Author, Richard Stengel, former editor of Time magazine was Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs from 2013 to 2016 during the Obama administration while John Kerry was Secretary of State. ( )

Richard Stengel was the editor of Time magazine until he was tapped to work at the State Department in the Obama administration as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. The job description was broad (essentially representing the United States to the rest of the world as, essentially, a marketer), but he quickly settled his focus on counter-messaging against 2 growing sources of disinformation: ISIS and Russia. The book is divided into 3 major sections. The first points to the inadequacies of the State Department in such areas as technology and sheer bureaucracy (affecting an ability to get anything done). The second section details the work he did over the 3 years he held that position until the election of Trump. The third section is his prescription for steps we can take to level the playing field.

I have a few observations. First, it was incredibly discouraging to read about the dysfunction in the State Department: the endless meetings with no actionable items at the end, a culture encouraging people to "play it safe" and not make new suggestions, and a hierarchical system that made it near to impossible to move nimbly forward with any agenda.

Second, I found myself lost often throughout the middle section of the book, as Stengel dealt with so many entities within government (I had to bookmark the glossary of acronyms of gov't agencies at the front of the book, as I referred to it so often). Most of the time he was trying to promote the same ideas to various groups, without much success. No wonder he had a hard time recruiting people to work for CSCC (The Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications), his baby. On the other hand, as much as a slog this section was, it did teach me about the day-to-day workings of a government department, and I believe I now have a much clearer picture of what we are attempting to do to combat disinformation. I also found the section on modern Russian warfare quite interesting (start with the distribution of disinformation to a country, send disguised military in to take over, and shut down traditional communications).

For me, the reward of the book was the final section on actionable items. A few of his suggestions: Develop hate speech statues; stricter regulation of social media to incentivize the creation of fact-based content and disincentivize the creation of disinformation (Section 230 of Communications Decency Act needs to be addressed); a digital bill of rights (platforms need consent to sell or share user information); redo search engine algorithms to discourage popularity as the key factor in a search; teach media literacy at secondary schools; and finally, have traditional media develop transparent ways of writing a story so we the consumer can check out original source material.

There is a lot of worth in this book. It's not a beach read, but quite necessary, I believe, in these times of ours. ( )

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Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It by Richard Stengel is a non-fiction book about disinformation and how we fight it on the new front of social media. Mr. Stengel, former editor of Time magazine, was at the frontlines in this new type of warfare while serving in the Obama administration as an Under Secretary of State.

Information and disinformation wars are as old as time, however with the rise of social media it has been easier than ever before to muddy the water with disinformation designed to confuse the populace. In his book, Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It author Richard Stengel writes of a firsthand account he had being an Under Secretary of State trying to figure out how to build a counter narrative.

The author writes about the Russian fascist, strategist and political analyst Aleksandr Dugin who wrote the “playbook” that Russia has been using the past several decades for their information warfare:

“Alexander Dugin is especially scary, he is known as Putin’s Resputin and has advocated the rise of conservative strongmen in the West, as Russia works to replace liberalism by the conservative superstate of Russia. “He has said all truth is relative and a question of belief; that freedom and democracy are not universal values but peculiarly Western ones; and that the U.S. must be dislodged as a hyperpower through destabilizing American democracy and the encouragement of American isolationism.”

Mr. Stengel makes an excellent case about the first part of his subtitle, but sadly the second part “what can we do about it” is not convincing. Mostly because of the government bureaucracies, slow moving administrative machinery, and simply the way democracies work. After moving from Time magazine to the State Department, Mr. Stengel “found government too big, too slow, too bureaucratic. It constantly gets in its own way.”

The government is not the answer, the author believes, but it is part of the solution. He calls for the media to be more responsible, check before they report. But that’s not enough, he adds, consumers of media need to also use reasoning and critical thinking before pressing the “share” button, disseminating disinformation to hundreds, if not thousands of people.
It only takes 10 to 30 seconds for most of those.

The book was a bit choppy, but fascinating nonetheless, and somewhat disturbing. Mr. Stengel does drive in the point that disinformation is dangerous to democracy, and has been weaponized by our geopolitical enemies to great effect. ( )

3.5 If you are one, like myself, who wonders why our government is slow to act, seemingly taking forever to get anything done, this is the book to read. Chronicling his time in the state department, he shows the many divisions, turf wars, constant meetings where little is accomplished, he shows how hard it is to put any new programs into place. He also shows how disinformation is put in place, ads targeted to specific audiences, who spread these false beliefs. He talks of the dark web and its influence and how difficult it is to stop it's influence. One site shut down another quickly opened, taking its place. Exactly how the Trump campaign used social media to great effect, and how Russia spread it's propaganda.

He offers solutions at books end, but explains how difficult it is to get people to not believe everything they read and see, especially when the message aligns with their own beliefs.

"Disinformation will always be with us. And that is because the problem is not with the facts, or the lack of them, or misleading stories filled with conjecture, the problem is us. There are all kinds of fancy cognitive biases and psychological states, but the plain truth is people are going to believe what they want to believe."

The responsible thing to do is to check sources, where are these coming from, whether we agree or not, whether they fit our opinions. This book was informative, but also scary in a way. This is a world now where anything in social media can be taken as truth.

ARC from Edelweiss ( )