I See New People

Many, many new people ...

(Since there are many new people arriving, this post from early June is now pinned. If you want to see what’s new, scroll to the article after this one. Edited 2024-07-25.)

I was a little startled but very pleased to see not one but TWO new high level recommendations among the five who have noticed my work. The three I recognize are …

Truth About Threats - SOCOM influence operations guru Paul Cobaugh.

Global Guerrillas - SOCOM pilot and long time author on conflict John Robb.

Spytalk - longtime intelligence sector reporter Jeff Stein.

The arrival of Jeff and John were no doubt assisted by Joe Menn’s Washington Post article on the revelations about The Grayzone from the intrusion into Iran’s PressTV. I wasn’t the only one with those files, I see they’ve made their way into DDoSecrets: PressTV, and there is already a story cooking with another analytical outlet based on my work.

Since a couple dozen of you are new, let me show you around.

Attention Conservation Notice:

I’m fairly good at writing catchy titles and I wander all over the place in terms of interests. Most articles here have an ACN immediately after the intro that offers reasons to NOT read any further. This one is for the influx of new people, constant readers are free to swipe left …

Inforwar Irregulars Bulletin:

The main content here after the initial boot camp has settled into a quarterly explorations of various topics related to online conflict.

• September 2023 - a sort of boot camp, meant to help develop skills with the tools needed to operate safely.

• 4th Quarter 2023 - using The Online Operation Kill Chain as a basic, we considered this from the aspect of a small ISR node characterizing and interdicting malign influence.

• 1st Quarter 2024 - loosely focused on PANOPTIC, short for Pattern and Action Nomenclature Of Privacy Threats In Context, a MITRE privacy oriented framework. We’re going to keep coming back to this one when I find material.

• 2nd Quarter 2024 - for the Malign Influence Operations Safari we got access to a fancy new tool set in the form of Semrush/SEOQuake, and we also explored some high profile leaks.

When class is not in session I still post various conflict centered observations.

Geocyber:

The Geocyber area was meant to focus on the overlap of international affairs boiling over into kinetic conflict, and what that meant online. Instead it’s taken on a similar focus and tone to the retired Neal Rauhauser Wordpress site. During the decade prior to the launch of IIB I would pick a new research direction after every presidential election, with climate change, and energy/food/water security featuring strongly.

Disinfodrome:

I have some skill in maintaining Open Semantic Search’s document indexing system and I’m a relentless document packrat. Disinfodrome is a cluster of virtual OSS systems with various document sets in them. The demonstration set everyone can see are 14,000 documents from the Trump Russia investigations and there are a number of others in addition to the PressTV material.

Part of what’s happening in 2024 involves Artificial Intelligence For Disinfodrome. There is a translation pipeline effort, since DDoSecrets is chock full of the take from Russian agencies and companies, and OSS itself is going to be joined by a GraphRAG based query solution. We recently acquired a Dell PowerEdge R430, which will be replacing a 2009 Dell R610, and a surprise donation in the form of Pinky & Brain has livened up my home AI computing setup after a difficult spring.

Tool Time:

It is difficult (but not impossible!) to get involved in online conflicts without having a cell phone or a computer. The internet produces a boundless flood of security advice of wildly variable quality, typically authored by guys who are mostly “talking to themselves”. This involves an implicit audience that knows precisely what they do, a recitation of the steps they took to solve their particular problem of the moment, and they never bother to contrast alternate approaches, let alone make clear any negative decisions they made regarding tools or methods.

Since sites like Reddit and Stack Exchange often surface best practices and AI content generation for the sake of SEO is about to make this area an even bigger shitshow than it was, I decline to compete head on.

The Tool Time section is a mix of advice meant for the moderately technical person who likely supports others involved in conflicts, occasional security stories from the They Did WHAT?!?!?! end of the field, which also happen to contain object lessons for us, and a good bit of my grousing about my personal low budget computer museum.

Conclusion:

I am honored that three serious authors think enough of my efforts in this curious niche to point members of their audiences here.

Silent Lucidity on June 7th was meant to be the start of three weeks of little to no content here, while I rest after the Malign Influence Operations Safari, and figure out what the heck we’re gonna do for Q3 of 2024.

Given that the most read article here is We’re Gonna Fight, while November’s Civil War Referendum got pushed off the list by the PressTV news … my assessment hasn’t changed. When the historians get to this time period they’ll mark the start of our second civil war as January 6th, 2021. So what’s next will be something in this general area.

And on that note, I’ll see all of you again after the 4th of July …