128. Taking aim at Democracy: Russia’s Doppelgänger gang isn’t just targeting elections anymore

Oren Etzioni used to be one of those AI optimists. Now, not so much. In fact, he’s so worried about AI-manipulated content, he created a non-profit, TrueMedia.org, to help ordinary people sort AI fact from fiction.

US adversaries are on a propaganda offensive around the world. Earlier this month, the Council on Foreign Relations in DC convened a discussion about the changing landscape of disinformation campaigns with James Rubin, special envoy at the Global Engagement Center at the State Department, Jon Bateman from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Anne Applebaum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. CLICK HERE moderated the conversation, and here are some highlights.

When the Hoover Institution’s director of war gaming, Jackie Schneider, started organizing war simulations more than a decade ago, she assumed that participants would respond to cyber attacks the same way they responded to traditional weapons of war – but it turns out that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

When North Korea hacked Alejandro Caceres, he expected the U.S. government to rush to his defense. When they just shrugged, he took matters into his own hands.

On the battlefields of Ukraine, Russia has become very adapt at electronic warfare — both jamming GPS satellites and spoofing satellite signals. We explain how it works and its ripple effects beyond the front lines.

A story about satellites, electronic warfare, and a team of American techies who MacGyver-ed a way to keep the power flowing in Ukraine.

In an interview, LockbitSupp, head of the Lockbit cybercrime operation, told us that the U.S., U.K. and Australia have the wrong guy — he’s not Dmitry Khoroshev, the 31-year-old Russian national they’ve charged with hacking. What’s more, he says more attacks are coming.

In a year that could bring a perfect storm of disinformation, meet Doppelgänger, a Russian-backed group seeking not just to shake up the world’s elections, but its institutions too.

The White House’s top cyber official is keen to set minimum cybersecurity standards for industry, put contingencies in place in case cyberattacks are successful, and start looping ordinary people into an effort to make products secure by design.

An episode from the ‘CSAIL Alliances Podcast’ from MIT CSAIL Alliances. Host Kara Miller talks with MIT robotics researcher and professor Daniela Rus about how we can use a new generation of robots to help humankind. Rus is the co-author of the new book, "The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots."