Clint Watts on 'Messing with the Enemy'
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2018
⏱️ 51 minutes
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Summary
Former FBI agent and Army officer Clint Watts has spent years hunting down terrorists and Russian disinformation on the Internet in his spare time. In his new book, Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News, Watts documents what he learned from his experience. On Monday, he sat down with Benjamin Wittes in the Jungle Studio for a conversation about how terrorists, cybercriminals, and nation-states use online media platforms to influence people’s social and political perceptions. They talked about how Watts began tracking disinformation, what he saw, and what free societies can do to protect against it.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
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| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | I think in the summer of 15 was a decision point for Russia. |
| 0:37.0 | Looking back at it now, four years later, |
| 0:41.0 | in the summer of 15, they made a strategic decision for Russia is, |
| 0:46.0 | when will we start hacking? |
| 0:48.0 | If they are hacking targets, that means they are making a strategic decision |
| 0:52.0 | about how they want to influence. |
| 0:54.0 | And so that decision had to have been made in the summer of 15. |
| 0:57.0 | Because through the fall is when you see the first real big wave of hacking attempts that go on. |
| 1:03.0 | They then are doing this, they're trying it in France, |
| 1:06.0 | they're trying it in Germany, they're hitting targets, |
| 1:08.0 | which means for the Putin team, they are making a strategic calculation. |
| 1:13.0 | What are the cost and benefits of hacking? |
| 1:16.0 | If I go too far and I really anger the United States, |
| 1:19.0 | will I suffer a retaliatory attack? And is it worth it? |
| 1:24.0 | I'm Matthew Kahn, and you're listening to the Law Fair Podcast June 5, 2018. |
| 1:31.0 | Former FBI special agent and Army officer Clint Watts has spent years hunting down terrorist and Russian disinformation on the Internet in his spare time. |
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