The IC CAE is glad to host Dr. Rand Waltzman, Senior Information Scientist at the RAND Corporation and former program manager at DARPA, for a colloquium this Tuesday. Below is an abstract of his topic, on which he recently briefed the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity:
“The Information Environmental Protection Agency (iEPA): The Need for Cognitive Security
An informed public is critical to a democratic society. The massive scale pollution of the information environment that we currently face and that is increasing at an enormous rate – with domestic as well as international sources – therefore poses an existential threat to our democratic system. Operations in the information environment now play a dominant role in everything from politics to terrorism to geopolitical warfare and business. These operations are increasingly dependent on the use of techniques of mass manipulation. Information has been weaponized and its use guided by social psychology. Operations are complicated by the fact that they now occur at a speed and extent previously unimaginable. Traditional cyber security is all about defense of the information infrastructure. But that does not provide much help against use of the infrastructure to influence and manipulate entire populations, e.g. classical denial of service attacks vs cognitive denial of service attacks. That problem requires a different approach and a different set of supporting technologies. I call these collectively Cognitive Security.”
This event is open to any interested individuals, and refreshments will be served. We hope to see you there!
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