I’d originally planned to pick a relevant news story and tie it to Spycursion somehow — “Hey look, you can steal Bitcoin too, here’s how you might do that,” etc., etc. But it turns out there were so many news stories that I couldn’t just choose one; that’s also why this month’s post is late. (That’s my excuse, and I’m stickin’ to it.) The plethora of cyberespionage-related news stories inspired another idea, which I’ll get to in a minute. As for the Spycursion update… I decided to go meta.
If you live in the United States, you’re probably aware of the allegations by the intelligence community against Russia for attempting to interfere in our 2016 (and 2018) elections. To the best of our knowledge, Russia didn’t do this by hacking voting machines — instead, they hacked our minds. They spread disinformation targeting both ends of the political spectrum in an attempt to divide Americans and sow chaos.
Consider where you get your news. If you’re like most people, you probably get a significant chunk of your news online, and a significant chunk of that from social media; the other largest news source, especially for older people, is TV.
Now, if you’re a disinformation specialist and you want to spread some salacious-but-obviously-false rumor, where do you go? The New York Times has over 130 million monthly readers, but that would be difficult to get into… pesky fact-checkers and all that. No, if your story is actually fake, no reputable news source would publish it (we hope) — you have to get in through a backdoor. One of those backdoors is social media. So you, being the sleazy fake news artist that you are, make a troll post on 4chan. Some legit-sounding but conveniently anonymous users “verify” it, and then some Twitter bots pick it up. From there, it spreads, with trolls fanning the flames and useful idiots spreading it around, and you’re off to the races.
There’s another backdoor, though, one that’s arguably even more insidious. This backdoor is mostly effective with stories that are half-true, or true, but with a particular spin on them… but it doesn’t have to be limited to those stories. The NYT alone has about 1300 employees. Let’s say you identify a shy young election reporter who made the rookie mistake of saving sexytime videos on her old, unpatched iPhone. Insta-blackmail! Now, her editors might catch anything too egregious you try to publish, but go up a couple of steps in the chain of command, and you could virtually guarantee the publishing of any semi-legitimate story that you want. And that’s not all! News organizations don’t just stick with their own stories, of course; they source from others. What gets published in the NYT also goes to Reuters, CNN, the gossipy lady down the street, etc. Congratulations! You’ve effectively blackmailed the entire media industry.
I don’t believe we’ve discussed it much, but we’ve designed a media system into Spycursion. It will be basic at first, like publishing stories about major hacks that players do, and other random events. The ability to blackmail journalists may come later. In order for that to be useful, you’d first need a good reason to do it — elections, stock market, laws, etc. All more advanced and ambitious features… but all incredibly awesome. 😉 You may even have the ability to play as a journalist, working for a news organization, deciding what stories to publish or not to publish… and being targeted by disinformation specialists.
Spycursion News Network
Now, for that other inspired idea: The Spycursion News Network! We will be sharing out real-world news stories about cybersecurity, espionage, and related topics, through this Twitter account. (The way things are going… we’ll probably post multiple times every day.) And yes, as the game and the media system progress, we’ll share some fake stories from within the world of Spycursion, too. For now, it’s all real, though. If you’re interested in these topics, give that account a follow!