A conversation with Jessica Brandt and Emerson Brooking on the information wars in the Russian invasion of Ukraine | The TechTank Podcast

On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, instigating the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II. In the age of technology, social media itself has also become grounds of war. Russia, armed with its sophisticated disinformation infrastructure, has sought to rewrite key events in war while flooding platforms with inauthentic activity. Social media companies, meanwhile, have been struggling with complicated, time-sensitive policy decisions where lives are at stake.

To discuss complications in the latest version of information warfare, Samantha Lai, guest host of the TechTank podcast and research assistant at the Center for Technology Innovation, is joined by Jessica Brandt, policy director of the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative and fellow in the Foreign Policy program’s Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution, and Emerson Brooking, resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab. Together, they will discuss the roles of technology and disinformation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and how social media companies and the American government have responded. They also discuss the precedents being set for the future of the global internet.

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TechTank is a biweekly podcast from The Brookings Institution exploring the most consequential technology issues of our time. From artificial intelligence and racial bias in algorithms, to Big Tech, the future of work, and the digital divide, TechTank takes abstract ideas and makes them accessible. Moderators Dr. Nicol Turner Lee and Darrell West speak with leading technology experts and policymakers to share new data, ideas, and policy solutions to address the challenges of our new digital world.