(by Andrea Pinto) In Sahel the jihadists, harnessed by international military operations, are evolving their offensive strategy using low-cost and much more impactful methodologies. In particular, they are taking care, with knowing skill, of external communication to recover consensus at the local level and to undermine the credibility of military operations such as the French one BarKhane. One example of all was the video of the French journalist Olivier Dubois, kidnapped in Mali on 8 April last, which was quickly circulated online on social networks after being published in a media close to al-Qaeda. The jihadists wanted to amplify the event by giving it a precise "target", influence French public opinion and make public the new strategy to combat foreign military operations.
This capability was analyzed by the French Ministry of Defense which commented: "It is a precise strategic rather than technical response, considering the means used, a computer and a normal internet connection".
The architect of jihadist communication in that area is a particularly active group known as lnim. "They want to win hearts and minds“, Say analysts. The terrorist groups on the ground are no longer able to impose themselves as they once did due to the presence of foreign armies and it is for this reason that they seek symbolic victories to give greater vigor to local propaganda. For example Inim he publicly condemned the Daesh attacks on civilians by promising revenge. This also denotes that the two groups are fighting for influence on Sahelian territory.
As mentioned, one of the objectives is to raise awareness and influence French public opinion. In fact, in his messages posted on the al-Qaeda social networks, he no longer hesitates to attack the French government directly. "Their main interest today is to undermine confidence in the Barkhane operation". For example, the controversy surrounding the Bounti bombing is very strong. French forces are accused of causing the deaths of at least twenty civilians. A report from the Minusma, but Paris considers the investigators' methodology biased, vigorously disputing the heavy accusations: "How did they have access to that area which is controlled by the jihadists?"
Therefore, the French Ministry of Defense is thinking of appropriate countermeasures to counter the threat, such as acquiring new tools in the fight against disinformation, such as the project software CONFIRM, developed by the start-up storyzy.
FIGHT AGAINST DISINFORMATION WITH THE CONFIRMED PROJECT
Fighting against the dissemination of false information is never easy, especially since it sometimes happens that even the so-called "reference" media are deceived, such as the New York Times, which recently had to apologize for false news on the Islamic State.
There are also false "institutional" information, released to hide a truth or for propaganda purposes. Here we try to manipulate public opinion for electoral issues, to undermine the cohesion factors of a society or to influence military operations. Social networks, in this dimension, act as an irreplaceable sounding board
To counter the disinformation campaigns, France, through the Directorate General of Armaments, has expressed its interest in Greens, a solution developed by the company storyzy, via the device RAPID.
The idea is to reach advertisers to cut off access to "programmed" advertising from sites that disseminate false information, using a database powered by an algorithm responsible for detecting sources that disseminate false information.
To be more efficient it was necessary to go further by giving the software the ability to identify communities that share false information on social networks in order to flood their discussions with counter-arguments. Hence the project CONFIRM - Counter-arguments against false information-.
Led by the storyzy, with the support of the laboratory Inria Wimmics and the institute Jean Nicod, this project made it possible to "better characterize disinformation by offering more detailed textual analyzes as well as a chronology of information dissemination to better understand the origin of disinformation and better identify the networks of actors who spread it ", explains theDefense Innovation Agency French - AID.
Il CONFIRM uses artificial intelligence, automatic natural language processing, the extraction of argumentative structures and experimental psychology, with the aim of better understanding the mechanisms of subscribing to false information.
A software has been developed which, using an approach of machine learning, he's able to "Correctly extract the arguments for or against the subject of the discussion".
"Some bricks developed within the CONFIRMA project have reached a level of technological maturity sufficient to be integrated into Storyzy's disinformation analysis platform“, Said AID.
Now, Storyzy's software is based on a database containing over two million indexed sources in over 35 languages, providing "global coverage". The technology of the CONFIRMA project is used by the transalpine Ministry of Defense and Interior but also by NATO.
Another challenge, however, is already around the corner, that ofhyperfake or Deepfake, a technology that, based on artificial intelligence, allows you to overlay existing audio and video files on top of other videos. This allows, for example, to artfully modify the speech of a public figure by making him say what he never wanted to say.