ALGORITHMIC WARFARE: NEXT GENERATION HYBRID WARFARE STRATEGY

In the modern era, social media platforms serve as a weapon in many conflicts.While they are useful for disseminating important information, social media can also be used in espionage, psychological operations, and disinformation campaigns. A critical component to these platforms is their recommendation algorithms, which were primarily designed to facilitate engagement and enhance the user experience. Through misuse and abuse, these algorithms have been repurposed as tools for military action and strategic advantage15. With the potential for social media to sow the seeds of discord and confusion in rival countries, the adoption of these next generation strategies has risen to the forefront of the strategy books for nation state actors to include Russia, China, and Iran1. The continued manipulation of these algorithms has shown that this behavior is no longer a byproduct of propaganda, but a deliberate strategic asset in targeting adversaries in modern warfare19 . Due to the nature of social media playing a large role in societal discourse, significant security concerns have been raised to increase the pressure for social media platforms to have algorithm transparency, regulatory oversight, and technological controls in place to lessen the impact of these actions to the civilian population. This study aims to analyze how social media algorithms enable state sponsored objectives, evaluate the effectiveness of countermeasures,and propose a multi layered mitigation strategy to reduce the collateral effects on civilian populations19.