Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: It is about having this narrative that democracy only leads
Speaker 2: to chaos and democracy never delivers. That is the overarching
Speaker 2: narrative for the authoritarian attacks. So I think one lesson
Speaker 2: is to let the people know that this has happened.
Speaker 2: Any If you'll let everybody know that this is the narrative,
Speaker 2: they're going to push the people built immune system and
Speaker 2: hype bodies in their mind even before that attack actually happens.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Voteronomics, where politics and markets and everything else collide.
Speaker 3: This year, voters around the world have the ability to
Speaker 3: affect markets, countries, and economies like never before, so it
Speaker 3: created this series Photonomics to help you make sense of
Speaker 3: it all. I'm Stephanie Flanders.
Speaker 4: I'm Adrian Wooldridge, and I'm Allegra Stratton.
Speaker 3: And you heard at the top of the show the
Speaker 3: former recently stepped down Minister of Digital Affairs of Taiwan,
Speaker 3: Audrey Tang. Now you might wonder why on earth, you know,
Speaker 3: we have all these illustrious people on this podcast, not
Speaker 3: least people I'm talking to right now, why would we
Speaker 3: have a recently stepped down Minister of Digital affairs. But
Speaker 3: Audrey Tang for the last several years has been absolutely
Speaker 3: the front line of the misinformation war, which of course
Speaker 3: we're all worried about being above and beneath the surface
Speaker 3: of these big elections that we're facing in the UK
Speaker 3: and the US and other countries, because Taiwan, as she
Speaker 3: says herself, has been the country most subjected to cyber
Speaker 3: onslaught on all fronts, whether it's around the senior US
Speaker 3: politician Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan and most recently the
Speaker 3: election where China clearly didn't want to have someone win
Speaker 3: the president see in Taiwan who was considered to be
Speaker 3: sort of pro independence or some form of independence for Taiwan.
Speaker 3: I mean, allegra you and I spoke to her and
Speaker 3: it was just a fascinating conversation.
Speaker 1: About It was fascinating and it was quite chilling as well,
Speaker 1: because when I was asking her if she the incidences
Speaker 1: that we've seen in the UK of possible disinformation and
Speaker 1: Russian bots stirring up division and so on, and you know,
Speaker 1: and she said yeah, and some like you know, yes,
Speaker 1: and it will have been much more than that. A
Speaker 1: And then the other thing that I that really resonated
Speaker 1: and I liked a lot was this idea of jury
Speaker 1: service on social media, so you could we as citizens
Speaker 1: should all be dipping into various different pieces of social
Speaker 1: media and kind of observing in quite an intense way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm very much looking forward to hit to hearing it.
Speaker 4: Absolutely fascinating subject.
Speaker 3: But of course we're interested in these things, even more
Speaker 3: interested in elections right now because we have one. And
Speaker 3: actually we had that was a snapcast that we did
Speaker 3: earlier this week of voting when we had first got
Speaker 3: that news the announcement for Rissi Sinek of the election
Speaker 3: in early July. And I think that's the one thing
Speaker 3: we didn't talk about, actually, is the risk of misinformation.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting. I think that experts are divided. I
Speaker 1: think that they feel that actually, in the elections that
Speaker 1: we've already seen in twenty twenty four around the world,
Speaker 1: that it hasn't actually played a huge role, but it
Speaker 1: is certainly right to be vigilant.
Speaker 4: I think there's absolute truth in that. But I think
Speaker 4: the extent to which this is going on is increasing
Speaker 4: all the time, and the extent to which the sort
Speaker 4: of the Russian model of deliberately spreading its spreading misinformation
Speaker 4: and agit prop is being taken up by China, and
Speaker 4: push forward is really quite important. And also I think
Speaker 4: if you look at the what you might call the
Speaker 4: states that are but Russia, you know, the Baltic States
Speaker 4: and the rest of them, you see it. It's a
Speaker 4: lot more of a problem it has been here. So
Speaker 4: I think the future is it's quite dark when it
Speaker 4: comes to misinformation.
Speaker 3: It's very hard to say definitively what's happening. And that's
Speaker 3: part of the issue is that you have this sort
Speaker 3: of echo chamber of different forms of social media, self
Speaker 3: selected groups who are then having damaging messages amplified. And
Speaker 3: Audrey Tang talks about it. But actually I was struck
Speaker 3: by Anne app Obama's done this fantastic big story for
Speaker 3: The Atlantic and this month's June issue of The Atlantic magazine,
Speaker 3: the New Propaganda War, where she just maps out how China,
Speaker 3: Russia and other sort of semi rogue nations are making
Speaker 3: common cause with sort of make America great again Trumpian
Speaker 3: Republicans to spread a message around sort of undermining liberalism
Speaker 3: and undermining kind of normal democrats.
Speaker 4: I think one of the many fascinating things that she
Speaker 4: said is that these countries are collaborating with each other.
Speaker 4: I mean both and said this, and Audrey Tang said this,
Speaker 4: And I think we should be looking certainly to what
Speaker 4: Taiwan has been doing. But again, I also think we
Speaker 4: should be looking to what some of the Baltic states
Speaker 4: or some of the states on that are closest to
Speaker 4: Russia have been doing. I think a really interesting example
Speaker 4: of that is Finland, which has in its schools a
Speaker 4: civic education program which teaches people how to resist foreign
Speaker 4: propaganda because they're being constantly bullied and acted by the Russians,
Speaker 4: and that's actually woven into their education system. So I
Speaker 4: think when we're thinking about what our defenses should be,
Speaker 4: we shouldn't just be thinking about the military. We should
Speaker 4: also be thinking about a much broader set of defenses
Speaker 4: against foreign interference, which include public opinion, public education.
Speaker 1: Do you think it would work here?
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I think it's just and I'm also just struck.
Speaker 3: We had our guest last week who was saying, when
Speaker 3: he goes to talk to students, and they all are
Speaker 3: sort of many of them are parroting the same sort
Speaker 3: of somewhat sympathetic to Russia line about Ukraine, and she
Speaker 3: actually Anne Applebam sites having had talking to other Western
Speaker 3: diplomats who have sort of been been in Africa and
Speaker 3: then are sort of shocked by everywhere they go people
Speaker 3: with a completely different narrative around the war in Ukraine,
Speaker 3: and many of them believing this particular story around the
Speaker 3: US using biological warfare early on in helping Ukraine to
Speaker 3: commit biological warfare at the beginning of the war. So
Speaker 3: I think it is there is a fear that even
Speaker 3: if you're doing all these things within your core core
Speaker 3: education system and on your mainstream media, the segmentation of
Speaker 3: the voices that people.
Speaker 4: Are getting you just have there's an enemy agate problem.
Speaker 4: But there's also just rumors and just nonsense that that
Speaker 4: that is there on that we have Arnold's and I think,
Speaker 4: you know, as this British election unfolds, I think it's
Speaker 4: very important that we take a pretty broad view of
Speaker 4: public opinion, not just reading the Times, but also looking
Speaker 4: at some of the weirdest stuff coming out on the
Speaker 4: Internet or gb News and the rest of it.
Speaker 3: While we're talking about you know, there's the risks of
Speaker 3: what might happen in the UK election I think you know,
Speaker 3: we also have that US election. We've been running a
Speaker 3: swing state pole because as you as you both will know,
Speaker 3: the seven swing states, they are the ones that will
Speaker 3: decide the outcome of this election. And actually the latest
Speaker 3: poll has just come out had some quite interesting results,
Speaker 3: particularly on this subject of foreign interference and also the
Speaker 3: risk of violence in and around the elections. We can
Speaker 3: go back to a friend of voter nomics, Nancy Cook,
Speaker 3: our top reporter in Washington covering all things campaign and
Speaker 3: economic qualicy and much else. Nancy, I know you've we've
Speaker 3: had quite a few of these swing state poles, but
Speaker 3: what are the top lines from this one?
Speaker 5: Well, the taplines are that former President Trump still leads
Speaker 5: Biden about forty eight percent to forty four percent across
Speaker 5: the seven swing states that we have been surveying for
Speaker 5: the last several months. And you know, this sort of
Speaker 5: builds on the success that we have seen in other
Speaker 5: polls with him where he has been leading Biden. I
Speaker 5: think what's interesting is that about forty six percent of
Speaker 5: the people we surveyed expressed some concern about foreign interference.
Speaker 5: And then the other sort of big takeaway is that
Speaker 5: Trump is leading in states like North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia,
Speaker 5: which is a state with a lot of African Americans,
Speaker 5: which will be key for Biden to win, and then
Speaker 5: they're tied in Nevada, Nancy.
Speaker 1: One of the things we're picking up on during this
Speaker 1: voter nomics is this idea of echo chambers and that
Speaker 1: different voter groups are sort of talking to with themselves
Speaker 1: and not really straying outside. And the poll underscoores that
Speaker 1: it's deeply partisan. So you have nine out of ten
Speaker 1: Republicans saying the economy was better off under Trump and
Speaker 1: only one out of ten Democrats thinking that. So you've
Speaker 1: got this very very strong expression of how partisan this
Speaker 1: election is.
Speaker 5: Absolutely and you just see that across the board with
Speaker 5: almost every policy area. I mean, you see that, you know,
Speaker 5: Trump really earns high marks on the economy from you know,
Speaker 5: all Republican voters. You see that also with foreign policy, housing, immigration.
Speaker 5: It's just it is so polarized that it's almost like
Speaker 5: two different countries at this point, the Democratic States and
Speaker 5: the Republican States. And that's why we have focused on
Speaker 5: these swing states, because you know, there's so much of
Speaker 5: the US that's basically you already know how people are
Speaker 5: going to vote, and these states are the ones that
Speaker 5: are kind of up for grabs.
Speaker 4: Nancy, are you surprised that the current Trump trial hasn't
Speaker 4: had more of an impact on voting intentions so far?
Speaker 5: I I'm actually not because I think that one, we're
Speaker 5: still many months away from the election. Two, I think
Speaker 5: Americans are very disengaged right now from this particular election.
Speaker 5: I think most Americans don't want either President Biden or
Speaker 5: former President Trump to be their candidates, and so I
Speaker 5: think people aren't paying a ton of attention to the trial.
Speaker 5: The fact of the matter is is that the first
Speaker 5: indictment that Trump had actually was great for him. It
Speaker 5: helped him with fundraising, It helped him with Republican base,
Speaker 5: it was something that boosted him actually, So you know,
Speaker 5: I just think it hasn't hurt him at all. And
Speaker 5: I think if there is a conviction, which we have
Speaker 5: to wait and see, it will only help him.
Speaker 3: But that is interesting, Nancy, because as you know, polls
Speaker 3: of Republicans had suggested that around a third of his
Speaker 3: support would consider it material if he got a fatherly conviction.
Speaker 3: You think that's just gone away now.
Speaker 5: I'm just not sure that that will hold and that
Speaker 5: will be the thing that will sway people on election
Speaker 5: day versus things like immigration and the economy. I think
Speaker 5: that people's sense of the economy, in their dismay with
Speaker 5: it is so strong that I'm just not sure that
Speaker 5: that will overshadow a conviction.
Speaker 3: The very top line I saw in one of the
Speaker 3: headlines around the poll is that you know, a half
Speaker 3: and that's Democrats and Republicans fear violence around the election,
Speaker 3: which I'm not sure whether we were asking people that
Speaker 3: in the last election or certainly you know, last twenty years,
Speaker 3: but that seems very striking.
Speaker 5: It is striking, and I think that's all because of
Speaker 5: January sixth and the violence and the attempted insurrection that
Speaker 5: happened after the last election. It has been so interesting
Speaker 5: covering politics in the week of that because a ton
Speaker 5: of the Republican Party has basically rewritten history on that
Speaker 5: and come to see them as a protest. You know,
Speaker 5: not that big of a deal. But I think that
Speaker 5: regardless of who wins in November, Democrats or Republicans, there's
Speaker 5: a fear that whoever is the loser, there will be
Speaker 5: a lot of protests and there will be violence. And
Speaker 5: I think it's really a stark data point in this poll.
Speaker 3: I did notice we had a fascinating piece by Josh
Speaker 3: Green earlier the last couple of days that the posters
Speaker 3: and focus people taking focus groups on both sides weren't
Speaker 3: looking for it, but kept on tripping up over people
Speaker 3: concerned that President Trump, if re elected, would then try
Speaker 3: to stay in office beyond the four years and violate
Speaker 3: the constitutional limit on two terms.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I love that piece as well, and I think
Speaker 5: that it is a concern among particularly Independents, and it's
Speaker 5: something that Trump keeps joking about. I mean, it's not
Speaker 5: really something that's just in voter's minds. It's something that
Speaker 5: he keeps talking about. He spoke before the National Rifle
Speaker 5: Association in Dallas, Texas, on Saturday, and he joked about,
Speaker 5: you know, winning a third term. You know, in the
Speaker 5: US you can only win two terms. That's what the
Speaker 5: law says now, and so he joked about serving even
Speaker 5: beyond that. I mean, he has made these comments before,
Speaker 5: so it's not really out of left field that this
Speaker 5: is something that is on the minds of American voters.
Speaker 5: But I thought it was interesting that it's coming up
Speaker 5: in these focus groups.
Speaker 1: Now as Joshua, it's NANSI. Do you enjoy the TV
Speaker 1: debate spin rooms?
Speaker 5: I think they're fine. I mean, you know, it's interesting though,
Speaker 5: is that the debates that they recently agree to, you know,
Speaker 5: they will have the spin rooms, I'm sure, but they're
Speaker 5: not going to be before an audience, and so it
Speaker 5: will be interesting to see, you know, how those ended
Speaker 5: up looking on TV, but then also what they look
Speaker 5: like afterwards.
Speaker 1: Why have they not going for an audience?
Speaker 5: I think that they It was one of the conditions
Speaker 5: that Biden and his team put forward to debate Trump.
Speaker 5: I think Trump is so masterful at sort of owning
Speaker 5: the media, owning the room, sort of overtaking a situation,
Speaker 5: and we saw that in a CNN town hall that
Speaker 5: he did just with him and a CNN moderator. He
Speaker 5: kind of just flipped the whole situation to his advantage.
Speaker 5: And it was a very sympathetic audience and they kept
Speaker 5: sort of interrupting the moderator, interrupting the follow up questions,
Speaker 5: and I think the Biden people wanted to feel like
Speaker 5: it was you know, President Biden really had a fair
Speaker 5: shot to make his points, and that people stuck to
Speaker 5: the time limits, and they felt like if there was
Speaker 5: a studio audience that person, you know, it would have
Speaker 5: just been even more disrupted.
Speaker 3: But it's a huge gamble which we will be looking
Speaker 3: at to see how it turns out. Nancy Cook, thank
Speaker 3: you so much, thanks for having me. So now onto
Speaker 3: that interview with Audrey Tang, Taiwan's former Minister of Digital Affairs.
Speaker 3: She's literally just stepped down and she feels Taiwan has
Speaker 3: been many years ahead of the rest of the world
Speaker 3: in having to respond to the threat of misinformation and
Speaker 3: cyber wars influencing elections. So I started by asking her
Speaker 3: how does she think we're doing so far and what
Speaker 3: do we need to learn before going to the ballot
Speaker 3: boxes later in the year.
Speaker 2: Taiwan has been on the forefront because we're the most
Speaker 2: heavily targeted according to v them for the past decade.
Speaker 2: Every year, we're at the top of the world in
Speaker 2: terms of the our information manipulation received, and we know
Speaker 2: something about information manipulation and it's not just elections. When
Speaker 2: the Ministry of Digital Affairs first started in August twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, a few weeks before that, Sensi Pelosi, then
Speaker 2: US Speaker visits the Taiwan in historic visits, and we
Speaker 2: saw the whole spectrum of destructive attacked, tack and leak,
Speaker 2: encouraging physical protests and all that in a very coordinated way.
Speaker 2: It's about creating a information vacuum. It is about having
Speaker 2: this narrative that democracy only leads to chaos and democracy
Speaker 2: never delivers. That is the overarching narrative for the authoritarian attacks.
Speaker 2: So I think one lesson is just to pre bunk,
Speaker 2: to let the people know that this is happening. This
Speaker 2: is not about pro a candidate or against a candidate.
Speaker 2: This is about an overarching narrative that says democracy never delivers,
Speaker 2: democracy only leads to chaos. And if you pre bunk it,
Speaker 2: if you'll let everybody know that this is the narrative,
Speaker 2: they're going to push the people built immune system antibodies
Speaker 2: in their mind even before that attack actually happens.
Speaker 3: So just to explain that Nancy Pelosi visit, you know,
Speaker 3: obviously the Chinese government had not wanted any senior US
Speaker 3: politician to visit Taiwan, so that's why you had that
Speaker 3: kind of concerted attack. And the more recent time when
Speaker 3: people were concerned about Taiwan was around the time of
Speaker 3: the election at the start of this year, were you
Speaker 3: applying some of the same lessons for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. For example, in every election, we already know
Speaker 2: that the counting process is going to be the main
Speaker 2: attack for not just every attack, but mostly information operation.
Speaker 2: People would accuse that the counting was rigged. People would
Speaker 2: accuse the election officials of siding with one particular candidate,
Speaker 2: People would dispute the result of the election, and so on.
Speaker 2: These are all traditional information operation targets. In Taiwan, we
Speaker 2: countered that by participatory counting. So for the past few
Speaker 2: years we restructured our accounting process. We have a paper
Speaker 2: only ballot, and so when people count those paper only ballots,
Speaker 2: they take each and everyone out, they show it to
Speaker 2: three different angles, and the three major parties, their YouTubers,
Speaker 2: their quarders, their participatory counters, they all film the process,
Speaker 2: and so each and every paper ballot was counted this way.
Speaker 2: So we didn't use digital technology to speed up the
Speaker 2: tallying process. Even though maybe electronic talenting can finish what
Speaker 2: used to take four hours in forty minutes, we conclude
Speaker 2: it's not worth it. The participation is important because when
Speaker 2: the inevitable information operation happens right after the counting process
Speaker 2: concluded that there was rigged counting and so and so forth.
Speaker 2: Actually it didn't spread very far, even though we have
Speaker 2: evidence that foreign information manipulators put a lot of resource
Speaker 2: in getting all those conspiracy theories to spread. All the
Speaker 2: three party leaders, they have their YouTubers and their campaign
Speaker 2: people in that particular counting station. It's all documented. So
Speaker 2: all they can say after the fact is that there's
Speaker 2: no riaking of the election. So it limits the basic
Speaker 2: reproduction number that are zero value of those information manipulations.
Speaker 2: So even though they threw a lot of resources into
Speaker 2: spreading this particular message, we fixed this problem by inviting
Speaker 2: everybody into the counting process. This is something that extronic
Speaker 2: tally cannot do as easily, oh do.
Speaker 1: The way you're describing recent events is very sophisticated digital literacy.
Speaker 1: Tell us your observations looking at these huge elections in
Speaker 1: the UK in America and how resilient you think those
Speaker 1: electorates really are.
Speaker 2: In Taiwan, we don't even use the word digital literacy
Speaker 2: or media literacy anymore in our curriculum. We always say
Speaker 2: digital media competence because literacy is when you are viewing
Speaker 2: the news, maybe with a critical eye, but still mostly
Speaker 2: as a consumer, whereas competent is when you're a co
Speaker 2: producer of information. And the great thing about getting high
Speaker 2: schoolers or even primary schoolers into the collaborative fact checking
Speaker 2: is that it changes their family dynamic, usually the children
Speaker 2: when they introduce a new platform, a new ecosystem, and
Speaker 2: so the parents and grandparents are sympathetic to it. And
Speaker 2: what we have found is that it is not the
Speaker 2: check facts that inoculates the mind. It is the act
Speaker 2: of going through fact checking, a thinking like a journalist
Speaker 2: that inoculates the mind, which is why it's so important
Speaker 2: to combine that with the curriculum and with this or
Speaker 2: family exercise.
Speaker 1: When you look at America and the UK and the
Speaker 1: many many other polls taking place this year around the world,
Speaker 1: do you think people know what's coming?
Speaker 2: I think what's really needed is that it comes from
Speaker 2: not just credibly neutral sources, which I understand in the
Speaker 2: US it's difficult to combine now, but rather from each
Speaker 2: and every party, from each and every denomination, from each
Speaker 2: and ever even religion and so on, community leaders and
Speaker 2: so on, such as published a book on this is
Speaker 2: about collaborating across people who were like ideologically or politically
Speaker 2: opposite of each other, but each side agreed that democracy
Speaker 2: is a process that requires some commonly agreed facts, and
Speaker 2: for that we need cross checking instead of just taking
Speaker 2: one institute and upholding it as the most rigorous. So
Speaker 2: a cross checking ecosystem is always superior to just a
Speaker 2: single like this Information Overside institute or things like that
Speaker 2: when it comes to pre bunking and debunking issues. And
Speaker 2: the other thing, especially for career public servants, is that
Speaker 2: even if you didn't anticipate something and you cannot pre
Speaker 2: bunk it, as long as you respond within an hour,
Speaker 2: it's as good as if you've pre bunked it. So
Speaker 2: we ensure in Taiwan that if we missed some pre
Speaker 2: bunking targets, we always respond with a hopeful, slightly humorous
Speaker 2: message mes media sixteen minutes or less after we detected
Speaker 2: that it is going to trend. And the reason why
Speaker 2: is that the career of public service through the press
Speaker 2: release channels, actually reaches more people than conspiracy theories, and
Speaker 2: if it's a little bit humorous, it also spreads faster
Speaker 2: than the conspiracy theories. So for everag person they actually
Speaker 2: received the clarification first before they received this information.
Speaker 3: You were a pioneer, Audrey, developing open source technology before
Speaker 3: going into government. But also you've been a force for
Speaker 3: this very collaborative, transparent process which you were just describing.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's built up a level of
Speaker 3: trust which you're not always going to get with other
Speaker 3: kinds of government fact checking in other countries. In fact,
Speaker 3: I was struck by a recent example in Senegal where
Speaker 3: there'd been a fake news law that actually was associated
Speaker 3: with the cumbent government in effect trying to prevent a
Speaker 3: lot of opposition discussion on TikTok and in other places.
Speaker 3: And funny enough, that law backfired because this opposition leader
Speaker 3: had been somewhat silenced by those laws, but there was
Speaker 3: so much curiosity about him that people went out and
Speaker 3: found out about him and they ended up voting him
Speaker 3: into office. But in a lot of cases, you know,
Speaker 3: don't we see that it is in fact quite authoritarian
Speaker 3: governments that are then using the language of fake news
Speaker 3: and talking about citizens needing to be protected from it.
Speaker 3: So how do you develop trust and avoid that problem?
Speaker 2: Yes, I think this is a great observation. How one
Speaker 2: is the tub of Asia when it comes to not
Speaker 2: just freedom on the net, but also journalistic freedom. And
Speaker 2: because my parents were both journalists, I would never say
Speaker 2: the words fake news to them or to anyone really,
Speaker 2: because to me, information manipulation is fundamentally about getting people
Speaker 2: to distrust the democratic process. This is not about pro
Speaker 2: or anti establishment pro or any parties and so on,
Speaker 2: or the polarization attacks that we have seen for most
Speaker 2: of this year. After the generative AI capabilities getting enjoyed
Speaker 2: by all the information manipulators, the easiest way is not
Speaker 2: to push for fake narratives, but just to amplify the
Speaker 2: parts of the opinions that looks like hate messages across
Speaker 2: party lines, across ideological lines, and just put a lot
Speaker 2: of resource in amplifying those polarized messages and then the
Speaker 2: polarization person the democracy by yourself and fact checks can
Speaker 2: do little about such polarization attacks because it's not factually wrong, right,
Speaker 2: So I think a lot of the work that we're
Speaker 2: now doing is again pre bunking. We introduce new laws
Speaker 2: like the Anti Fraud Act currently in the Parliament that says,
Speaker 2: if you want to have freedom of reach through everard,
Speaker 2: you have to digitally sign your message, and not just
Speaker 2: the people paying it, but also the people appearing in it.
Speaker 2: It's from a celebrity, the celebrity need to sign it digitally,
Speaker 2: and that applies to foreign advertisements too, so there's no exceptions.
Speaker 2: It wants to ensure the authenticity of the actor without
Speaker 2: saying anything about the content. We've seen more and more
Speaker 2: that the content level laws do a lot of collateral harm,
Speaker 2: even with the best intentions, exactly as you pointed out,
Speaker 2: because it also interferes with the journalistic work. And I
Speaker 2: understand that there are similar laws in the works in
Speaker 2: both US and the UK, and my sincere hope is
Speaker 2: that these can be passed before the election, because otherwise
Speaker 2: it's not just fake versus true anymore. It is a
Speaker 2: lot about just inauthentic portrayal of celebrities and so on.
Speaker 3: Audrey, I would say, when we've spoken in Taipei the
Speaker 3: end of last year, I would say you were quite
Speaker 3: calm about some of the sort of straightforward deep fakes
Speaker 3: that people have talked a lot about here in the
Speaker 3: context of the election, Things coming out just before the
Speaker 3: election that show one of the candidates saying something or
Speaker 3: doing something but I noted that you were much more
Speaker 3: concerned about the potential for Ai to produce very kind
Speaker 3: of individualized fakes. So you know, not just a fake video,
Speaker 3: but technology allowing manipulator to build up a relationship with
Speaker 3: an individual person. So maybe just talk us through talk
Speaker 3: us through that so we too can be frightened.
Speaker 2: So after the election in January, I think I was
Speaker 2: right in not worried about the polarization attacks because the
Speaker 2: effective polarization, how people hit each other cross party line,
Speaker 2: went into a historic love All three parties felt that
Speaker 2: they have won a little bit, so there's no winner
Speaker 2: takes all, loser loses all dynamic and it's very good
Speaker 2: for the health of our democracy and mental health for
Speaker 2: everyone involved. But I do see that this direct communication,
Speaker 2: this precision persuation as an ongoing threat. The idea is
Speaker 2: that if you have an addictive app that people use
Speaker 2: in Taiwan, for example, the short form videos, people like
Speaker 2: it just like any other country. We're a little bit
Speaker 2: fortunate in that we've been seeing for quite a few
Speaker 2: years that TikTok is a harmful product for cybersecurity. So
Speaker 2: it only has about a quarter of installation based in Taiwan.
Speaker 2: And only about one tenth of that use it as
Speaker 2: their primary platform. So we're not as addicted as some
Speaker 2: other jurisdictions are to TikTok. But TikTok is just one
Speaker 2: example because what it does is already has a reward model, right,
Speaker 2: it knows what takes you and what addicts you. And
Speaker 2: so instead of just spreading one single message to try
Speaker 2: to get people to retweet or whatever, that was like
Speaker 2: the previous wave of information manipulation, nowadays decision targeting AI
Speaker 2: can just push a series of messages, let you feel
Speaker 2: a little bit more disenfranchised, a little bit more disempowered,
Speaker 2: a little bit more empathy around the democratic process. But
Speaker 2: if you are addicted to it, and if you watch
Speaker 2: it hours and hours every day, then the end result
Speaker 2: is that you lose energy to participate in the democratic processes.
Speaker 2: So it is even more insidious and chronic than polarization.
Speaker 2: And I think this is something that we need really
Speaker 2: to watch out for.
Speaker 3: Talk us through that. But how can one pre bunk
Speaker 3: or pre inoculate against that. It just feels so sophisticated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one way is simply to let people know that
Speaker 2: this form of addiction, everything else being equal, is not
Speaker 2: good for him. In the US, of course, as we know,
Speaker 2: or TikTok in particular, they are now setting a timeline
Speaker 2: so that it needs to divest right and need to
Speaker 2: sell to a US operator who hopefully will instill a
Speaker 2: more digital democracy capabilities into the app, because if they're
Speaker 2: already addicted to it. Nowadays, there's research that says if
Speaker 2: you adjust the sorting algorithm a little bit to promote,
Speaker 2: for example, authentic self disclosure, or promote a little bit
Speaker 2: more vulnerability, a little bit more ideas of communicating across
Speaker 2: society differences, a little bit more collective sense making and
Speaker 2: all that instead of the addictive entertainment stuff, it actually
Speaker 2: results in the same amount of engagement, whereas it makes
Speaker 2: people care more about democracies or maybe OI techs is
Speaker 2: a few hyper parameter changes and then it gets people
Speaker 2: on social media to be more pro social rather than antisocial.
Speaker 2: So maybe that's another experiment that whatever cause TikTok can try.
Speaker 3: Got it. I love the idea of after an election,
Speaker 3: all parties feeling like they want a bit and feeling
Speaker 3: like they hate each other less. We can only hope
Speaker 3: you mentioned the US approach. There's obviously been a specific
Speaker 3: bill there addressing to which may end up applying to
Speaker 3: other platforms. The EU has had its own package of
Speaker 3: digital services legislation which it brought out at the end
Speaker 3: of the year. I mean, how would you compare the
Speaker 3: EUSE approach to that of say the US or the UK.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that you approach of assigning more liabilities
Speaker 2: and more duties to the gatekeepers is definitely a robust
Speaker 2: approach because as soon as some platform reaches a certain
Speaker 2: protest percentage of the people, it doesn't matter where it
Speaker 2: comes from, it now has to comply with these duties.
Speaker 2: In fact, in our INTI Fraud Act, that's precisely the
Speaker 2: approach that we take. So even if you're a foreign operator,
Speaker 2: as long as you hit x percent of active Tawanese
Speaker 2: user space and new advertisements, you're required.
Speaker 1: Audre, you've been really eloquent describing all the different policy
Speaker 1: leavers and mechanisms that democracy can put in place to
Speaker 1: try and protect itself or in your phrase, inoculate itself
Speaker 1: against the the problems. But can you just reflect for
Speaker 1: us just taking a step back on the threat, the enemy,
Speaker 1: the stimulus, the people that are seeking to spread these untruths,
Speaker 1: and I want to give you an example in the
Speaker 1: UK a few years back. There's obviously been incidents since,
Speaker 1: but there was a very high profile example where our
Speaker 1: footballers missed a bunch of penalties in the Euros a
Speaker 1: few information I prov on football tournament. There was abuse
Speaker 1: and they huge abuse. Some of that abuse may have
Speaker 1: come their way anyway from domestic social media accounts, but
Speaker 1: equally there was evidence that some of it was also
Speaker 1: stirred up from abroad. It seemed to be compounded, whipped up,
Speaker 1: amplified by foreign social media accounts. Can you just describe
Speaker 1: for us? Is that kind of phenomenon here to stay?
Speaker 1: Is it going to get worse? Is it already very
Speaker 1: bad and we just don't realize it. Just give us
Speaker 1: a stock take.
Speaker 2: So when it comes to elections, we can always start
Speaker 2: from the ordinary, right, the classic sever trusions so we're
Speaker 2: enabled to vote, Tempering and authorized access data theft and
Speaker 2: things like that, and ransomware and so on, all all
Speaker 2: these are still here to stay. They're not going away.
Speaker 2: What worries us is that it's now evolving into what's
Speaker 2: called hybrid capabilities. So instead of just addos attack denying
Speaker 2: the service of governmental agencies, websites, coupling that with amplifying
Speaker 2: information operation material so that when fact checkers want to
Speaker 2: access the source of truth they found the source of
Speaker 2: truth is denied service, whether it's a media outlet or
Speaker 2: whether it's a ministrial website or as we mentioned, a
Speaker 2: heck and leak about a campaign and so on, but
Speaker 2: then using the leak material to do AI abuse and
Speaker 2: defaikes and so on, as literally putting words into the
Speaker 2: heck victim that they didn't say. But because the heck
Speaker 2: material contains maybe videos or sufficient amount of sound files,
Speaker 2: it sounds and looks very real and so on. So
Speaker 2: these are the new capabilities new as of last year
Speaker 2: or so that were extra word because then the severate
Speaker 2: intrusions are bad enough. But previously it would take a
Speaker 2: very resourceful adversary and many different trines before it reaches
Speaker 2: the common people. But now amplified by this precision persuasion
Speaker 2: and abuse and defails, they can afford to do each
Speaker 2: try with minimal or negligible cost, and so they can
Speaker 2: just keep trying until a narrative hits and then we
Speaker 2: have a viral information manipulation. So which is why it
Speaker 2: is so important to have this digital signature scheme because
Speaker 2: it means that one person can only have one account.
Speaker 2: If you want to open pseudonyms, that's fine, but you
Speaker 2: sign it in a way it's called zero knowledge that
Speaker 2: still lets people know that it is just a single person,
Speaker 2: maybe anonymous, a single person behind it. No longer can
Speaker 2: one simply register ten thousand accounts and wait for most
Speaker 2: of them getting fund or whetherver it, but still activate
Speaker 2: the rest of the account to look like it's astroturfing
Speaker 2: and so on, look like there's a ground swell support
Speaker 2: and so on, and all these are going to be
Speaker 2: very difficult to tell from actual groundswell support because if
Speaker 2: you click into each account's profile, live history, interaction, it
Speaker 2: looks completely real. It's now generative AI made. So I
Speaker 2: think digital signature really is one of the new bedrocks
Speaker 2: that we need to instill into those larger platforms this year.
Speaker 1: At the time, there was a debate, you know, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, with suggesting that this has been uniquely
Speaker 1: whipped up abroad and that this would never have happened
Speaker 1: if it weren't for foreign media accounts making things worse.
Speaker 1: But equally we have to focus and analyze ourselves, don't we.
Speaker 2: That is certainly true. And also if you're on x
Speaker 2: dot com or Twitter, there's this jury duty that you
Speaker 2: can enter called community notes, and I participate in the
Speaker 2: community notes just to improve my media competence. And if
Speaker 2: you participate in the community note community, very quickly you
Speaker 2: can see all sort of information manipulators going on, trying
Speaker 2: to weigh the public opinion one way or another. And
Speaker 2: I attended the Google Jigsaw conference a couple months ago,
Speaker 2: and there were a lot of conversations around these and
Speaker 2: Google Jigsaw did release a new set of capabilities, a
Speaker 2: new set of API. Instead of just detecting the toxicity
Speaker 2: and so on, it now also measures democratic bridge making abilities.
Speaker 2: So for each and every note, you can actually gauge
Speaker 2: how much pro social it is compared to your ordinary
Speaker 2: hate messages and so on. So it's not just weeding
Speaker 2: out the toxic or the hate, but actually nudging people
Speaker 2: to provide pro social services online. And I think this
Speaker 2: is also very helpful if it can be applied to
Speaker 2: more social media platforms.
Speaker 3: So I guess I mean, before we finished that, just
Speaker 3: there's one fundamental thing which comes out of what you
Speaker 3: said right at the beginning, and you said the common
Speaker 3: feature of a lot of these attacks. What you're trying
Speaker 3: to pre bunk is the idea that democracy doesn't deliver,
Speaker 3: that it produces chaos. I mean, I guess you know
Speaker 3: you have to then also, as well as doing all
Speaker 3: the things you're talking about as a government, you have
Speaker 3: to work on that not being true, actually on actually
Speaker 3: delivering for people, because if their lived experience is chaos
Speaker 3: and political dysfunction we've seen in many places, you know,
Speaker 3: there's no point trying to debunk that if actually people
Speaker 3: are feeling in their daily lives like democracy is not delivering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think exactly as you observed. If people think
Speaker 2: of democracy only as voting every two years or four years,
Speaker 2: very small bandwidth, just a few bits, very long latency
Speaker 2: for change to happen or to see it to actually
Speaker 2: not happen, then obviously there's going to be a pathy. Right.
Speaker 2: But I think a lot of the online ecosystems, the
Speaker 2: fact checking ecosystem, the covacs, the participatorying, the initiatives of
Speaker 2: not just referenda but community initiatives and so on, they're
Speaker 2: there because it's a continuous democracy. It is something that
Speaker 2: people can feel every day. As long as people employ
Speaker 2: those democratic tools in their lives more, maybe in their community,
Speaker 2: in their schools, in their churches. I think the word
Speaker 2: democracy will have a much more nuanced meaning. The more
Speaker 2: people have the stage to show affinity, compassion, curiosity, newance,
Speaker 2: sharing personal stories, reasoning, and respect of each other, the
Speaker 2: more people are going to associate the word democracy with
Speaker 2: some lived experience that is actually pro social. So I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that let's just protect the election. I'm saying that,
Speaker 2: leading up to the election, let's protect our lift experience
Speaker 2: around democracy on a smaller scale, lowercase the democracy.
Speaker 3: But yeah, but the elected politicians actually have to deliver
Speaker 3: on things people care about, like education and health.
Speaker 2: Yes, which is why we need to do both. We
Speaker 2: need to build a grassroots legitimacy that's hopefully higher than
Speaker 2: any of the particul parties, and then we need to
Speaker 2: hold those parties into accounts actually delivering what the people want.
Speaker 3: So, Audrey, you've now stepped down. I think you were
Speaker 3: one of the youngest ministers when you joined the government,
Speaker 3: and you're now we're hearing from you going to be
Speaker 3: traveling a lot more outside Taiwan, so I hope you're
Speaker 3: going to be able to spend lots of time with
Speaker 3: our governments and help them protect everyone against protect ourselves
Speaker 3: against some of the things that you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how I can help and stand ready to help.
Speaker 2: In fact, I'm going through a bunch of European countries
Speaker 2: as we are airing this episode, going across seven different
Speaker 2: countries in just twenty two days. The idea is that
Speaker 2: trying to come to each jurisdiction like three or four
Speaker 2: months before they are having a election, and just connect
Speaker 2: with the officials, societyal leaders to share what worked in Taiwan,
Speaker 2: and also to share the kind of community grassroots toolkits
Speaker 2: that everybody can just adopt and if people coordinate, I'm
Speaker 2: sure that this year will be not a democratic setback,
Speaker 2: but rather a democratic rebatalization.
Speaker 3: I hope so too. Maybe in a few months we'll
Speaker 3: have to we'll have to find out from you how
Speaker 3: you mark each of these countries that you've met.
Speaker 2: Great, happy to be back on the podcast.
Speaker 3: Audrey Tang, Thank you so.
Speaker 2: Much, Thank you Liveline Prosper.
Speaker 3: Okay, that is more than enough for this week's second
Speaker 3: episode of Voter Nomics. Thanks for listening. This episode was
Speaker 3: hosted by me Stephanie Flanders, Alegra Stratton and Adrian Woodridge.
Speaker 3: It was produced by Sammasadi with help from Chris Marklu
Speaker 3: and Julia Manns, editorial direction from Victoria Wakely. Brendan Francis
Speaker 3: Newnan is our executive producer, and Sage Bowman is Head
Speaker 3: of Bloomberg Podcasts. With special thanks to Nancy Cook and
Speaker 3: Audrey Tank. Please, if you like it, subscribe, rate, and
Speaker 3: review this show wherever you listen to your podcasts.