How does the digital world affect political climate? Is Facebook really on top of election hacking and private data compromise? In today's episode, Morgan Wright sits with Christopher Lochhead to break down influence and interference, how to avoid scams, and social media's effects on teenage suicide.
"The difference between interference and influence determines how we respond to what happened." - Morgan Wright
Three Things We Learned
Interference is a violation of sovereignty
There are 50 nation states in the US. With this comes the many voting systems that can make it pretty difficult to ensure that no voter fraud happens come election time. But since there has been no recorded voter fraud, there is technically no instance of a nation-state acting against the US, and therefore no interference.
Influence is a valid national objective of a nation state
Influence operations have gone on since time immemorial. The most obvious example is the effort to stop the spread of communism in the Western Hemisphere. However, influence has only recently become a hot topic in this digital age thanks to the massive amount of data shared through social media platforms.
Russia's had a hundred-year head start in running influence operations
Reports of Russia's efforts of compromising information to run their influence operations date as far back as 2015. But it wasn't until a bunch of kids were able to access classified information that Facebook was tossed into hot water. This dissonance shows how truly behind the US is in all this.
Hacking has always been a threat and a potential tool to use against humanity. But then there's also fake news, the generation and spreading of disinformation, which influences people's mindset. Psychological warfare pits people against each other and divides even the biggest nations and most thriving of economies, and the US is no exception.
 
Bio:
Morgan is an internationally recognized expert on cybersecurity strategy, cyberterrorism, identity theft and privacy.
He is President and Chief Development Officer for RadiusAI.
He currently serves as a Senior Fellow at The Center for Digital Government and is a national security opinion contributor to TheHill.com.
Morgan's landmark testimony before Congress on Healthcare.gov changed how the government collected personally identifiable information.
He’s made hundreds of appearances on national news, radio, print and web including CNBC, Fox News, Fox Business, CNN, ABC, NPR, NBC and more. Previously Morgan was a Senior Advisor in the US State Department Antiterrorism Assistance Program and Senior Law Enforcement Advisor for the 2012 Republican National Convention. In addition to 18 years in state and local law enforcement as a highly decorated state trooper and detective, Morgan has developed solutions in defense, justice and intelligence for the largest technology companies in the world including SAIC, Unisys, Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco.
He’s a contributing author for the 4th Edition Computer Security Handbook,