I finished reading Messing with the Enemy by Clint Watts. Clint Watts is a former Military/FBI counter terrorism analyst type and clearly doesn’t like Donald Trump, his book having been written in 2018.
while I don’t totally agree with Watts’s views on President Trump, whom I would probably throw myself off a bridge after being around for more than a week, I will say that I agree with about 90% of the content of the book.
Nations who are enemies of the United States most certainly can use Social media to manipulate the masses, and from where I sit it is certainly being used to manipulate the masses right along with AI applications like Microsoft’s Copilot. “I have no doubt about that in my own mind!”
All in all, I would recommend the book to just about anyone who has a smartphone in their pocket and enough brains to understand the concepts presented. This book is particularly worth reading after what happened back in 2020 with COVID-19 and given the way things have been progressing moving forward. “Social Media Users Beware!”
Also, it should be noted that Microsoft’s Copilot app flat out refused to help me with any part of the writing and editing for this post, Copilot using its lack of training in political topics as it’s excuse. In my mind, this further makes it important that everyone using social media and embracing new AI tech read Clint Watts’s book. While his focus is on Russia and terrorism in the book, I strongly believe the concerns he raises about technology manipulating the masses can also be applied to the threat Corporate America poses to us as citizens in their use of this technology for profit and policy setting amongst the masses. In short, from where I sit, “Corporate America is just as much a danger to democracy as terrorism or a communist nation state!”