You might still think about Eric Schmidt as a “(big) tech guy” and businessman, but his passion for (geo)politics was always evident, even while he served as Google’s CEO.
These days, Schmidt is the chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), a think tank that would like to position itself as a reference point to a military alliance, NATO, and get it to “monitor disinformation in real-time.”
SCSP’s ambition is no less than to help craft new national security strategies, always with an eye on the alleged attempts to increase disinformation (here AI is to blame) – but also ways to combat that, and here, SCSP says (the US) must strengthen its “AI competitiveness.”
The goal is to “win” what’s referred to as the techno-economic competition by 2030 – there’s that deadline, favored by many a controversial globalist initiative.
Here, the group would like NATO and its members to fight against what is described as AI disinformation, that new chapter in information warfare.
Schmidt’s think tank doesn’t like what’s seen as the current reactive approach and the tired old debunking. That means there must be an “active” one – and the replacement for debunking would logically be some form of the dystopian concept of “prebunking.”
(SCSP mentions both as desirable methods in a late 2022 report, but this time shies away from using the latter term.)
SCSP wants various actors to carry out real-time surveillance of “disinformation” by means of spending money on tools fed with publicly available online data (aka, the cynically named “open source” data).
In other words, real-time mass-scale internet data scraping. Such tools already exist and are used by law enforcement, causing various levels of controversy.
Next comes prebunking, even if the latest batch of SCSP recommendations stops short of calling it that.
But what would you call it?
“NATO should provide its own positive narrative to get out ahead of disinformation, and highlight failures of authoritarian regimes, especially on their own digital platforms.”
And to make this work, SCSP wants NATO to co-opt various governments and companies, as well as NGOs. Inside the alliance, a “disinformation unit” should be formed.
Last but not least, the think tank says – “Foster healthy skepticism.”
Perhaps starting with SCSP’s own roles, goals, and affiliations.