#192 Dr. Josh "Bugsy" Segal on the American Maginot Line

06/04/24 • 63 min

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association.

During this episode, Dr. Josh “Bugsy” Segal discusses his ongoing concerns about the “American Maginot Line.” He is concerned that the United States is insufficiently and inappropriately funding the cognitive war that is bearing down on us. Moreover, the United States domestic political system hampers progress. Our gallop across the information landscape includes political hot button topics, sea stories, open source intelligence, and also some bright spots.

Recording Date: 29 May 2024

Resources:

Cognitive Crucible Podcast Episodes Mentioned
Deft9 Solutions
Colour Revolution
EU vs Disinformation
Disinformation Governance Board
Disinfo 2024 Conference
Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui
Has China Won?: The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy by Kishore Mahbubani
Disinformation: The Nature of Facts and Lies in the Post-Truth Era by Donald A. Barclay

Link to full show notes and resources

Guest Bio:

Dr. Joshua “Bugsy” Segal is the Co-Founder & Vice President for Strategy and Innovation at Deft9 Solutions. A veteran of over 30 years in national security policy, strategy and operations, and intelligence, both military and civilian, Dr. Segal is an internationally recognized expert in arms control, countering foreign malign influence, and counter-WMD. Dr. Segal spent over a decade as a member of U.S. multilateral arms control delegations in Geneva, Vienna, and The Hague, including the negotiations to finalize the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention and establish the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. After leaving the federal government and then retiring from the military, Dr. Segal serves as an advisor to senior DoD leaders on operations in the information environment and teaches OSINT tradecraft.

About: The Information Professionals Association (IPA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the role of information activities, such as influence and cognitive security, within the national security sector and helping to bridge the divide between operations and research. Its goal is to increase interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars and practitioners and policymakers with an interest in this domain.

For more information, please contact us at [email protected].

Or, connect directly with The Cognitive Crucible podcast host, John Bicknell, on LinkedIn.

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, 1) IPA earns from qualifying purchases, 2) IPA gets commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Recording Date: 29 May 2024

Resources:

Cognitive Crucible Podcast Episodes Mentioned
Deft9 Solutions
Colour Revolution
EU vs Disinformation
Disinformation Governance Board
Disinfo 2024 Conference
Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui
Has China Won?: The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy by Kishore Mahbubani
Disinformation: The Nature of Facts and Lies in the Post-Truth Era by Donald A. Barclay

Link to full show notes and resources

Guest Bio:

For more information, please contact us at [email protected].

Or, connect directly with The Cognitive Crucible podcast host, John Bicknell, on LinkedIn.

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, 1) IPA earns from qualifying purchases, 2) IPA gets commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Previous Episode

#191 Jose Davis on Public Affairs Integration and Leveraging AI for Operations in the Information Environment

During this episode, US Air Force Captain Jose Davis discusses his paper, which is entitled: "Leveraging AI for Operations in the Information Environment: 3 Demonstrations in Disinformation, Social Media, and Entropy." The paper focuses on the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the realm of Operations in the Information Environment (OIE), particularly for the Air Force. The paper presents three case studies demonstrating how AI can positively impact OIE and advocates for direct AI research in this area. Additionally, he’ll recap an information campaign that US Air Forces in Europe conducted to assure Baltic NATO Allies, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Recording Date: 24 April 2024

Research Questions: Jose Davis suggests as interested student examine:

What other common metrics can be developed or researched for assessing the Information Environment, tailor-made for the national security needs and useful for IO and PA operators?
What are the practical outcomes in the Information Environment (a complex system) when entropy is influenced, pushed either higher or lower? e.g. Hypothetically, when high entropy is present, humans deploy simplifying heuristics, so this should help improve Key Leader Engagements’ (KLE) timing and improve KLE dossiers. Or with PA/IO, high entropy hypothetically may demand a simplified messaging campaign.
In what other ways can AI be leveraged to combat nefarious AI use for disinformation?
The ideas of watermarking or safeguarding content from manipulation from nefarious Generative AI are a form of immunization, advancing Inoculation Theory as a whole. What other preventative measures along the lines of immunization can be taken to combat disinformation?

Resources:

- Cognitive Crucible Podcast Episodes Mentioned
- Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence
- Universal adversarial perturbations by Seyed-Mohsen Moosavi-Dezfooli, Alhussein Fawzi, Omar Fawzi, and Pascal Frossard
- Pre-trained Adversarial Perturbations by Yuanhao Ban, Yinpeng Dong
Automating OIE with Large Language Models by Cpt Alexander Sferrella, Cpt Joseph Conger, and Maj Kara Masick
Claude Shannon
AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by former Google technologist Kai-Fu Lee and science fiction writer Chen Qiufan. I’m a huge advocate of using story to educate. For those new to AI or wanting to understand AI’s societal impact, this is my go-to book. Written in a series of fictional short stories with in-depth essay analysis at the end of each, the book teaches AI while making it entertaining.

Next Episode

#193 Hatteras Hoops on Human Domain Security

During this episode, Hatteras Hoops discusses business and national security considerations related to Human Domain Security. Current concepts around insider threat, insider risk, insider trust, insider fraud, critical people protection, personnel security and counterintelligence are broadly considered Human Domain Security. Evolved from over a millennia of documented models, practice, and theory, the terms insider threat and insider risk often have negative connotations around intention, despite the definitions being clearly inclusive of both intentional and unintentional insiders. Human Domain Security seeks to disarm and expand its value to more sensitive parts of the world, and through a more positive application.

Recording Date: 6 June 2024

Research Questions: Hatteras Hoops suggests interested students examine:

What empirical evidence exists across administrative, physical, and technical controls that proves changes in behavior can serve as retrospective indicators of human risk?
Based on history and technical advancements, what specific emerging human-centric disruptions should we expect in the next 10 years? How will it affect trust across teams and organizations? These are important topics because I don’t think we’ve fully thought through the extent of its impact from society to person

Resources:

Cognitive Crucible Podcast Episodes Mentioned

#123 Jonathan Roginski on Insider Threats

Other resources:

Quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”
Human-Domain Security Evolution by Hatteras Hoops
Cyber Crime: Insider Fraud & Extortion — The Sharp Case by Hatteras Hoops
Global Challenges in Securing the Human-Domain, Part I: by Hatteras Hoops
MITRE Insider Threat TTP Knowledge Base
Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking
Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman and Greg Mckeown
Hatteras Hoops Medium writings
Hatteras Hoops LinkedIn

Link to full show notes and resources

Guest Bio: Hatteras Hoops is a Senior Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton supporting the Commercial vertical in the European market based out of the Hague, Netherlands. He has over twenty years’ experience spanning defense, national security, and commercial cybersecurity missions. His current focus transcends strategic consulting, governance, and human-centric security solutions. He holds a Master of Engineering degree in Cybersecurity from the George Washington University.