Social Cyber-Security Dynamics
“Social Cyber-Security Dynamics”
Speaker: Carley, K. (Carnegie Mellon University)
Date: 12 June 2019
Speaker Session Preview
SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Kathleen Carley (Carnegie Mellon University) as a part of its SMA DHS Speaker Series. Dr. Carley first defined and characterized social cyber-security. She then stated that social media is about networks and identified three influential groups that interact with users within these networks: 1) echochambers (a toxic group of people connected to each other that share the same ideas), 2) superspreaders (individuals that spread information and alert people of changes), and 3) superfriends (individuals that engage in dialogue to change others’ beliefs and get them to act). Dr. Carley proceeded to discuss the four D’s of traditional information warfare (dismiss, distort, dismay, and distract) and present her key findings regarding technology exploitation, social cognitive manipulation, and more general manipulation. She stated that maneuvers are often carried out by using images (particularly memes) and provided an example from a Russian countercampaign. Dr. Carley then spoke about how bots build groups (i.e. construct groups from scratch or create the appearance of groups when they may not actually exist) and nuke groups (destroy existing groups). The exact number of bots on social media is unknown, and they are not uniformly spread out. Bots can also create echochambers on their own, which creates the false perception that a particular opinion is shared by a large group of people. Furthermore, Dr. Carley explained that Russian bots and users have joined both sides of an argument in the past in order to further polarize the groups, anger both sides, and increase the divide between them. She then identified the key Russian information campaign lines of effort: 1) present Russian strength/unity, 2) weaken the EU and NATO, 3) polarize American society, and 4) isolate Israel. To conclude, Dr. Carley identified a series of challenges that experts within the field of social cyber-security currently face.
Dr. Kathleen M. Carley
Experience Dr. Carley is a Professor of Computer Science in the Institute for Software Research, IEEE Fellow, and Director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. She joined Carnegie Mellon in 1984 as Assistant Professor Sociology and Information Systems. In 1990 she became Associate Professor of Sociology and Organizations, in 1998 Professor of Sociology, Organizations, and Information Technology, and in 2002, attained her current role as Professor of Computation, Organization, and Society. She is also the CEO of Carley Technologies Inc. aka Netanomics.
Dr. Carley’s research combines cognitive science, sociology, and computer science to address complex social and organizational issues. Her most notable research contribution was the establishment of Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) – and the associated theory and methodology for examining large high-dimensional time variant networks. Her research on DNA has resulted in tools for analyzing large-scale dynamic networks and various multi-agent simulation systems. Her group has developed tools for extracting sentiment, social and semantic networks from social media and other textual data (AutoMap), simulating epidemiological models (BioWar), simulating covert networks (DyNet), and simulating changes in beliefs and practice given information campaigns (Construct). Her ORA system is one of the premier network analysis and visualization engines supporting geo-temporal analysis of social network and meta-network data. It is used worldwide and at several of the combatant commands. Illustrative projects include assessment of IRS outreach activities, assessment of impact of NextGen on airline re-rerouting, counter-terrorism modeling, counter-narcotics modeling, assessment of design of public-health departments, mapping the global cyber-attack network, and social media-based assessment of crises such as Benghazi, Darfur, and the Arab Spring.
Education Dr. Carley received SB degrees in Economics and in Political Science from M.I.T., and a PhD degree in Sociology from Harvard University.
Publications Among Dr. Carley’s many scientific publications, she co-authored papers “Exploring Characteristics of Suspended Users and Network Stability on Twitter” (2016), “Transition Networks in a Cohort of Patients with Congestive Heart Failure” (2015), “Remote assessment of countries’ nuclear, biological, and cyber capabilities: joint motivation and latent capability approach” (2015), “Destabilizing Terrorist Networks” (2003), “The Impact of US Cyber Policies on Cyber-Attacks Trend” (2016), “Rapid Modeling and Analyzing Networks Extracted from Pre-Structured News Articles” (2012), “An Incremental Algorithm for Updating Betweenness Centrality and k-Betweenness Centrality and Its Performance on Realistic Dynamic Social Network Data” (2015).
Honors Dr. Carley is an IEEE Fellow. She is the recipient of the Allen Newell award for research excellence. She has served as President of the North American Association for Computational and Organizational Simulation (2003-2004) and of the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (1999-2000). She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sociology and Computers Section of the ASA (2001). In 2011 she received the Simmel Award for advances in the area of social networks from INSNA and became a senior member of the IEEE. She has served as a Task Force Member of the Defense Science Board and of Geographic Information Science Panel of the Strategic Command. She has served on a committee and several panels of the National Research Council including ones on the military, big data, and geo-spatial analytics and was a member of the DHS-HSSTAC.
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