Tech Leaders Dismayed by Weaponization of Social Media

The tech industry can't hide from the information war, particularly when its own creations are being weaponized. That was the consensus of a panel at the Techonomy17 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., last week. The group assembled to discuss the meaning of authority in a networked, artificially intelligent world. The panelists quickly zoomed in on the manipulation of Facebook, Google, and other sites by Russians during the U.S. presidential election. They, as well as several other speakers at the conference, painted a dark picture of our current online world for at least the immediate future; they concluded that preventing such manipulation is not going to be easy. "I spent my whole life working in civil liberties, and I didn't see this coming," said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.