Ep2. Who Referees Cyberspace?

Hello Mega-Orderers! We want to make sure that Disorder is the most orderly podcast that you've ever listened to. To do that, we need your help. Please go to DisorderShow.com/survey. Tell us about yourself what you love about Disorder and what you'd want to hear more of or less of. Plus, you'll be entered to win one of our two monthly $50 gift cards. That's DisorderShow.com/survey. I'm Jason Pack. And I'm Alex Hall Hall and this is Disorder. This is a podcast where we examine a pressing global issue like climate change, tax havens or neopopulism. We discuss how these issues have come to be part and parcel of our era of global disorder. And we finish by proposing solutions to restore effective global governance that could ultimately help us find a semblance of order in this mad mad world. In this week's episode, we're going to look at who referee cyberspace. The online world is a lawless jungle. And maybe this is because the internet came into being during a period of global deregulation. And as such, it mirrors the coordination failures surrounding other aspects of our era of disorder. This week, we're going to discuss what can be done to constrain the disordering possibilities of our unregulated cyberspace, all the while ensuring that this technology is used for good. First we'll hear from David Patrick Caracos. David is a journalist and war correspondent whose first-hand experience of conflict in the 21st century led him to write the book, "War and 140 characters explaining how social media is changing modern warfare." This week, he's going to be telling us how he's seen social media reshape how actual conflicts play out. Later on, we're going to hear from Asha Rangapa. She's a former FBI agent, an expert on disinformation, and she's going to tell us about the role Big Tech has played in creating this unregulated internet. So Jason, to help understand our current situation, I think we need to spend a little time discussing how the internet came into being, and why it was left unregulated. So I've been doing a little bit of amateur research myself, and I've found out that the internet evolved as a result of a US decision under President Eisenhower to set up a defense agency to try and find ways to harness new technologies. This was called the Advanced Research Project Agency, or ARPA for short. In the 1950s, they evolved this thing called the ARPAnet, and in the 1960s, for the very first time computers began to speak to each other. How we fast forward you get Tim Berners-Lee inventing the worldwide web, then you had the invention of email, you had the dot com boom, then you had social media. It's now this massive unregulated space. Why didn't governments try and regulate it? I mean, they've regulated water, and air, and space. I mean, there are other intangible things that we've regulated. So why not this one? There are multiple things going on here. One is the principle that computer chips are able to double the amount of information that they store every 18 months, and therefore the amount of information that existed on these early ARPA nets is less in the entire world than you and I have on our personal computer. And the amount of information that existed on all of Silicon Valley's computers in 1980, when I was born, is less than exists in one borough in a small town now. So it's just huge. Exactly, Alex. And therefore the regulation complexities of the internet are different than what has needed to be regulated before, because the amount of information is a billion times the sum of human knowledge in ancient Greece. That's a lot of information. But is it the technology that needs regulating, or is it what's transmitted through the technology? It's primarily the technology that needs regulating, but one of the complexities of regulating it is the sheer quantity of data. I think the second thing is that in the early days of the internet, people were excited about the possibilities that this new space presented to liberate individuals from mediation either by government or newspapers or platforms. And this was drawing on the Anglo-Saxon world's truly deep commitment to liberalism and freedom of the public sphere. And these are the ideas that are behind free speech and the declaration of independence. And people like John Stuart Mill, who believe that if you have free speech, truth is inherently going to push out falsehood because truth resonates as true and society coalesces around it. And that criminalizing speech is actually what makes it attractive. But now it's harder than ever to tell what's real and fake online. So Alex, why was Mill so much more right for the printed word and arguably quite wrong for how the internet operates? I think there's been quite a lot of dissolution really with the internet. I remember it was so exciting when protesters in Iran could show real-life footage of what was going on or protesters in Burma could show real-life footage about what was going on and push back against their governments. So I was one of those who thought that it was going to be overall a good thing that this would put authoritarian governments on the back foot. And I think the biggest dissolution I guess you could say is realising that authoritarian regimes are now harnessing this technology and they're using it back against us. And then you've got the problem that we in the West, we have our free speech, freedom of expression, we see that as a strength. And now it's creating a vulnerability for us. When I was ambassador in Georgia, one of the absolutely toughest things we had to deal with was a constant flow of disinformation from Russian sources. So we, and this was when the UK was in the EU, we were trying to tell the Georgians joining the EU is great. There's all these advantages, there's economic benefits, and there's more political freedom. But what the Russian bots were doing was spreading information about, "Ah, but if you join the EU, they're going to push all this gay narrative and trans narrative, and they're going to undermine your culture." And Georgian culture is very conservative. So every year on EU day, what should have been a very joyful day, Georgian Orthodox priests used to lead these protests against gay people. And they became against the EU because they thought it was all about being gay, which obviously is not right. Well said. And you could argue that the type of disinformation you describe seeping into Georgian society is all part of this new 21st century way of fighting. Cyber warfare is integral in all modern conflicts. So to hear about how the internet and cyber space in general is the key domain in which warfare plays out, we're going to turn to David Patrick Caracos. He's been embedded with Ukrainian forces, he's discussed Twitter with Israeli comms experts, he's worked with American generals and British civil servants about how we can come back disinformation. We're hoping that he's going to shed some light on how Facebook and Twitter have transformed the way that wars are waged, covered and consumed. David, thanks for joining us. Good to see you again as always Jason. Hi David. Hi Alex. So David, militaries and spy agencies have long ago caught on to the importance about controlling the narrative. Hasn't this been going on since before writing haven't militaries always wanted their own population to believe that their country is the victim of an unprovoked aggression and the enemies are all barbarians and evil. So how is seeking to control the information any different now that we have social media. In of itself, it's not different. Thesydides talks about propaganda, he also talks about people willing to believe El Nonsense rather than just taking a bit of time to actually find out the truth. So certain things are perennial. But I think what we need to understand is that General Mattis once said if Alex the Great by which he meant Alexander looked at the battlefield now, he'd understand it. And he's right, armies fight armies, maybe the technology changes but the principles don't. War doesn't really change but the context in which wars afford does change. You talk about this new person called homo digitalist, the kind of citizen journalist. Could you give us a flavor of what difference they're making and some examples maybe. And then I want to come back to say overall do we think this is a good thing or a bad thing. I'll start with the slightly broader issue which is this when the internet came along we have this cyber utopianism. The belief that well give amount of women access to the internet and it will set them free. Yeah, well, you know, there couldn't be despobs anymore. Now you can see everything that's being done. Yeah. Well, we saw for over 10 years what a sad was doing in Syria hasn't really made much of a difference. In the end, the tools used will always come to be used by the oppressor. Generally they can use them more effectively because they have the resources of a state behind them. Now this idea I talk about homogenous tarleys. is all of us, right? Because we are all of us now pretty much all the time, and all the time, if you'll me, connected to a smartphone, a small computer. Now, this gives us the potential to exercise extraordinary influence at the individual level. Now, mostly we don't. People sometimes say, "Well, social media's democratic. "Anyone, whether they're a taxi driver, "or a president, or a king, has 280 characters." Well, okay, yes. But at the same time, the hierarchies that exist in real life exist online. The BBC has however many million followers. I have 63,000 followers, someone else has 600 followers. So they do exist. But look, we need to understand something as well. Why did George Floyd become such a thing? You know, it wasn't because a policeman killed a black person, which unfortunately is a long static. It's because I made it a tile. This was right by that is a young girl with just a phone. We're all actors in a war because we have this thing, this little computer in our pocket, David. But how does this cause this conscription? In other words, it used to be that if you were 14-year-old girl who had wealthy parents, you weren't conscripted to fight for the Russian state. But now, if you oppose the Russian state with your little mini computer by, you know, showing a video of you're making your nails into blue and yellow colors, you could get a visit from the GRU and your dad's assets could be stolen because you painted your nails blue and yellow. How does that change the structure of how conflict plays out? Well, social media fundamentally does two things. It amplifies messages and it mobilizes people. We all become little mini broadcasters. It allows people, individuals, to start exercising influence, rules afford on two levels, right? They are the physical level and they're thought of what you might call the discursive level, which is to say that there's always a political debate around it. And nations, even large nation states, have to win the discursive battle or they doesn't go well for them. Look at Iraq. In the final analysis, now you can argue it was also because it was a disaster on the ground, but we lost the discursive battle. We couldn't justify it. And because there were no WMTs, we lost that discursive battle. Now, let's take this gars and girl. Tell us the story. Yeah, tell us the story. Hey, it means you're our backer. So when it was protective edge, it's launched in 2014. I think she's 14 years old and she's sitting in her house in Gagin, it's being pummeled every day. And she starts to write, "What is essentially a diary?" She says, "You know, here's who I am. I'm terrified. All I want to do is learn to play the guitar." And she says, "What I call not a job to be a soap opera, but it's a soap opera that's the most dramatic kind because it's literally life and death." And over the wall, she gets hundreds of thousands of followers. You see the effect that it has. Now, we have to understand like, to what degree does she affect Israeli military calculations? The answer is zero. But it is the thing. Obrige protective edge is if I remember 55 days long, it's the longest war Israel fights in its history. And I spoke to an idea of commandals say we're not sure we can ever fight a war that long again. It's because of people like that. And war starts to happen here. Is there any physical war between Israel and Hamas? It's decided before it starts. Hamas cannot defeat Israel. Israel is not going to clear our guards and throw Hamas in the seats, not going to happen. So actually the result of the physical battle is predetermined. So actually, what is actually happening here? We know the physical outcome before it starts. So what then happens to 55 days is almost two narratives. One saying, look, we're at democratic states on the siege. The other people go, we are an oppressed people fighting just to survive. That is what's being played out over 55 days. Almost operatically in front of an audience. How many people, how many kids and women and children, et cetera, were killed during Iraq? God knows how many, but you couldn't see them. You couldn't hear them. Now you can because of people like Farah Bak. And in the end, Israel gets to a stage where it's kind of doubly down. Israel, the complete overdog, militarily, financially in this situation because the more Palestinians or the more Hamas ever, or the more that it destroys Gaza, the worse it becomes because people like Farah just destroy it to the world every day, the more it's attacked politically. Now what's its alternative here? What to allow its own citizens to be killed to sort of try and meet that narrative? It can't. So in a sense, states like Israel need to win the political war in certain places to get arms sales, all this sort of thing. And that threatens that. Does it threaten it? Existentially no, but it is different. The minute you started talking about how Farah in Gaza was personalizing the conflict, it made me think. I mean, you said we couldn't see people on the ground in Iran, but I remember during Afghanistan, we kept on seeing awful images of weddings that got bombed and families that were bombed and it was collateral damage. It actually makes it hard for anybody, any invade, any aggressor because you're always going to see the evidence of that conflict. But we thought conflict was going to become completely anonymous so everyone had these drones and they would bomb people and you wouldn't see it. It was kind of remote warfare. But actually, when I'm getting with social media, it's suddenly coming back into our homes again in a very visceral way because we see it. But does it change the calculations of any of the actors? Is Israel going to be put off from doing what it feels it needs to do probably not, but it's about how difficult it becomes at the political level to get the stuff that it needs? I mean, back to your point about Afghanistan, yeah, but the point was, first of all, those images you saw would have been curated by professional news editors and stuff because that's how you saw them there on TV. This kind of stuff is in-is-upel. You know, that's true. That's true. When the stuff was kicking off in East Jerusalem, you saw actually, I think it was Jake Biden, even Angela Merkel came out very strongly in support of Israel. Look at his sad. He's now on the way back to being rehabilitated. So can we say that they lead to the overthrow of people like a sad, no, he can't? But can we say that they changed the calculation in military commanders yet because I see it every day? And you pray not least because half the time they need to take the firms off the soldiers because they keep streaming from where they are. So individuals have this power to influence the narrative and perceptions, but they don't necessarily change states' calculations. Can we go back to the state level again? Which states and your view are using social media and cyber warfare effectively? And which ones are slow? Are we using it effectively or are we still on the defensive? Because we're an open society, so we're more vulnerable to having this kind of stuff used against us. How do you think it's playing out on the state level? The state that most quickly understood the potential of these new technologies, I think, was Russia. And that's because there's a long history of active measures and all of this stuff. They got it immediately, whereas interestingly enough, states like Iran, in the beginning, they tried to bat social media. I remember sitting in an internet cafe in Tehran getting around this rather pathetic block of Facebook. The Russians instinct was to embrace it. Are the Iranians have now changed, of course. I always say that the world's super power of disinformation is Russia, perhaps China, but that's a different thing. The rising power is Iran. In terms of your other question, are we vulnerable because we're open? The answer is yes, we always are as a result. We simply can't force state apparatuses to still be geared towards this kind of, I guess, propaganda output in the way that a state like Russia is. So what do we need to do to make our cells stronger without suppressing the medium or the four are altogether? So there's several things. The first thing is to not get too hysterical about it. We are victim to the degree of believing the Russians are all chess grandmasters playing 18 moves ahead. Well, a lot of this stuff is really basic. You throw everything at the wall and if 5% sticks, it's a result. The second thing of this is more about ourselves is to understand how you build resilience, to understand the problems. When I give talks on this, I always ask a question to people, which is, do you know how long movies were silent for before they got sound? We let alone color, and the answer is 30 years. I did not know this. That's a third of a century. You know, how old a social media technology is really? So Facebook comes along in 2004. It gets spread out to everyone in 2007. You know, it really cuts through 2010. It's 10, 15 years old. We're still in the wild west stages of this stuff. Nobody really knows how to regulate it. They just have to deal with it. Look, if I want to say, Alexandra Hall kicked my badger, and I want to write this in an article, my editor will go, "What's your evidence?" I'm going to let that happen. I'm going to let you know when you can't write it. If I decide to tweet it, and it just so happens, the lot of angry people from the foreign office, because I thought you're a bit too much of a rebel, retweet it, and it goes viral. And get a lot of hate mail. Yeah, I'm going to get a lot of. It runs on all the magic kicker. And yeah, okay. You can sue me. And then 15 months later, it might go to trial, and by then everyone's to go on anyway. So we just don't know, I think we are dealing with it wrong in a conceptual level. We are getting hung up on content. We're getting hung up on what is being said. You know, I don't know. Billy Bob from Tennessee wants to say, "Akillary Clinton kicked his dog. He should be allowed to say it." What is not permissible? If it turns out that Billy Bob from Tennessee, and all his mates, is in fact either from St. Petersburg or with his mates, if we're looking at how to combat this sort of stuff, stocking hung up on content and go for behavior. That's the thing that we have to target. The fraudulent mass astro-terthing, all this sort of stuff, because you just can't stop people from being me, unfortunately. David just used the very amusing term astroturfing. I didn't know what that was, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, astroturfing is the use of fake grassroots efforts that primarily focus on influencing public opinion and are typically funded by corporations and political entities so as to influence people's opinions. On the internet, astroturfers use software to hide their identity. So in David's example, Ivan and his mates impersonating Billy Bob and his mates is a classical example of estuoturfing. And that such things like this even have their own terms begs the question, are we in an informational war? I would say we are. There's another conceptual issue here which is people think of war as a light. You switch it on and you switch it off. War breaks out. You literally declare war. They ambassad a hands over a formal declaration of war, extraordinary. Yes. And you fight and both sides wear uniforms and you can see where the battlefield is. It ends. The winner defeats the loser, imposes a political settlement and war ends. It sounds as gentlemanly as retiring to the smoking room and playing cards after dinner. Yeah. And I want my victory parade down the mall. Exactly. And look, I do want to be careful here because it is easy to overegle a lot of this stuff. But in terms of has there been a concerted and consistent propaganda campaign, this information campaign, whatever you want to call it, against the West for years here, absolutely. It hasn't stopped. I see it. Do you think this new phenomenon is contributing to the disorder or helping push back against states? What effect is that having? I think when you're talking about an enduring global disorder or an age of disorder or whatever you want to call it, it's really seen when we're looking at new technologies. New technologies are essentially accelerating a trend from order towards, if not chaos, then a more disordered reality. New media platforms are by their nature, not structured around the architecture of states. So I think the trend is one that I'm not going to talk about the end of the nation state that's a cliche and it's not true. COVID showed us the degree to which states can impose central authority. But it's just all chaotic, isn't it? Next on disorder, we're going to hear how a former FBI agent thinks we could order the current disorder in cyberspace. But first, we're going to take a short break. Summer always changes how I get dressed, my dear mega-orderers. I want pieces that feel lighter and breathable. Things that are easy and still put together. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials and they feel amazing. Like I'm into the Quince European linen trousers and shorts. 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Take his recent conversation with Corey Doctoro where he talks about inshitification and that's when a product gets so bad that it has clawed back all the value from the customers and the advertisers and it has entrap them both. And that's like the new Mercantilism that I talk about. So to listen to the Jordan Harbinger Show, search for it on Apple Podcasts Spotify or just go to JordanHarbinger.com/Subscribe. I think you'll really enjoy it. Hey y'all, I'm Elise Hugh. I'm Jennifer Edman. We are the co-hosts of the Epstein Files Book Club where we break down the latest revelations from the investigations and network of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. We have thoughtful guests on and do a bunch of reading so you don't have to. Hopefully we'll get a sense of what's real, what's not, and what we can do about it or just commiserate with us because it's really hard to brush us this shit alone. Tune in every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be hearing more from David over the coming weeks. But what he's really brought home is it's not just warfare that's affected by this space. Everything. From political campaigns, hacking of our water supplies to the kids in my bedroom, engaging with people I have no idea who chaos is reigning on the internet. So to me at least it's clear that we do need to order this cyberspace. But who has the right to do that? Is it the job of government? Is it big tech? Is it individuals? How do we order this space? To find out, we're going to speak to Asha Rangapa. Asha's a senior lecturer at Yale University's Jackson School for Global Affairs. She's also a former CNN legal analyst and was previously an FBI agent and an expert on disinformation. I spoke to Asha about the problems that unregulated cyberspace presents. And we both mentioned various ways that collective action could help tackle the issue. I started by asking her how can we begin to get the right people in place to help deal with this issue of unregulated cyberspace? I think part of the challenge is that this problem doesn't neatly fit into anyone silo. And our institutions, they're sort of separate competencies. And the problem of disinformation really spans a lot of them. So the question I think first is where does this fit? Is this an issue for the State Department? Is this an issue for law enforcement? Is this a military issue? Is it all three? And if that's the answer, then how do we coordinate among all of these different people? Because I think we have the experts. I think what we haven't been able to set up is an institutional mechanism to share that expertise and come up with a all of government comprehensive way of addressing it. I think that the cyber commons is actually amenable to global regulation. Just like the way that the maritime arena was seen from the 16th century as not really amenable to global regulation until the rise of the British Empire, particularly after the Seven Years War, but even after 1815 really is cementing the idea that one hegemonic power is going to take it upon itself to deal with something like freedom of navigation and ordering the maritime domain. So how would you see the democratic world dealing with the cyber commons? What are the institutions and regulations that we need to deal with this multisylow multinational problem set? I think it requires understanding how our adversaries see cyberspace. I think a lot of the US approach has been that this is a domain that is separate from these other spheres, right? That we have a diplomatic sphere. We have kinetic warfare, then there is the cyberspace and whatever you do there, you can escalate, maybe it escalates up to cyber war, but it's this idea that these are all separate things. Our adversaries see cyberspace as a tool for a number of different things. They see it as a tool for foreign policy. They see it as a tool for preparing for kinetic military conflict. We need a paradigm shift. And then we can start constructing the rules and frameworks around that. So as an institution list, that heart, which is what a 2019 L profile of you referred to you as, could you speak to the role of American institutions as well as international institutions in trying to preserve and win this war of ideas? Because we're talking about a war of ideas where rule of law, equal justice, freedom of the press needs to be defended and pushed out and really explained as a concept to combat what else is going on. We have not yet articulated what we are battling and we need to make that clear. We need to really articulate this like good and evil. I mean, the, you know, used to be capitalism and communism is rule of law and democracy against autocracy. I mean, we have to frame it in these ways because that is the way that you can then rally people around particular values. And then the other institutional idea that I think we, we have to have our alliances. There's just no way that any one country is going to be able to do this alone. And the goal of these active measures is to fragment these alliances, right? To divide and conquer approach by mostly weaker nation states as a way to increase power and influence as a former FBI agent. I come to this looking from particularly Russia's side, which I focus on, but our adversary side, what are they trying to exploit? An adversary, an affluent government, a foreign intelligence service doesn't engage in these types of active measures, influence operations unless they see a vulnerability that can be exploited. And what we have in the United States right now is an incredibly fragmented and polarized society, which makes it very, very easy for us to be exploited. And so I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to I think that one of the ways that we can pivot is how do we rebuild civil society in the United States? There's a breakbook called Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, who talks about social capital and how social capital creates social trust. And social trust is really important because it's related to the civic health of a society. Societies with high levels of social trust pay taxes, give deterrenty, donate blood, participate in elections. But what it does is it strengthens the social fabric and makes them, I think, more resistant and resilient to the kinds of things that Russia is doing. The challenge here is that to do that, you actually meet people interacting with each other. And unfortunately, we're in a digital age where we spend about six and a half hours a day online, usually surrounded by people who agree with us. And we're not really forging those human connections that are required to accrue actual social capital. That is where I would say much of our energy shouldn't be directed because I don't think this is going to stop at any point soon. Let me ask you, how can we, given the fact that the US is not going to be Scandinavia, what are your thoughts about this question of duties as opposed to rights in places like the US and UK, where from thatcher and Reagan onward, our relationship to the state has been fundamentally altered by neoliberal ways of thinking? So I think this gets to the me versus the we in our self conception. And this is for the United States at least, I think, a very challenging line because we're a hyper individualistic society that me is really pulled us away from the we and you could see that during COVID, right? So if everybody wears a mask, then it prevents the spread of this and that helps you too, right? So there's a way in which you're making a small sacrifice, but guess what you're going to get a big benefit from it. And that just broke down. You have that idea. I think that was another opportunity before the Russian invasion for us to collectively rally around something that we're going to defeat an external enemy that we can defeat together. And we really failed at that, I think. But I think that's a challenge. I think what you're describing is the tension between the me and the we and I think that that's how do we get the we back is really the question. Of course, a whole society response. Let's talk a little bit about big tech. So what I see having happened is that in the flush years as the Berlin Wall came down, the Western economies are growing. This happened to coincide with the moment where there was the idea that yes, there were going to be some institutional challenges. But if we just deregulate and we have other countries who are joining the globalized space deregulate, there's going to be so much economic growth. The problems will sort themselves out. This is also the moment that big tech is coming into being. And big tech is either decades ahead or at least years ahead of the regulations of it. Where do we go from here? I don't think it's going to take an Elizabeth Warren presidency to have to address these issues because they are going to be paramount for whoever comes into office in the US. And I think that when people gather in Strasbourg and Brussels, they're really thinking hard about these issues. So how do we rejigger with legislation, obviously, the relationship between big tech and the regulators? So first collective action. I mean, I think we're still at a place where those people and the supporters of it are still a minority overall and that you need to have a coalition. Like this is not the time for policy purity or ideological litmus tests or whatever that. If you look at, for example, Chile and getting rid of an actual intransient dictator of 17 years, what did they do? The opposition created a coalition. They had many differences, but they rallyed around. One thing they agreed was we don't want Pinot, and they were able to manage this. There's a great movie called No, which I highly recommend about that. But how does this get at the big tech issue? So we need to try to regulate big tech. Yeah. So let's get back to big tech. So I think the first thing to really recognize and call out is that these companies really want to pitch themselves as just digital analogs to the town square. That is just not true. If I walk down to the New Haven town green and I set up a speaker's corner, people are going to come and listen to me. If I have something valuable to say, they'll walk away. Another speaker could be there and won't have a megaphone, won't have an artificial megaphone. The town of New Haven doesn't reward the person who has the most extreme speech through some kind of weird thing. I mean, there's so many distinctions that you can put out and they are not a neutral town square. They have a marketplace that is distorted. And I think we should think of regulations as correcting for those distortions the same way that we do in other markets. I mean, we create transparency rules, et cetera, for companies so that the stock market isn't distorted. We prevent insider trading. I mean, there's all kinds of regulations that we create to ensure the proper functioning of markets. The other thing that I would say about Big Tech is I compare Big Tech to Big Tobacco. As these companies are currently set up, their bottom line is fundamentally incompatible with the public good. The product that they are selling is not healthy for society. For them to make money, we get unhealthier. We get sicker. And what happened in Big Tobacco? In Big Tobacco, it really wasn't regulation. We sued the hell out of them. That attorney general came around and found a novel, legal theory to hold them accountable for the negative externalities that they were creating and to pay for those negative externalities and to create structures to address them. I mean, we still have tobacco, but they have certain civic obligations because they sell a product that is ultimately toxic. And I think that those two paradigms, the marketplace of ideas and this idea of what I call "sindustries", like industries that are just really just not good for society, but we're not going to shut them down or kind of the models to look at. Maybe you could sketch for us what a world might look like where Big Tech is more regulated and how does that world look to you? What does transparency would go a long way, the ability to understand how the algorithms work? Because that's the distortion, right? That's what's creating the distortion. And when I participate on a social media platform, I'm not in control. And I think that we need to change that dynamic. We're kind of being experimented on in a way, right? So I think, you know, understanding that and from the intelligence standpoint, how do you neutralize disinformation? You expose it. And this is also consistent with our values of free speech. You don't censor it. You expose it. You reveal who are the actors. What was what is actually happening? And this happened, for example, during the Mueller investigation when he indicted the Internet Research Agency and explained exactly how the tactics were. And so I think the other piece is requiring platforms to make available disinformation when they identify it to researchers so that we can actually start to understand and expose to get a mind around it. Because once it's just deleted, like, you know, I know that people who research this are incredibly frustrated with these platforms and their lack of information sharing in order to understand the problem better. They thrive in a place where they control all of it. And that control is what we need for a sit foremost to dismantle. Alex, I'm curious about what Asher just said there about how collective action is the necessary means to order the increasingly disordered and dangerous technologies of today. It's certainly how I think things need to be approached. But does it align with your experiences in policymaking? Can there ever really be collective action to regulate cyber space? Or is that something that, you know, intellectuals and lefties chatting think is possible? But once you're in the beast of policymaking, it's beyond how government could ever function. I mean, in theory, I sort of feel we should be able to regulate cyber space. I think the real problem we have is that our interests are not aligned. I mean, there's one set of governments who want to order it to push back against disinformation and then you have another set of governments who actively use it for disinformation. And then like Asher said about Big Tobacco, I mean, the incentive structure for high tech and big tech companies is precisely the opposite of us. I mean, they want the clicks. They want the extreme material out there that drives engagement. And we want this sort of rather dull, boring, accurate information. I think that there's two things going on here, Alex, that we need to unpick. One is that technology is going to evolve quicker than the regulatory regimes to deal with it. And the regulatory regimes are 10 to 20 to 30 years behind. So that by the time the regulatory regime happens, monopolistic capture has happened in the space. Like if we look back at the railroads, the railroads came into being in the 1830s, 40s and 50s. And by the time government in the US at least had figured it out, There was a monopoly and they had to insist, no, you can't charge more for a short journey than for a long journey. And they just regulated the shit out of these railroads and then they broke up the monopolies. So could we possibly be in a cycle whereby Facebook and Google and Amazon have exerted themselves created monopolies? But that's just like what the Rockefeller's and Standard Oil and the railroad companies did. 20 or 30 years time we're going to be figuring out and we're going to have antitrust to unpick that. Or something else going on here which is that the internet is something which due to our stovepipe bureaucracies of middle-aged diplomats we're not going to be able to regulate even when we get our heads around it. I just don't think our bureaucracies are going to be able to tackle this. But what we can do is try and change the incentives for the people who do know about this. So Asher talked about making the tobacco companies pay and we already have quite a lot of discussion about making the polluter pay for example. So maybe these platforms they also need to be made to pay and they need to come up with the solutions and then they get fined if you know there are loopholes that others exploit and let them come up with those fixes. I mean they created these facts. I love a good stick between the dress of a caradena stick. I know human nature enough. The stick works. Yeah. But I have another point here as well which is why are we so passive in the face of Russian disinformation? And I mean this sits a little bit uncomfortably because we're supposed to be democracies and we're supposed to be better. But maybe we should go on the offensive. Maybe we should start flooding Russia with disinformation and see if they like a taste of their own medicine. And maybe suddenly they'll think actually we do want to regulate this a bit. Sure. That can lead to mutually assured destruction. And it doesn't sit uncomfortably with me. I've written extensively about the need to go on the cyber offensive. You know if we had made the lights go off in St. Petersburg for a few hours and then said if you continue the war in Ukraine they'll go off for three days. Why don't we do that? I mean they do that. Why don't we? We have multiple theories here. We have two theories. On the question of incentive structures I do think that you're right. It's not impossible because setting the regulatory regime is something that we've done successfully before and we can do in this new space. Maybe the difference is the collective action issues here because tobacco is obviously a product that although produced globally it's sold exclusively nationally. We don't have an international dimension to making it difficult to prevent smoking. So the collective action thing here makes me think of the Swift code system. Financial transfers are inherently international. They're like the internet that they're taking place between multiple different domains. But in America the people who do these wire transfers have an association like a guild and that's the guild of the Swift code practitioners. And if you could be kicked out of this guild which we threatened to do for the Russian Central Bank. It's such a big deal that no one can transact business with them. Because the preponderance of big tech is American companies and it requires lots of our protocols I think that even though there are Chinese equivalents of Facebook and Chinese equivalents of Google we can create choke points whereby the West can have a Swift code like system for the standards of e-commerce and e-information sharing. And that Chinese companies are not going to want to risk violating these standards and being cut off from global e-commerce. I take your point why can't we come up with some common standards so we have to get at this thing creating a neutral marketplace. If people can say what they want but it shouldn't be pushing messages. That brings us to the end of this week's show. Thanks to Asha Rangapa and to David Patrick Caracos for joining us and thank you for listening. If you like the show please follow us on Apple podcasts or wherever you're listening so that you can get every episode as soon as it's out. And if you're particularly interested in today's topic then head to our show notes where you'll be able to find links into some deeper dives into this topic. And in our next episode of Disorder. Permanent chaos is what they thrive on. Permanent chaos is a good thing. We'll look at how our era of global disorder has allowed a new type of leader to thrive. One we call the neopopulists. But until then we hope you have an orderly week. Bye. Right now news and politics are moving awfully fast. It can feel overwhelming to say the least. I'm Evan Osnos, a staff writer for The New Yorker. On the political scene podcast we slow things down to understand how power really operates in Washington DC and what it means for you. My co-hosts Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser and I have decades of reporting experience. On every Friday we have conversations with insiders and experts to understand the forces remaking America. Join us Fridays for the Washington Roundtable from the political scene. On Mondays and Wednesdays you can also hear insightful episodes from our New Yorker colleagues David Remnick and Tyler Fogget, available wherever you get your podcasts.