Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Herbert Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in cyber policy and security at the Hoover Institution, both of Stanford University. Comments on this paper are welcomed and can be sent to herblin@stanford.edu.

The existential threat from cyber-enabled information warfare
1. The Cuban Missile Crisis in the Age of Twitter ....................................................................2
2. The importance of information to nations and societies....................................................3
3. On the existential threat from cyber-enabled information warfare...................................5
4. On human cognition............................................................................................................8
5. Climate change denialism .................................................................................................11
6. Nuclear conflict .................................................................................................................13
7. The coming information dystopia .....................................................................................14
8. Fearing the end of the enlightenment ..............................................................................15

Abstract
Corruption of the information ecosystem is not just a multiplier of two long-acknowledged existential threats to the future of humanity—climate change and nuclear weapons. Cyber-enabled information warfare has also become an existential threat in its own right, its increased use posing the realistic possibility of a global information dystopia, in which the pillars of modern democratic self-government—logic, truth, and reality—are shattered, and anti-Enlightenment values undermine civilization around the world.

[. . .]

Or maybe.. going --> from ~the Linux -vs- Doze (and other 'Info Wars' not about committing seppuku):
Something about (?) Information Must Be Free (+ the cha. cha. cha.) featured a bit more bogosity than could be ferreted out; after all:
Soon Unicorns rampaged, trampling poor-little Pollyanna paper-doll thin. Then the conclaves of the Founding-mothers (before the KKK klaverns appeared-all-masked, and so on).

So then: it appears that there may be no more than a hand-ful of humanoids possessed of enough gravitas to Un-DO thousands of 'habits, Traditions and imprecations'--as are diametrically-opposite to the necessary cooperation of masses/the organized and the messy/ and there is no surcease visible; just e^x dx dx consternation of [-] Class.

(So must we craft a fly-by: nudge a coming-near asteroid enough to be ~150% of the Shock!! of the Russky one?)
Shouldn't cost more than a few billion.. the Mega-4 monopolists of Silly Valley could handle that as a brunch tip. It's clear that no amount of silicon- nor meat-logic will next be worth a pitcher of warm-spit [from another Classy-Prez, that was.] ... in breaking the deadly-embrace of TrueBelievers^☼ and their Certainties™
(If the Dems run true-to-form over this execrable d e l a y -before- the Double-or-Nothing ..well, you know.)

Carrion-Logic 101?