A Lot of Good People Told Me

Our final guest this season is Eric Greenwald. Eric is a distinguished cyber security fellow with the Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin who has served with the National Security Council staff, the FBI and U.S. Cyber Command. In the private sector, Eric Greenwald has worked as a litigator and an international trade lawyer and more recently, as a producer for the CBS News program “60 Minutes” and National Public Radio (NPR). With this varied background at the intersection of security, cyber, policy and journalism, he was the perfect person to serve as an advisor for this podcast project. In early 2021, I pitched him an idea of a podcast exploring the issue of informationnoye protivoborstvo. This mouthful is Russian for “information confrontation,” an umbrella term to define their proven strategy of information disruption in grey-area conflict zones (which are also sometimes kinetic conflict zones). Informationnoye protivoborstvo encompasses both cyber hacking AND disinformation. Eric suggested we focus on disinformation, as the solutions to address hacking and disinfo are very different, with the disinfo solutions a bit more sparse. Disinformation in this case, and always on our podcast this season, means falsifying a narrative and spreading it for one’s own goals and interests. Sometimes it can be as innocuous as a joke, or sometimes it can seek to drive a wedge between Americans on hot button issues like race and gender and sexuality. On this special wrap-up episode, we discuss solutions to minimize disinformation in the U.S. and mitigate some of its harmful effects. We discuss ideas like civic engagement and media literacy courses in schools. We talk about content moderation with 1st Amendment considerations. We also tackle Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Thank you, Eric, for not only marveling at the complexity of the issue but for also exploring policy solutions and providing important context for all of us. The answer is truly, we ought to do a lot of these things to test and see what works. With incremental steps, we can begin to chip away at the issue to right our wobbling ship.

This week our guest is Dr. Scott Debb, professor at Norfolk State University’s Master of Science in Cyber Psychology program. We dive deep into the psychology and effects of disinformation and technology by exploring fun topics like doomscrolling and FOMO. With the most calming voice you can imagine, Dr. Debb somehow made us feel alright about the world. We had a wonderful conversation about human behavior and technology, the implicit trust we place in our tech, how individuals fit in our tech-reliant society and the changing nature of the social contract. Above all, we remembered there are human beings behind the chat bubbles on our phones, and we all have an inherent need to belong. Dr. Debb’s background is in clinical psychology, primarily working with individuals suffering from anxiety, depression, substance abuse. He’s also worked a lot with kids and families in lower socio-economic status areas. Dr. Debb had spent years looking at the expansion of technology and social media as forces of communication and later fell into cyberpsychology as one area of psych that incorporated many interdisciplinary aspects. He ended up creating the first U.S.-based graduate program in Cyberpsychology at Norfolk State University, in Norfolk Virginia. Thank you, Dr. Debb!

Kathleen McElroy is the real deal. We were honored to sit with her in Austin, Texas to discuss the current state of journalism in America. Kathleen is the director of the School of Journalism and a professor at The University of Texas at Austin. She came to academia after more than thirty years as a professional journalist at The New York Times and the Austin American-Statesman. Her interests include newsroom ethics and the role of race in collective memory, sports media and obituaries. Our discussion revolved around public trust levels in journalism and democracy, the current media landscape and how we got here. We talked about what still qualifies as “news” when all information online appears the same to the reader – or, perhaps more aptly, the “consumer.” We explored the phenomena of rogue lone wolf “journalists” who work outside established news room systems. We talked about the breakdown of gatekeeping and, of course, we discussed disinformation! Kathleen helped us break it down and paint a real picture of the current landscape. One key takeaway is that we all have permission to read the comics page in the newspaper and watch tiktok videos online about cats. Thank you, Kathleen, for your perspective!

Bobby Chesney is the Dean of the University of Texas School of Law and at the time of our interview, he served as Director of the Strauss Center for International Security and Law – the center who made this podcast possible! On this episode Alex and Bobby define and discuss deep fakes and the philosophical ponderings of what happens when you cannot trust what you see online. We also dive more deeply into the legal implications of disinformation and various attempts to regulate that may impact our first amendment rights. Bobby’s scholarship focuses on U.S. national security policies and institutions, encompassing both domestic and international law issues. He’s written open-source academic text books on cyber security policy and law as well as intelligence and national security as it dovetails with surveillance and covert action. He is a veritable fount of knowledge and has also focused research around deep fakes, a specific area of disinformation, with Danielle Citron of UVA. Be sure to check out his writing for Lawfare Blog, as well as the National Security Law Podcast. He’s on Twitter @bobbychesney.

On this episode, Alex speaks with the illustrious and engaging Christopher C. Krebs. Krebs is an American attorney who served as first Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from November 2018 to November 2020. In November 2020, President Donald Trump fired Krebs via Tweet for refuting Trump's claims of election fraud in the presidential election. Shortly after this, Mr. Krebs penned an op-ed for The Washington Post in which he asserted himself: “Trump fired me for saying this, but I’ll say it again - the election wasn’t rigged.” We talk about what the government can and cannot do to bolster security, and how some matters of national security can be threats from within. We are big fans of Krebs and appreciate his service working on security for our country -- at CISA and beyond with his new consulting agency, Krebs Stamos Group, co-founded with former Facebook Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos. We will also now steal his joke about how CISA loves security so much, they include the word twice in their agency's name. Thank you, Chris! :) This interview took place on March 10, 2022, before Krebs spoke publicly in conversation with Bobby Chesney at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, as part of their ongoing Brumley Speaker Series.  

In Memes, Bots and Algorithms, we talk with the incredible Renée DiResta, a true expert at the forefront of this research through her work at Stanford Internet Observatory. In one of her many “no big deal” moments, Renée testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) about Russian disinformation campaigns in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Renée is particularly interested in understanding how platform algorithms intersect with user behavior and factional crowd dynamics. She studies how actors leverage the information ecosystem to exert influence, from domestic activists promoting health misinformation and conspiracy theories. She has studied influence operations and computational propaganda in the context of pseudoscience conspiracies, terrorist activity, and state-sponsored information warfare, and has advised Congress, the State Department, and other academic, civil society, and business organizations on the topic. Recently, she appeared in a longform podcast interview with Joe Rogan and is featured in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. Editorial note: Renée is awesome and worth following across many platforms. Her Twitter page is @noUpside.

Disinformation and Propaganda 101. On this episode we get critical historical and background information on this subject through discussion with Bryan Jones –  a technology entrepreneur, executive and adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law. He currently teaches a course called Propaganda, Deception & Manipulation in the Technology Era where he traces the evolution of information warfare, from the 1700s to current day. Central to a lot of Bryan’s work is the intersection of democracy and technology. In our conversation we touch on the differences between propaganda and disinformation campaigns, plus the psychology behind how they work and how they became central to modern day political discussions.  Bryan also talks about social media and algorithmic optimization to facilitate and accelerate the reach and impact. “A Lot of Good People Told Me” is a podcast exploring the effects of disinformation on the American public. This first season is the culmination of Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs graduate Alex Rose’s Brumley NextGEN fellowship through the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. This policy project explores issues at the intersection of cyber security, journalism and world affairs. On the podcast, Rose interviews experts like Bobby Chesney, Renée DiResta, Christopher Krebs and more to uncover how disinformation and propaganda is disseminated through technology and how it has come to shape our lives. On one episode she speaks with Dr. Scott Debb, a cyber psychologist who illuminates concepts like doomscrolling, confirmation bias and group think. She looks at the decline in trust in public institutions and how disinformation may be responsible. While looking at the security implications, she is also searching for viable policy solutions we can take out into the world to combat the detrimental effects of disinformation while protecting our right to freedom of speech, protected under the first amendment. The music featured on the podcast is composed by Alex Dupree, who also edited every episode and served as a crucial production partner. For more information please visit www.alexrosebb.com or www.strausscenter.org. You can also follow us on instagram @alotofgoodpeopletoldme. Thank you so much to the Strauss Center for helping to bring this project to life. And thank you for listening and engaging with this topic.

“A Lot of Good People Told Me” is a podcast exploring the effects of disinformation on the American public. This introductory episode will define "disinformation" and lay the groundwork for the exploration and information-gathering we'll dive into this season.  This first season of "A Lot of Good People Told Me" is the culmination of Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs graduate Alex Rose’s Brumley NextGEN fellowship through the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. This policy project explores issues at the intersection of cyber security, journalism and world affairs. On the podcast, Rose interviews experts like Bobby Chesney, Renée DiResta, Christopher Krebs and more to uncover how disinformation and propaganda is disseminated through technology and how it has come to shape our lives. On one episode she speaks with Dr. Scott Debb, a cyber psychologist who illuminates concepts like doomscrolling, confirmation bias and group think. She looks at the decline in trust in public institutions and how disinformation may be responsible. While looking at the security implications, she is also searching for viable policy solutions we can take out into the world to combat the detrimental effects of disinformation while protecting our right to freedom of speech, protected under the first amendment. The music featured on the podcast is composed by Alex Dupree, who also edited every episode and served as a crucial production partner. For more information please visit www.alexrosebb.com or www.strausscenter.org. You can also follow us on instagram @alotofgoodpeopletoldme. Thank you so much to the Strauss Center for helping to bring this project to life. And thank you for listening and engaging with this topic.