Dear CCI Friends,
During a quite busy time here at CCI, Natylie Baldwin will allow us to reprint some of her excellent communications going forward. Natylie found CCI years ago and got in touch for an appointment. She was considering making the switch back to foreign policy writing from fiction, this time with a focus in the U.S.-Russia field. We met numerous times for long dinners at Delancey’s on the bay of San Francisco.
I finally invited Natylie to travel with me to Crimea. That was the beginning of her now engrossment in the history and current day outcomes of U.S.-Russia relations. Her recently published book, The View from Moscow, with subtitle Understanding Russia and US-Russia Relations is serious. It has 40 pages of endnotes from known experts from the last century. I urge you to read this book if you aren’t completely familiar with US-Russia history..
Meanwhile, enjoy Natylie’s coming articles which will explain what is going on today in this tortuous relationship between Russia/China and the West.
More to follow from Natylie and from me … as time permits!
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Natylie’s Place: Understanding Russia
Can Deepfake Technology Endanger World Peace?
July 6, 2021
By Natylie Baldwin
A recent deepfake video of Tom Cruise has some analysts wondering if such technology has gotten so good that a deepfake video of a world leader could possibly lead to an inadvertent war. Below is an excerpt from one in depth article on the subject that was recently published by ABC Australia. Let me know in the comments below what you think – could this potentially threaten world peace and security or will societies be able to sufficiently rein in this technology in the near future?
By Mark Corcoran and Matt Henry, ABC Australia, 6/24/21
Weaponising deepfakes
It’s a possibility that keeps former CIA officer and disinformation specialist Matt Ferraro up at night.
When deepfake Tom started doing the rounds in Washington DC’s national security and intelligence community, some feared a dystopian future had taken one giant leap closer. Matt was one of them.
“I think that ‘terror’ is probably not too strong a word,” says Ferraro, who worked for America’s top spymaster, the director of National Intelligence, during the Bush and Obama administrations.