糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Receives $5 Million from U.S. Army to Combat Adversarial Information Campaigns
Dr. Nitin Agarwal, founding director of the at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has received $5 million from the Army Research Office to evaluate and defend against emerging cognitive threats.
The Army Research Office is a directorate of the .
The project, set to run through 2025, aims to identify research gaps in deviant socio-technical behaviors, shape an agenda focused on developing strategies that can counter emerging threats, and create tools for near real-time analysis of such threats.
鈥淣arratives on social media could be easily weaponized and propagated at frighteningly fast speeds,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淪uch insidious threats that attempt to influence beliefs and behaviors need to be considered as modern weapons of cognitive hijacking. We need to develop scientific approaches to combat these emerging threats in a global context, equip our warfighters with these capabilities, and strengthen community resiliency.鈥�
Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Information Science, says these threats are increasingly flash mob-type events, where groups self-organize and coordinate in cyberspace, then disperse. Coordinated cognitive attacks can cause stock market frenzy, violent protests, highly coordinated cyberattacks on public infrastructure, for instance. To an outsider such acts may look arbitrary, however, intense coordination happens in the background.
鈥淕iven the evolving technological landscape and increasing complexity of cognitive attacks, research is warranted to develop multidisciplinary and theoretically grounded capabilities to evaluate emerging socio-cognitive threats that can serve the needs of our military at strategic, tactical, and operational levels,鈥� Agarwal said.
U.S. Sen. John Boozman is a strong advocate for basic and applied research at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock.
鈥淭he evolving nature of social media and the changing tactics our adversaries use to spread misinformation requires us to develop a strategy to respond,鈥� Sen. Boozman said. 鈥淒r. Agarwal鈥檚 research will help create critical tools to combat bad actors on these platforms. I鈥檓 proud to support Arkansas鈥檚 role in advancing solutions to counter cyber threats.鈥�
鈥淲e are extremely grateful to the Army Research Office, 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock leadership and U.S. Sen. John Boozman for championing this vital research,鈥� Agarwal added. 鈥淚t helps position the COSMOS Research Center at the forefront of developing capabilities to combat cognitive threats. The investment will help put these capabilities in the hands of our warfighters to ultimately strengthen our national defense and security apparatus.鈥�
When narratives rapidly evolve in an unchecked online environment, the results can be dangerous. State and non-state actors, alike, can use social media platforms to amplify certain narratives and sway public opinion in their favor. Some of Agarwal鈥檚 previous research has shown how YouTube鈥檚 algorithms can be manipulated to promote positive content about China while crushing negative news like human rights violations against Uyghur minorities in western China, or how the terrorist organization, Islamic State uses bots to recruit members and for propaganda campaigns.
“There are many popular shows about the use of forensics to solve physical crimes. Somewhat similarly, Dr. Agarwal uses social cyber forensics to determine the sources of scams and influence campaigns, some of which threaten our country and its allies,鈥� said Dr. Lawrence Whitman, dean of the Donaghey College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. 鈥淗e works closely with the Army to apply the methods and tools his team has developed to make us all safer. It’s great to have Dr. Agarwal working on these threats, and we are grateful to have this partnership with the Army Research Office.”
Agarwal鈥檚 research team investigates governments, groups, and individuals who use advanced communication tactics to orchestrate sophisticated cognitive attack campaigns through a variety of existing and emerging social media platforms, particularly multimedia-rich platforms.
U.S. defense groups are interested in the work because it helps to identify how adversaries are promoting certain narratives via social media, how such narratives resonate with the target audience, and how those narratives can be combated. Training exercises will be conducted to enhance the U.S. workforce with skills in big data analytics, data management, machine learning, and artificial intelligence with applications in security.
The award will provide support for high-speed computational servers that are necessary to support the processing of large volumes of multimodality data, which includes text, image, video, audio, reach, engagement, metadata, and interactions. It is also expected to fund around 15 student research positions, several postdoctoral research fellowships, and data engineer positions.
鈥淭he funds will help create exciting opportunities for our students and research staff by exposing them to real world problems and stimulating them to develop science-based solutions,鈥� Agarwal said.
This research was sponsored by the Army Research Office and was accomplished under Grant Number W911NF-23-1-0011. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Army Research Office or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation herein.