On March 2, 2011, most American citizens thought nothing of an obscure briefing to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in which then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned how the United States was losing the ability to control global narratives. 

During the Cold War, she argued, Americans in effect monopolized the media and were able to use information to support both foreign and domestic policy. But, in short order, globalization challenged that monopoly.

“Our private media cannot fill that gap. In fact, our private media, particularly cultural programming, often works at counter purposes to what we truly are as Americans and what our values are,” Clinton told lawmakers.  “We are in an information war, and we are losing that war. I’ll be very blunt in my assessment.”

Today, the Western world has been knocked on its heels by the information war. In our 2016 elections, Russian interference played a critical role in influencing the outcome of the presidential election. The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence would later determine that as early as 2014 the Russian government sought to disrupt local and national election infrastructure, and had been preparing and practicing many of the tactics employed in the 2016 election for years.

The same committee also found that Russia actively spread misinformation through American social media platforms to cause domestic chaos by “exacerbating existing tensions on socially divisive issues, including race, immigration, and Second Amendment rights.” In Houston, Russia organized simultaneous protests for and against the same issue in 2016 to pit locals against each other.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Iran and Russia interfered with the U.S. pandemic response by promoting messages on social media that distorted the issues and made it harder for national and local public health authorities to control the spread of the disease. 

And now, as many college campuses across the country are embroiled in massive protests, independent analysis has revealed that foreign malign influence may be exploiting these protests to cause disruption to U.S. infrastructure and division among populations in advance of the upcoming elections. 

In a report released last week, the Network Contagion Research Institute, an organization that identifies disinformation operations from state actors and extremist groups, found “the involvement of a network linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that funds and supports both alternative anti-establishment media organizations promoting anti-American narratives” was influencing college protests.

The report went on to say: “The NCRI finds that the increase in direct-action, targeting infrastructure and public spaces, is in part driven by organizations connected to CCP foreign influence efforts.

“While nominally focused on Israel, the current protests can be better understood as a well-funded initiative driving a revolutionary, anti-government, and anti-capitalist agenda, with the leading organizations serving as versatile tools for foreign entities hostile to the U.S.

“The methods of these organizations exacerbate societal tensions, polarize the younger generation, and appear to seek the destabilization of American institutions.”

Our Role In Protecting Our Democratic Systems

The irony of all this is that foreign governments that reject democracy and suppress citizen engagement in their own countries are hijacking U.S. domestic democratic systems to undermine our institutions and communities.

With another election just months away, here in Hawaii we need to think about the integrity of our information and the impacts it can have on our institutions.

To be clear, I don’t think that we need to worry about a foreign government stealing our elections in the sense that they change the tallies of the votes we cast. We are well-prepared against that kind of overt attack.

I’m more worried about a foreign government stealing the hearts and minds of our people through information warfare, because in many ways we have become vulnerable to hype and lost some of our citizen skills.

The first thing we need to do is walk back our contemporary habit of instantly reacting to everything. I get it, on social media everyone wants to be seen as a superstar. Being the first to say “I denounce this! I condemn this!” can elevate one’s dopamine supply from a flood of similar-minded people tracking a trending topic. 

In fact, there are even people who engage in an online practice called “hate reading” where one intentionally seeks out offensive content, just so they can denounce it and disseminate to their networks why they hate it.

The problem with doing this is it often amplifies messages that shouldn’t see the light of day, causing niche or obscure agitators to become internet celebrities and unreasonable ideas to become mainstream.

Think before you get offended. If something is a lie, don’t help spread the lie, even if you think it helps your worldview. As a GenXer, I remember when teachers used to rhetorically ask us, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you join them?”

Now, everyone gladly jumps off a bridge, cliff or lie because everyone else is doing it. Stop.

Bring Back Editorial Restraint

In the past, we had the benefit of for-profit media outlets exercising an enlightened or at least careful editorial control over what they broadcast or printed. It was thought, at the time, the public shouldn’t be agitated too much, because of the social disaster that could result.

Today, for-profit media gets more impressions and better advertising reach when you’re wildly upset, with no thoughts about the consequences or social disruption. This is precisely what makes foreign misinformation planted in a domestic setting so effective.

Those of us who value democratic systems and especially order and calm need to kick back against media hype tactics. It’s only profitable because we make it profitable. But if enough of us boycott or refuse these kinds of guerilla media tactics, we can bring an end to it.

Can we win this information war? We’d better.

I hate to say it, but between the post-pandemic era and our social media world, people have terrible interpersonal skills. “Soft” skills, or the ability to get along with people in private and public interaction, is sorely lacking. I see this especially in Hawaii where we purport to be “the Aloha State” but we have lost the ability to discuss differences amicably or work through problems without creating massive community discord. 

The most powerful move you can make to take back democracy and the stability and integrity of our institutions is to be able to talk to people amicably. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently suggested that the No. 1 indicator of success in one’s career is having a positive attitude toward others.

This should be a no-brainer for Hawaii, but the Aloha spirit seems to be getting pushed out more and more by a prevailing wind of hostility, lack of respect, instant rage and a tendency to dehumanize people who are different than us.

What this creates is a climate of isolation and paranoia that encourages snap reactions, gossip-spreading and us vs. them thinking that makes it easy to stir you up on-demand. And that’s dangerous.

Our upcoming election is not about Democrats or Republicans. It’s about humans who are able to maintain a social fabric of connectedness and who, hopefully, can think for themselves and make discerning judgments without being hijacked by foreign interference.

Can we win this information war? We’d better.