[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 161 (Friday, September 28, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6375-S6378]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             MISINFORMATION

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, what I want to talk about is a new 
form of political weapon that has emerged onto the political 
battlefield in America, and it is a political weapon for which the 
American system is not very well prepared yet. The new political weapon 
we see is systematic and deliberate misinformation, what you might call 
weaponized fake news.
  Vladimir Putin's regime, in Russia, uses weaponized fake news all the 
time for political influence in the former Soviet Union and the modern 
European Union. Our intelligence agencies caught them using 
misinformation to help Trump win the 2016 American election. Some also 
is homegrown. In America, the original weaponized fake news was climate 
denial, spun up by the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry 
used systematic, deliberate disinformation to propagandize our politics 
and fend off accountability for its pollution of our atmosphere and 
oceans.
  So, for both national security and political integrity reasons, we 
need to better understand this misinformation weaponry. Guess what. 
Science is on the case. A comprehensive array of peer-reviewed articles 
appeared last year in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and 
Cognition and, I am sure, is on the Acting President pro tempore's 
bedside table for light reading. Dozens of scientists contributed to 
this report, and I list their names in an appendix to the speech.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my appendix be added at 
the end of my speech.
  What they found is interesting. One piece--tellingly subtitled 
``Understanding and Coping with the `Post-Truth' Era''--describes how 
``the World Economic Forum ranked the spread of misinformation online 
as one of the 10 most significant issues facing the world''--the top 
10.
  ``An obvious hallmark of a post-truth world is that it empowers 
people to choose their own reality, where facts and objective evidence 
are trumped by existing beliefs and prejudices,'' concludes one 
article--not a good thing.
  This is not your grandfather's misinformation. This is not ``JFK and 
Marilyn Monroe's Love Child Found in Utah Salt Mine.'' This is not 
``Aliens Abducted My Cat.'' This is not fun and entertainment. This is 
also not people just being wrong. Indeed, ``misinformation in the post-
truth era can no longer be considered solely an isolated failure of 
individual cognition that can be corrected with appropriate 
communications tools,'' they write.
  In plain English, this isn't just errors; there is something bigger 
going on. Scientists from Duke University agreed.
  ``Rather than a series of isolated falsehoods, we are confronted with 
a growing ecosystem of misinformation.''
  In this ecosystem, misinformation is put to use by determined 
factions.
  ``The melange of anti-intellectual appeals, conspiratorial thinking, 
pseudoscientific claims, and sheer propaganda circulating within 
American society seems unrelenting,'' write Aaron M. McCright of 
Michigan State and Riley E. Dunlap of Oklahoma State.
  They note: ``Those who seek to promote systemic lies'' are ``backed 
by influential economic interests or powerful state actors, both 
domestic and foreign.'' Let me highlight those key phrases--``systemic 
lies . . . backed by influential economic interests.'' Like I said, it 
is not your grandfather's misinformation.
  An author from Ohio State writes that this creates artificial 
polarization in our politics that is not explained by our tribal social 
media habits. His subtitle, too, is telling: ``Disinformation Campaigns 
are the Problem, Not Audience Fragmentation.'' He notes these 
disinformation campaigns ``are used by political strategists, private 
interests, and foreign powers to manipulate people for political 
gain.''
  ``Strategically deployed falsehoods have played an important role in 
shaping Americans' attitudes toward a variety of high-profile political 
issues,'' reads another article.
  In a nutshell, Americans are the subjects of propaganda warfare by 
powerful economic interests.
  So how is all of this misinformation deployed?
  ``The insidious fallouts from misinformation are particularly 
pronounced when the misinformation is packaged as a conspiracy 
theory,'' they tell us--insidious, indeed. By wrapping deliberate 
misinformation in conspiracy theory, the propagandist degrades the 
target's defenses against correction by

[[Page S6376]]

legitimate information. Conspiracy theories, the articles notes, ``tend 
to be particularly prevalent in times of economic and political 
crises.''
  Pulling emotional strings is another technique. Emotionally 
weaponized fake news is reflected in ``the prevalence of outraged 
discourse on political blogs, talk radio, and cable news.''
  These powerful interests also take advantage of ``the 
institutionalization of `false equivalence' in so-called mainstream 
media.'' They sophisticatedly leverage media conventions to their 
private advantage.
  Another tactical observation: To be effective, the misinformation 
campaign does not have to convince you. It can simply barrage, confuse, 
and stun you.
  One of these articles related the Bangor Daily News assessment of 
falsehoods coming from the Trump White House: ``The idea isn't to 
convince people of untrue things, it is to fatigue them, so that they 
will stay out of the political province entirely, regarding the truth 
as just too difficult to determine.''
  This, of course, is a well-known political propaganda strategy. What 
the Bangor Daily News saw, the researchers note, is ``mirrored by 
analysts of Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns.''
  McCright and Dunlap describe how weaponized fake news--what they call 
``the intentional promotion of misinformation''--is made into 
systematic propaganda by amplification of what they call the ``powerful 
conservative echo chamber.'' It is systematic, it is deliberate, and it 
is supported by a purposeful private apparatus.
  This brings us back to what the authors call the ``utility of 
misinformation . . . to powerful political and economic interests.'' 
What they conclude, basically, is that the weaponization of fake news 
is done for profit and with purpose. It has an apparatus of 
amplification. It needn't convince but simply stun or confuse. Like an 
insidious virus, it can carry its own conspiracy theory and emotional 
payload countermeasures against the ordinary antibodies that ordinarily 
protect us from being misled.
  The scientists urge that we must examine these systematic campaigns 
of false misinformation ``through the lens of political drivers that 
have created an alternative epistemology that does not conform to 
conventional standards of evidentiary support.''
  Let's unpack that language for a minute. Let's begin with the fact 
that it is ``political drivers'' that are behind the scheme. This is a 
tool in a larger battle for political supremacy.
  To help win this battle, political actors have ``created an 
alternative epistemology,'' a separate way of looking at the world; 
obviously, a way of looking at the world that aligns with their 
economic interests.
  That ``alternative epistemology'' is untethered from the truth. It 
``does not conform to conventional standards of evidentiary support.'' 
It stands on falsehood, on prejudice, and on emotion, not on fact.
  What the authors call ``post-truth politics'' has motive and purpose. 
They write: It is ``a rational strategy that is deployed in pursuit of 
political objectives.''
  In these propaganda campaigns by powerful economic interests, some 
stuff right now happens a lot more on one political side. Scientists 
track an uneven distribution of emotion-ridden fake news and 
misinformation. They say: ``The prevalence of outraged discourse on 
political blogs, talk radio, and cable news is 50% greater on the 
political right than the political left.''
  Other authors write ``if the political context were to change, we 
might expect the distribution of misperceptions across the political 
spectrum to change as well,'' but for now, the weaponized fake news 
virus predominantly infects the political rightwing and modern 
conservative politics.
  McCright and Dunlap writes: ``The Right seems especially adept at 
using Orwellian language to promote their ideological and material 
interests via what we would argue are systemic lies.''
  So who does this? Weaponized fake news is not cheap. It is not cheap 
to test. It is not cheap to manufacture, and it is not cheap to 
distribute. It is also not cheap to maintain a network to put 
weaponized fake news out there in a way that masks the identity of the 
economic forces behind the network. This takes money, motive, and 
persistence, and that means big industrial players.
  What authors call the ``800-pound gorilla in the room'' is ``a 
political system that is driven by the interests of economic elites 
rather than the people.'' That is big economic elites playing a game of 
masquerade and manipulation in our politics. The scheme may look like 
populism. Indeed, part of the masquerade is, it is designed to look 
like populism, but that is what is going on.
  The disinformation campaign is ``largely independent of the public's 
wishes but serves the interests of economic elites.'' The populist 
masquerade is part of the disinformation exercise.
  These economic elites take methods developed decades ago by one 
industry to use for another industry today. We see this in the fossil 
fuel industry-weaponized fake news about climate change--climate denial 
we call it.
  The stakes are very high, with the International Monetary Fund 
calculating that fossil fuel exacts a subsidy from the American people 
of $700 billion per year. To protect an annual subsidy of $700 billion 
per year, you can cook up a lot of mischief.
  Where did the fossil fuel climate denial mischief begin? It began in 
the tobacco industry's fraudulent schemes to deny the health risks of 
tobacco. Did Big Oil shy away from those tobacco tactics, knowing those 
tactics were actually found in court to be fraud? No.
  Indeed, to quote an article: ``The oil industry has worked to promote 
doubt about climate change science using tactics pioneered by cigarette 
manufacturers in the 1960s.''
  To protect a $700 billion annual subsidy, you can build a bigger 
denial scheme even than Big Tobacco, and they did. McCright and Dunlap 
call this the ``climate change denial countermovement.'' They say its 
message ``may be the most successful systemic lies of the last few 
decades.''

  They continue:

       Briefly, this countermovement uses money and resources from 
     industry and conservative foundations to mobilize an array of 
     conservative think tanks, lobbying organizations, media 
     outlets, front groups, and Republican politicians to ignore, 
     suppress, obfuscate, and cherry-pick scientists and their 
     research to deny the reality and seriousness of climate 
     change.

  Other authors write that ``the current polarization of the climate 
debate is the result of a decades-long concerted effort by conservative 
political operatives and think tanks to cast doubt on the overwhelming 
scientific consensus that the earth is warming from human greenhouse 
gas emissions.''
  ``To cast doubt'' is the key phrase in that last quote. The authors 
emphasize that ``climate science denial does not present a coherent 
alternative explanation of climate change. On the contrary, the 
arguments offered by climate denial are intrinsically incoherent. 
Climate-science denial is therefore best understood not as an 
alternative knowledge claim but as a political operation aimed at 
generating uncertainty in the public's mind in order to preserve the 
status quo.''
  How did that play out in Republican policymaking? ``[W]hile climate 
change used to be a bipartisan issue in the 1980s, the Republican party 
has arguably moved from evidence-based concern to industry-funded 
denial.''
  Let's be clear. Climate denial is not a search for truth. As the 
evidence piled up that early climate change warnings were accurate, the 
climate denial campaign did not relent in the face of those facts. 
Indeed, the scientists relate, ``the amount of misinformation on 
climate change has increased in proportion to the strength of 
scientific evidence that human greenhouse gas emissions are altering 
the Earth's climate.''
  It is a fossil fuel upgrade of the fraudulent Big Tobacco strategy. 
One example is the so-called Oregon Petition, a bogus petition urging 
the U.S. Government to reject the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global 
warming. One article points out that ``the Oregon Petition is an 
example of the so-called `fake-experts' strategy that was pioneered by 
the tobacco industry in the 1970s and 1980s.''
  Of course, since this scheme isn't real science, it doesn't use real 
scientific outlets. ``[M]uch of the opposition to

[[Page S6377]]

mainstream climate science, like any other form of science denial, 
involves non-scientific outlets such as blogs.''
  Another article notes that this is done on ``websites that obfuscate 
their sponsor by mimicking the trappings of nonprofits and other more 
trusted sites.'' Again, masquerade--even camouflage--is part of the 
problem. I think it goes without saying that in real science it is not 
necessary to mask the real proponent.
  Another signal of the scheme is repetition of falsehood. ``Dozens of 
studies document an illusory truth effect whereby repeated statements 
are judged truer than new ones.''
  In real science, when someone realizes what they are saying is wrong, 
they stop saying it. In the weaponized disinformation scheme, you just 
keep saying it. You maybe even say it more to capitalize on this 
``illusory truth effect.''
  This, of course, recalls the infamous Big Tobacco declaration: 
``Doubt is our product.'' That is a quote from a tobacco memo.
  The heart of the fossil fuel industry's scheme is to undermine 
legitimate science with false doubts. To chip away at the scientific 
consensus on climate change, they chip away at the foundations of truth 
itself.
  One author sees this as ``the willingness of political actors to 
promote doubt as to whether truth is ultimately knowable''--think of 
the President's lawyer, Giuliani, saying ``truth isn't truth''--or 
``whether empirical evidence is important''--think of climate denial 
trying to drown out the truth through repetition of false statements--
third, ``and whether the fourth estate has value''--think of the 
President attacking the legitimate media as ``fake news'' and the 
``enemy of the people.''
  The scientific paper concludes: ``Undermining public confidence in 
the institutions that produce and disseminate knowledge is a threat to 
which scientists must respond.''
  Sadly, real science is poorly adapted to defending itself against 
weaponized disinformation in the public arena.
  Let me conclude with what one article calls a case study in the 
spread of misinformation. Last year's ``Unite the Right'' rally in 
Charlottesville, VA, which led to the murder of Heather Heyer, killed 
by a White supremacist speeding into a crowd, a witness recorded on 
film the car plowing into that crowd of people. The authors wrote: 
``Within hours, conspiracy theories began floating around the internet 
among people associated with the alt-right,'' attempting to undermine 
and discredit the witness. Social media posts then appeared 
``suggesting [the driver] staged the attack, was trained by the CIA, 
and funded by either George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or the 
global Jewish mafia. . . . [T]hose conspiracy theories migrated into 
more mainstream media. Variations appeared on info wars and Shawn 
Hannity's show on Fox.'' FOX News, by the way, is a common venue for 
fake news.
  Here is what the scientists chronicle as the ``Fox News effect'':

       It has repeatedly been shown that people who report that 
     they source their news from public broadcasters become better 
     informed the more attention they report paying to the news, 
     whereas, the reverse is true for self-reported consumers of 
     FOX News. . . . [F]or self-reporting viewers of Fox News . . 
     . increasing frequency of news consumption is often 
     associated with an increased likelihood that they are 
     misinformed about various issues.

  In a nutshell, the more you watch real news, the more you know; the 
more you watch FOX News, the less you know--great for the elite 
merchants of doubt.
  The effects of misinformation become measurable by looking at 
provable falsehoods that people are made to believe.

       [A] 2011 poll showed that 51 percent of Republican primary 
     voters thought that then-president Obama had been born 
     abroad. . . . [Twenty percent] of respondents in a 
     representative U.S. sample have been found to endorse the 
     proposition that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by 
     corrupt scientists. The idea that the Democratic Party was 
     running a child sex ring was at one point believed or 
     accepted as being possibly true by nearly one-third of 
     Americans and nearly one-half of Trump voters.

  All provably false. All propagated until significant numbers of 
people believed.
  So how do we fight back? The researchers offer an array of 
approaches. ``Russian propaganda can be `digitally contained' by 
supporting media literacy and source criticism,'' says one.
  ``Our recommendation,'' wrote another, ``is to begin by generating a 
list of the skills required to be a critical consumer of information.'' 
In essence, we have to adapt new citizenship skills to protect 
ourselves from weaponized fake news.
  Another recommendation is to teach people about the tactic of sewing 
doubt through disinformation. Where ``typical cues for credibility have 
been hijacked,'' understanding the tactics will help inoculate people 
against being taken in by the scheme.
  The researchers reported:

       Participants read about how the tobacco industry in the 
     1970s used ``fake experts''--people with no scientific 
     background, or doctors and scientists with beliefs 
     unrepresentative of the rest of the scientific community--to 
     create the illusion of an ongoing debate about smoking's 
     negative health consequences. Participants who read about the 
     ``fake experts'' type of argument were less affected when 
     later reading a passage on climate change that quoted a 
     scientist who referred to ``climate change . . . [as] still 
     hotly debated among scientists.''

  Other authors argued that a comprehensive approach will be needed to 
debunk climate denial. They note that ``climate denial typically 
masquerades as `pro-science' skepticism and paints the actual science 
of climate change as being `corrupt' or `post-moderate.' It is possible 
that those carefully crafted forms of misinformation will require 
continued human debunking as well as increased media literacy.''
  Last, there is a role for the media. ``At present,'' authors point 
out, ``many representatives of think tanks and corporate front groups 
appear in the media without revealing their affiliations and conflicts 
of interest. This practice must be tightened, and rigorous disclosure 
of all affiliations and interests must take center stage in media 
reporting.'' Again, once you out the participants and show the scheme, 
people can figure it out for themselves.
  Recommended media reforms include a ``counter fake news editor [to] 
highlight disinformation'' or a ``[r]ating system for disinformation'' 
or ``a Disinformation Charter.''
  Science itself is beginning to examine the growing threat of 
misinformation in American society, which is appropriate since science 
is so often the target of weaponized misinformation campaigns. More and 
more, real science must face up to the fact that a new predator roams 
its territory and adapt new defenses against this predator. The 
predators may not want to defeat all science. They probably still wants 
to use their iPhones and drive cars and live in safe buildings and 
enjoy products and services that science gives us. But they do seek to 
defeat whatever science challenges the economic interests that fund 
them.
  As I said at the start, the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and 
Cognition is not exactly grocery-store checkout-line reading. Few 
Americans have read this volume. I am probably the only one in 
Congress. But its message is important, and that is why I came to the 
floor to share it today.
  Campaigns of lies are dangerous things, like an evil virus in the 
body politic, and if we want to be a healthy country, we will have to 
defeat the weaponized disinformation virus. Curing our body politic of 
the ongoing fraud of climate denial would be a very good start.
  I note the deputy majority leader is here on the floor. I apologize 
for continuing my speech while he is here. I appreciate his productive 
role in the happy events that I described at the beginning of these 
remarks.
  Before the Senator from Texas takes the floor, I ask unanimous 
consent that the appendix I referenced be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Sources: Journal of Applied Research in Memory and 
     Cognition, Volume 6, Issue 4 (December 2017)
       Letting the Gorilla Emerge From the Mist: Getting Past 
     Post-Truth By Stephan Lewandowsky (George Mason University, 
     University of Bristol), John Cook (George Mason University) & 
     Ullrich Ecker (University of Western Australia),
       A Call to Think Broadly about Information Literacy By 
     Elizabeth J. Marsh & Brenda W. Yang (Duke University)
       Combatting Misinformation Requires Recognizing Its Types 
     and the Factors That Facilitate Its Spread and Resonance By 
     Aaron

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     M. McCright (Michigan State) Riley E. Dunlap (Oklahoma State)
       Beyond Misinformation: Understanding and Coping with the 
     ``Post-Truth'' Era By Stephan Lewandowsky (GMU, University of 
     Bristol), Ullrich Ecker (University of Western Australia), 
     and John Cook (George Mason University)
       Misinformation and Worldviews in the Post-Truth Information 
     Age: Commentary on Lewandowsky, Ecker, and Cook By Ira E. 
     Hyman (Western Washington University), & Madeline C. Jalbert 
     (University of Southern California)
       Routine Processes of Cognition Result in Routine Influences 
     of Inaccurate Content By David N. Rapp & Amalia M. Donovan 
     (Northwestern University)
       The ``Echo Chamber'' Distraction: Disinformation Campaigns 
     are the Problem, Not Audience Fragmentation By R. Kelly 
     Garrett (Ohio State University)
       Leveraging Institutions, Educators, and Networks to Correct 
     Misinformation: A Commentary on Lewandosky, Ecker, and Cook 
     By Emily K. Vraga (George Mason University) & Leticia Bode 
     (Georgetown University)

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________