
foundations are now interested
in that kind of problem.
And I think there's obviously
there's a role for education
at many levels, not
just kind of in schools.
But you know, adults should
learn how to, you know,
in this question of detecting
what's true and what's false.
I mean we were just
talking before
about how students don't
necessarily see anymore what's a
good source and what's
a bad source online.
I mean I think there's
same for adult,
you know, almost everybody.
>> John Haskell: Because you
and I when we were in college,
we were, you go to the card
catalog, and everything,
virtually everything
was a major publisher --
>> Anne Applebaum: Right.
>> John Haskell: or
university press.
So it was relatively reputable,
and then you follow cites
and book bibliographies.
But today it's, you know,
and we had actually to get
out of our dorm room to
go there and do that.
>> Anne Applebaum: Right.
>> John Haskell: As opposed
to being bombarded
with all this stuff.
So that's, I mean, we're the
suckers ultimately, right.
And so, it's our weakness,
and that's what you.
Is that what we have to address?
>> Anne Applebaum:
That's, one of the issues
that I haven't resolved
in my head actually is the
question do people want
to know what's true?
Do they want good information?
And we all think we want
it, and if you ask people,
they say they want it.
But how much effort are
people willing to put
in in order to get it.
And this then becomes
a political problem.
Because if they aren't
willing to do it, I don't know,
can you have democracy if people
don't care anymore whether
things are true or false?
It begins to be, you
know, a real challenge.
And the second problem then
is can you have democracy
if you don't have, so one of
the effects of social media and,
you know, online media, is that,
as I said, people are now siloed
in their echo chambers
where different people trust
different kinds of news.
Okay, but if you don't, if
there's no shared public space,
if we're not all having
the same debate anymore.
And this isn't about opinion,
you know, left wing-right wing.
This is like, do we all agree
what happened yesterday?
Right. If we don't all agree
what happened yesterday,
how do we make a
policy to deal with it?
Or how do we debate
it or talk about it?
And finding ways to
bring back some kind
of shared public space.
I think that's a real crisis,
particularly in this country.
I mean in some European
countries
where you still have
public broadcasters,
there still is the BBC, you
know, if not everybody likes it.
It exists, and it's,
everyone agrees
that it's a legitimate
news organization.
But I mean look, in this country
we have people who, you know,
I don't think there is
a national agreement
about who's legitimate
television and who's not.
>> John Haskell: So, one of
Russia's targets, of course,
is Ukraine, and you've
written a good bit about it.
Are they trying to do anything?
>> Anne Applebaum: So Ukraine
is fascinating actually,
because Ukraine is a
kind of petri dish.
Ukraine is where all
kinds of, you know,
where Russian political
influence campaigns have been
tried and practiced, and almost
everything you see everywhere
else has been tried at
least once in Ukraine.
Whatever hacking people's
private email or creating,
you know, bot nets that
will, that was all done
over the last decade in Ukraine.
Ii think it's, and
it's also been a kind
of petri dish for responses.
The first really good
and interesting kind
of anti-disinformation NGO or
civil society group was created
in Ukraine called Stop Fake.
And Stop Fake began
using sort of techniques
of online journalism to
identify when a picture was fake
or when a video was fake or
when, you know, and they create,
again, they created, they
sought to reach journalists,
and they began looking
at identifying.
This is not so much
factchecking as verification.
So they're in, it's
an interesting group,
and they've tried, you know,
they've tried different
experiments and trying to figure
out how to reach
people and how to try
in different languages
and so on.
You know, the Ukrainian
government has also tried some
things that I think
are negative.
You know, they've tried to
ban, they have banned actually.
There's a Russian social
media platform called VK,
which is now banned in Ukraine.
And there's just, you know,
they reckon that's manipulated.
So they try and do
it by banning things,
and we'll see if that works.
I think, you know,
probably it won't.
You know, one of the
answers sometimes is okay,
you need to create,
if you're being,
if your society is being
undermined by, you know,
negative, you know, one
of the correct responses
should be well,
you need a positive narrative
that attracts people.
They've been maybe less
good at creating that.
>> John Haskell: So you
have a good megaphone
with writing a column
a couple times a week
for the Post and other outlets.
What have you told
policymakers to think about
or what would you like to?
We have some in the room that
we have an opportunity you
can tell.
>> Anne Applebaum:
Yeah, raise your hands.
>> John Haskell: Maybe this
is what might be a good thing
to think about.
You know, when you have
an opportunity to talk
to a member of Congress.
What do you tell them?
What would be a useful
way to think
about what to do about this?
>> Anne Applebaum: So first
of all, it would be useful
to have some piece of the US
government doing this full time
as its only job.
And it shouldn't just be
people who do public diplomacy
or press communications,
which is what it often is now.
And who can begin to think full
time about the aspects of it.
And then, and also beginning
to fund research into it.
Which is happening a
kind of scattered way.
There are foundations doing
it, but there should be more.
Also, I think, I
think it's, you know,
the lesson of the recent
hearings with Mark Zuckerberg is
that Congress really
needs to up its game
on understanding what
this is and how it works.
Yeah. It's not --
>> John Haskell: They're
disagreeing with you.
>> Anne Applebaum: Yeah,
it's not actually that funny.
You know --
>> John Haskell:
[Inaudible] humor.
>> Anne Applebaum: The
level of knowledge,
you know, is incredibly low.
You know, I mean this is
such an important and urgent
and interesting problem with all
kinds of facets, both domestic
and foreign policy, affecting
education, affecting research.
You know, shouldn't
there be a, you know,
congressional committee
devoted to this?
Shouldn't we begin to think
harder about which pieces
of the US government
should be doing,
which pieces of the legislature.
I mean I'd like to see, you
know, members of congress
who do this, you know,
just like we have some
who do the arms services
committee,
and that's what they
think about full time.
I'd like someone to be thinking
about this all the time.
Because there may be, there
may have to be some regulatory
or legislative pieces
of the solution.
I mean certainly, there will
be, the Europeans are going
to do that if we don't.
So, it's time to
get on the ball.
>> John Haskell: Well, you know,
we appreciate very
much your being a part
of addressing that
knowledge gap.
I mean that's what
we're trying to do here.
We appreciate that a
lot here at the library.
So the last thing I want
to ask is, you know,
you have a good streak on
winning prizes for your books.
So, not to jinx anything, but
what is your next project?
>> Anne Applebaum:
I thought you were
about to say what is my prize?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I am, I have, I've been
very involved in this issue
and trying to do research on it
and also inspire a conversation
about it, which is something
I hadn't really done before.
I've always worked as a
journalist or as a historian,
not as somebody kind
of involved in policy.
So, it's been new for me.
I would very much like to write
a book about the year 1989
and what happened afterwards.
Because we've made
a lot of assumptions
about what happened then and
what happened in the 1990s.
And actually, the 1990s is
a really interesting decade
when you had huge transformation
in Central and Eastern Europe.
And although it's been written
about, you know, by journalists
at the time and in some
scattered way, I think it,
it's one of those things where
the 1990s weren't interesting
for a long time because it was
just kind of old news and stuff
that happened that was
boring and yesterday.
And now suddenly, I think we're
at the moment where
it's history.
And so oh now, it's time
to reassess what happened
after communism fell.
As you know, most of my three
larger history books have all
been about Stalinism.
And I think I won't
write about Stalin again.
Done with Stalin.
>> John Haskell: So we're
having a book signing
on the most recent book next
door at Woodall Pavilion,
so I hope you all will come
join Anne in a few minutes.
But thank you very much.
>> Anne Applebaum: Thank you.
>> John Haskell: This
was very informative.
>> Anne Applebaum: Thanks.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.
