From my opening speech at the Cambridge Disinformation Summit:
Disinformation sets the stage for corruption.
"...This year, we decided to focus on studying the harms that are fueled by intentionally misleading narratives from actors who have financial, power, psycho-social, and/or physical incentives to exploit others. We will hear from experts, for example, about assessments of multi-generational systemic economic, climate, and humanitarian damage that stems from malign cognitive influence campaigns.
This focus on harms is critically important because I see disinformation—which is an intentionally deceptive speech act—as often a preparatory act to engage in an intentional associated harms or exploitation act.
In other words, I see disinformation as preparing the landscape for corruption.
Across the globe and throughout history, we can see how disinformation campaigns—which I view as preparatory speech acts—groom vulnerable people for associated corruption acts like sextortion fraud scams, crypto rug pulls, catfishing, sexual slavery, terroristic violence, or expansionist warfare.
...I think we offer one of the few remaining anti-corruption guardrails at this moment in history, which is why we must continue our work, despite threats from very powerful and well-funded global actors who do not want us to expose or impede their corruption.
I want to pause for a moment to reflect on that last statement. From data I have observed, some disinformation campaigns appear to be funded in the billions of U.S. dollars, backed by some of the wealthiest people on Earth and some government treasuries.
In contrast, our work, which I consider to be among the foundational pillars to preserving global democracy and countering systemic corruption, is relatively funded by governments like it is a grade school bake sale. This must be fixed with urgency.
Academics and independent journalists need significant funding to better understand, expose, and inform policy about narrative-led corruption. I hope the discussions in our meetings will help articulate the gravity of the risks we face and the commitment to and quality of work from this community. I hope that this, in turn, can inspire governments and others who value evidence-based policy, collaborative government, and democracy to properly fund this work, while they still have the ability to do so.
As some experts will discuss in these meetings, information corruption and cognitive manipulation fuel existential threats. Our work should be considered important enough to fund as if it were part of fundamental societal or sovereign defence.
Our work could potentially offer greater societal defence in this moment than some billion-dollar military hardware. In fact, some of our research could inform policy or actions that could reduce the need to deploy the military hardware we have already spent billions on. So, I think there is a high return on investment to properly fund our work."
