Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich: Who's Faking It? Pentagon Cyber Warriors

Planting false information on Facebook. On November 22, 2012, the Los Angeles Times published an alarming piece of news entitled Cyber Corps program trains spies for the digital age. The cyber warriors who are headed for organizations such as the CIA, NSC, FBI, the Pentagon, and so on, are trained to stalk, rifle through trash, sneak a tracking device on cars and plant false information on Facebook. They also are taught to write computer viruses, hack digital networks, crack passwords, plant listening devices and mine data from broken cellphones and flash drives. Not surprisingly, less than a month later, it was rumored that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei had started a Facebook page. The style and content of the site ruled out its authenticity,but the State Department was amused. In spite of the potential for alarm, State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland jokingly expressed Washington's curiosity to see how many "likes" Khamenei would receive. This is no joking matter. Any message on this page would be attributed to Khamenei, with a potential for dangerous ramifications. Barely a month later, on January 24, 2013, Guardian's blaring headlines exposed fake blogs and Facebook pages made for BBC Persians Iranian journalists, with claims that were made in order to harass, intimidate, and discredit the journalists. These fake blogs, according to The Guardian charges, are not by the American Cyber Corps warriors, but are alleged to be the creation of the Iranian Islamic cyber activists, in what appears to be an operation sponsored by the authorities. While truth is the first casualty of war, journalists are also fair game, thanks in large part owing to the provisions of the Information Operations Road Map of 2003, signed by the then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and pursued by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, as part of the plan, public affairs officers brief journalists. In 2005, it came to light that the Pentagon paid the Lincoln Group, a private company, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi papers in support of US Policies. The plan also called for a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory, unmanned aerial vehicles, miniaturized scatterable public public address systems, wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet.