Informational content is just beginning to be properly considered as an urgent infrastructure security concern in addition to the physical integrity and functionality of the computers and telecommunications networks that enable the transmission of such content. The 2016 and 2020 presidential elections in the United States (US) raised awareness about disinformation campaigns and greatly increased both public and private sector efforts to combat foreign influence operations. But the importance of informational content goes far beyond its potential cognitive impact on human actors, such as voters. Automated industrial control systems (ICS) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices can be adversely impacted, or even maliciously manipulated, as well. In a world of heightened reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) and/or machine learning (ML) algorithms – which require large volumes of training data – content becomes part of the infrastructure, because each datum that is processed contributes to the future functionality of the algorithm. AI/ML algorithms that are trained on or receive disinformation inputs will yield imperfect outputs.
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