If you thought foreign interference played a big role in the 2020 presidential election, just wait until this fall.
With the Russians, the Chinese and our adversaries in the Middle East all seeking to control this election, you wonât know what to believe between now and November.
And artificial intelligence is making their job easier.
Four years ago, AI was there, but it was not readily available to the masses. Today, even high school and college kids have access to these technical brains, which they use to their own advantage. You can bet that foreign powers have their AI locked and loaded and ready to disrupt the 2024 election in any way possible.
Attempting to influence the leadership of foreign governments is nothing new. All the powers in the world â America included â want leaders that are sympathetic to their political and economic points of view.
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The Panama Canal might never had been built if the United States had not help create an insurrection in Colombia that resulted in Panama, under a puppet regime we could control, becoming an independent country.
In the early 1950s, we, along with the British, helped engineer a coup in Iran that put the Shah in power, a move designed to protect our oil interests, a policy move that still haunts us today.
The list goes on. One country is always trying to use another country to its advantage and helping put a weak or sympathetic leader in power is usually the easiest way. Artificial intelligence and the internet have made that task much easier.
Right now, our adversaries are sitting around trying to figure out which of the two candidates running for president in the United States is the biggest pushover. Who can be manipulated the easiest? Who will compromise and who will stand firm? The balance of power in the world could be at stake.
Foreign powers want the weakest candidate elected, and they will stop at almost nothing to get their way. You can be sure that social media will be flooded with fake ads, fake interviews and false information from now until the November election.
How do we determine what is real and what is fake? Thatâs a good question. Artificial intelligence is now able to replicate a candidateâs voice and create video so real that no one can tell what is fake and what is not.
Who knows what racist, sexist or other derogatory comments will appear on social media during the campaign. Yes, they will likely be quickly pulled down, but once they appear, the damage is done.
With hackers at work every moment of the day, it is not impossible that even ordinary citizens could be cloned and made to utter disparaging remarks on social media against their own party.
Fake or not, once it is out there, the images remain in the minds of the viewer forever.
And donât think this AI-generated fake news will be limited to foreign powers. The opposing political parties are not above sabotaging their opponents in any way they can.
In 1972, for example, Republicans wrote the Canuck Letter, which sabotaged the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie. Democrats, Iâm sure, have also done their fair share of creating false information over the years. Now, with AI, the source of such sabotage will be all but untraceable.
So which candidate would our world adversaries prefer to sit in the White House for the next four years? Who knows?
But whoever it is, you can be sure that countries like Russia, China and Iran will pour money and effort into getting their candidate elected and the other defeated. And they will stop at nothing when it comes to smear tactics.
So, this fall take any political posts you see on Facebook or Instagram with a grain of salt. The chances of them being accurate are 50-50 at best. With artificial intelligence at work, none of us will know what is real and what is not.
In the AI world, the truth is often so obscured that you canât believe what you hear or what you see.
This is going to be a long and dirty presidential campaign â at home and abroad.
Donnie Johnston’s columns appear twice per week on the Opinion page. Reach him at djohn40330@aol.com.
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