CBC’s The House: Did Putin triumph over Trump at the Alaska summit?
What did the Trump-Putin summit achieve — and what comes next for Ukraine? CBC senior defence reporter Murray Brewster helms this security-focused episode of The House, featuring a debrief with former U.S. diplomat Michael Carpenter on what came out of the sit-down between the U.S. and Russian presidents late Friday in Alaska.
Then, two Canadian experts — a former NATO assistant secretary general and a former naval commander — dive deep into whether Canada can realistically reduce its dependence on U.S. military equipment and support.
Also: as global leaders watch closely for what could happen next in Ukraine, Chief of the Defence Staff General Jennie Carignan discusses what possible role Canada could have in any ceasefire — and whether armed forces have the bench strength for a prolonged engagement.
Finally, Canadian researcher and author Alicia Wanless joins The House to explain why she believes the world’s democracies should look to the past — the far past — as governments continue to fight against disinformation.
Secrets & Spies: The Information Animal: Humans, Technology, and the Competition for Reality with Alicia Wanless
How do we make sense of truth in a world saturated with content? This week, Chris speaks with Alicia Wanless—director of the Information Environment Project at the Carnegie Endowment and author of The Information Animal—to explore how humans have always wrestled with information, long before the internet. They unpack the patterns that emerge when new technologies reshape how we communicate, why influence operations aren’t new, and how today’s information warfare fits into a much older story. From ancient Athens to spam, and social media to national security, Wanless explains why understanding ourselves as “information animals” is key to confronting the chaos of the digital age.
Information Ecology and 19th-Century Naturalism at Verify 2024
TexHosted by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Cyber Initiative and Aspen Digital, Verify 2024 brings together journalists and cyber and tech policy experts to discuss critical issues in cybersecurity. For this live recording of the Lawfare Podcast, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down at Verify 2024 to talk about information ecology and 19th-century naturalism with Alicia Wanless, the Director of the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Chinmayi Sharma, an Associate Professor at Fordham Law School.
OECD: Strengthening information integrity through whole-of-society partnerships – lessons to drive positive change
Governments cannot respond to threats posed by disinformation alone. New governance models designed to build the resilience of societies are needed. The focus of this panel will be to illustrate how governments can work more systematically and efficiently with non-governmental partners, researchers, and media organisations to design and implement effective policies to promote information integrity.
Information Animals Fighting Information Wars
Alicia Wanless (Carnegie Endowment) joins the show to discuss the links between information and technology, information competition through history, the need for a better understanding of information ecosystems, whether we’re in an information “civil war,” and much else besides.
Moving Beyond Disinformation with Dr. Alicia Wanless
Information is complex. The lines between fact and fiction have become easier to blur as new technologies create wild ecosystems of data. In this episode, Dr. Alicia Wanless from Carnegie’s Partnership for Countering Influence Operations, talks about whether disinformation is something we can even fight, and why it may end up costing us our heads.
Chatter: Information Ecology with Alicia Wanless
Alicia Wanless is one of the pioneers of the idea of information ecology, the notion that we should think about information and disinformation as part of a complex ecosystem, the management of which she analogizes to environmental policy. Wanless has been complaining for several years that the war on “disinformation” skates over important question: What are the collateral effects of anti-disinformation policies? How do interventions against information pollution operate in the real world?
In her conversation with Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare’s editor in chief and this week’s Chatter guest host, Wanless talks about how she became interested in information management, what’s wrong with the discussion of disinformation, what a more environmentalist approach to information spaces might look like, and what a useful research agenda for the nascent field would focus on.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- Wanless’s essay on Lawfare: “There’s No Getting Ahead of Disinformation Without Moving Past It.”
- The book Network Propaganda
21st Century Propaganda: Understanding Today’s Threats
Threat actors’ toolkits have evolved in the digital age. How can we respond effectively to manipulative messaging and the data that drives it? In this RUSI Journal Radio episode, hosts Demi, Emma and Ed are joined by David Gioe, Alicia Wanless and Daniel Dobrowolski to discuss the challenges facing the information environment and the measures that might protect it.
The Lawfare Podcast: Alicia Wanless on What’s Wrong with the Discussion of Influence Operations
Alicia Wanless is the director of the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and she has a beef with the current debate over influence operations. Put simply, we don’t really know what works in countering them, and the studies of the subject all seem to be case studies using different methodologies and examining different things. Benjamin Wittes spoke with her about how we might improve our knowledge base on this subject, what kind of information we would need to study whether influence operations work and what works to counter them. They talked about transparency reporting requirements for the big tech companies, data sharing between companies and scholars, what a massive effort at research in this space would look like and whether it has any possibility of coming to be.
At the Vanguard: How Women Lead the Charge in Researching Influence Operations
Women lead the way in researching influence operations, but their leadership comes at a cost. Often identifying and exposing nefarious campaigns that seek to discredit others, influence operations researchers frequently become targets of the operations themselves. Join us for a conversation with Maria Ressa, Shireen Mitchell, and Luiza Bandeira, moderated by Alicia Wanless, on the experiences of some of those women leading the charge to understand and counter influence operations. What drew them to the field? What are some of the challenges they face? And how can women be better protected online?
The De-Weaponization of Digital Information: What Have We Learned from the Last Year?
This event was co-hosted by the Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) and FHI 360 to foster a rich discussion on the impact of online hate speech and disinformation on peace and stability in the US and across the globe. The forum provided a platform for practitioners and thought leaders to share lessons they have learned, and to make recommendations for how best to respond to overt digital influence operations by state and non-state actors.
Platform Bans and Free Speech on Conversations with the Future
The Center for the Governance of Change at IE University and Oscar Jonsson host Mark Scott, Chief Technology Correspondent, Politico and Alicia Wanless, Director, Partnership for Countering Influence Operations, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to discuss social media platform bans and free speech.
The Information Environment in a Digital Age on Diplomatic Immunity
Kelly McFarland and Alistair Somerville, talk to Alicia Wanless, director of the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations (PCIO) at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on how to understand and tackle problems in the information environment.
Disinformation in 2020: Actors, Threats, Solutions
A panel talk hosted by the Institute for National Security Studies:
The Future of Data and Democracy
A panel session hosted by Aspen UK on 22 October 2020:
Russian Disinformation and the Media: One Journalist’s Story
Speaking to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s The World Unpacked on: What are influence operations? How do malign foreign actors choose targets to help spread disinformation? And what does it feel like to be an unwitting pawn in a foreign government’s campaign to sow division?
Zero Hour Podcast Interview #2
Discussing my role at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and research related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stop and Think – Before Falling Down the Digital Rabbit Hole
This TED Talk was presented at Whitehall in London. The event, Tedx Whitehall Women, was hosted by the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The theme of the overall TEDx event was “Time”. This talk posits that we should take the time to stop and think before falling down the digital rabbit hole, and covers issues such as online bullying, disinformation, complaining, and narcissism – but also suggests ways in which each of us can improve our information space for the better.