About this item
A former FBI Special Agent and leading cyber-security expert offers a devastating and essential look at the misinformation campaigns, fake news, and electronic espionage operations that have become the cutting edge of modern warfare - and how we can protect ourselves and our country against them.Clint Watts electrified the nation when he testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. In Messing with the Enemy, the cyber and homeland security expert introduces us to a frightening world in which terrorists and cyber criminals don't hack your computer, they hack your mind. Watts reveals how these malefactors use your information and that of your friends and family to work for them through social media, which they use to map your social networks, scour your world affiliations, and master your fears and preferences.Thanks to the schemes engineered by social media manipulators using you and your information, business executives have coughed up millions in fraudulent wire transfers, seemingly good kids have joined the Islamic State, and staunch anti-communist Reagan Republicans have cheered the Russian government's hacking of a Democratic presidential candidate's e-mails. Watts knows how they do it because he's mirrored their methods to understand their intentions, combat their actions, and coopt their efforts.Watts examines a particular social media platform - from Twitter to internet Forums to Facebook to LinkedIn - and a specific bad actor - from al Qaeda to the Islamic State to the Russian and Syrian governments - to illuminate exactly how social media tracking is used for nefarious purposes. He explains how he's learned, through his successes and his failures, to engage with hackers, terrorists, and even the Russians - and how these interactions have generated methods of fighting back. Shocking, funny, and eye-opening, Messing with the Enemy is a deeply urgent guide for living safe and smart in a super-connected world.
About the Author
Clint Watts is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Center For Cyber and Homeland Security at The George Washington University and a national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC. He's the author of the book Messing With The Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians and Fake News. His research and writing focuses on terrorism, counterterrorism, social media influence and Russian disinformation. Clint's tracking of terrorist foreign fighters allowed him to predict the rise of the Islamic State over al Qaeda in 2014. From 2014 - 2016, Clint led a team of researchers who tracked and modeled the rise of Russian influence operations via social media leading up to the U.S. Presidential election of 2016. This research led Clint to testify before four different U.S. Senate committees in 2017 and 2018 regarding Russia's information warfare campaign against the U.S. and the West. Clint's writing has appeared in a range of publications to include the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Daily Beast, Politico, Lawfare, War On The Rocks, World Politics Review and the Huffington Post. Before becoming a consultant, Clint served as a U.S. Army infantry officer, a FBI Special Agent, as the Executive Officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC) , as a consultant to the FBI's Counterterrorism Division (CTD) and National Security Branch (NSB) , and as a counterterrorism analyst on a range of programs supporting the U.S. Intelligence Community and U.S. Special Operations Command.You can follow him on Twitter @selectedwisdom
