MWW: I Don't Need a Ride, I Need Memes
Welcome to Memetic Warfare Weekly!
My name is Ari Ben Am, and I’m the founder of Glowstick Intelligence Enablement. Memetic Warfare Weekly is where I share my opinions on the influence/CTI industry, as well as share the occasional contrarian opinion or practical investigation tip.
I also provide consulting, training, integration and research services, so if relevant - feel free to reach out via LinkedIn or ari@glowstickintel.com.
I’ll be running a Cyber Threat Intelligence training course in Singapore in early August. The course will focus on non and less-technical analysts and the integration of creative uses of OSINT into CTI.
If interested, feel free to let me know at ari@glowstickintel.com and I’ll connect you to the right people.
Additionally, if any readers are based in Singapore and interested in meeting up, reach out and let’s try to make it happen!
On that note, let’s get back to the blog. This week we’ll cover some recent updates and jokes. I plan on writing some more practical content in the coming weeks and months as it’s been a while since I last published a practical guide, so bear with me.
I Don’t Need a Ride, I Need Memes
Reuters has published several articles claiming that the Taiwanese government has provided them with evidence of planned Chinese interference, including targeting the Taiwanese elections by promoting pro-China candidates with illicit fundings, disinformation campaigns and more.
The reporting claims that a key narrative in an ongoing operation is that Taiwan’s president has a planned escape route in case of a Chinese invasion, with the planned Han Kuang military exercises serving as a cover for drilling such an exfiltration operation.
This narrative makes sense and should be understandable as a direction to pursue for offensive IO in almost any country, but I have no doubt that we will see other analysts and journalists quickly calling out China for “copying the Russian playbook”, a la Zelensky.
While of note and it’s good that Taiwan is going on the offensive here by calling out such action, publishing a series of disinformation articles in state media is really only part of the story here, as such activity still requires amplification online for it to be a comprehensive case of IO.
Taiwan in particular appears to be lacking in its ability to muster civil society (with a few notable exceptions) and government to combat Chinese IO. This is a capability that can and should be further developed, and hopefully will take them past just identifying narratives in state media.
Clint Watts Keynote - No Joke Required
It’s not often that we get a solid 40 minute overview from a leading IO/CTI investigation team describing their recent findings, but lo and behold - here we have one. This video is great and highly recommended to anyone looking to better understand how larger organizations are fusing IO and CTI for investigation.
The True North, Stronk and Meme
A Quebec-based Canadian research institute has translated their latest report on “geopolitical cyber incidents” in Canada to English, and they’ve done us the courtesy of including IO as part of these incidents.
Let’s take a look at some of their findings below:
I don’t have much to add here, to be honest. China and Russia are unsurprisingly the top two, but even Iran being up there for 11 never ceases to surprise I suppose - people consistently forget that Iran is a very capable TA.
I’d like to see some more segmentation or information on the “Unknown” countries, as well as further explanation of the "information manipulation” subset of attacks, but I suppose I’ll have to wait there. Either way, some useful context for anyone interested in Canada.
De-Luft-Ization
In what can only be described as hilarious and unsurprising, Gal Luft, an Israeli-American (like yours truly, but in the reverse direction), was indicted by the United States on multiple charges of:
Keep in mind that Luft has yet to be apprehended, yet alone found guilty, and as such he still should remain in the eyes of the reader as innocent until having been proven so, despite the severity of the charges.
You may have heard of Luft, as he’s a witness in the totally-not-political Republican-led investigation of alleged corruption in the Biden family. Luft has claimed that past charges levied against him are meant in fact to silence him - take that with however many grains of salt you may choose.
I’ve come across Luft’s name and writings on numerous occasions. Luft’s writings in Chinese state media, for example, focus on energy-related topics, China, as well as a few Chinese state media talking points such as “de-dollarization”, having written books on this topic as well.
Luft has written for other semi-official Chinese outlets as well, such as South China Morning Post, promoting other Chinese talking points as well as some now proven to be wrong analysis on Ukraine.
The indictment itself has some interesting information, such as alleged text messages sent to and from Luft which may have been intercepted by lawful interception systems or acquired from other suspects or sources.
This story is primarily a reminder that covert influence is but one field in which states act to promote their own interests, and that individual actors themselves active in covert influence are also often active in others, including apparently arms trafficking.