So I'm ashamed to admit this given how long it just took me to set up the audio here My name is dr. Hewreed and I'm a professor of digital forensics here at Norwich University So the irony of having someone with computers coming up and and sharing Sharing things so here's my utmost pleasure to be able to chair this session with you this afternoon with some very exciting papers that transcend Not only the geopolitical arena, but also a lot of the cyber security space as well So I'm really looking forward to hearing what our presenters have to say So without further ado, please allow me to introduce our first presenters. We have Dr. Kozirev who is an expert in comparative politics Strategic studies and foreign policy in Eurasia. His major interest is great power politics east-west relations international conflict and the political economy of regionalism and regional integration At present he is professor of political science and international studies at Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts He is also affiliated with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and as associate in research Joining him up here is also dr. Goldstein who is director of Asia engagement at defense priorities Formerly for 20 years. He served as research director at the US Naval War College His expertise includes maritime security and nuclear security issues With major focus also recently including the Arctic and the Korean Peninsula He holds a doctorate from Princeton and MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS and a BA from Harvard and is currently a visiting professor from Brown University So please allow me to join me in giving them a round of applause in inviting them up to share their Research or so Chinese strategic partnership of a new type the security dimension. Thank you Thank you so much It's a special privilege privilege for us to both a while professor Galile Goldstein and myself to present that this Amazing forum and we would like to express our gratitude to president On the room or dr. Morris dr. Ko the colleagues at the John and Mary Francis Patton's peace and war center for this Unique opportunity especially given the the the topic and the actually the importance of the questions we are discussing today General Weidner this morning formulated one key task for the current of future strategic planners with which he actually stressed as Contestation with Russia and China is global in both by scope and in character Again once again, so I would tell you one secret contestation with the United States has been for the Russian and Chinese leadership has been already Global in scope and and and nature for a minimum for a decade decade or so So our paper is devoted to the security partnership and the security dimension of the strategic partnership between Russia and China and it examines the important aspect of the potential Russian Chinese alliance in the security alliance and professor Graham actually referred to this this morning as well and Are we have tried to answer the three questions? Raised in our Actually paper so one question is to what extent we may consider the current crisis as a turning point in this important relationship kind of mask off type of now revealing the real strategic goals and instruments in the Russia's and China's Contestation with the United States and what is the future direction of this partnership my might look like We second a question is what is the nature of this type of this alliance like relationship that we are seeing Now having have been formed now And third question is the prospect of new Chinese Russian security alliance and would this alliance prompt the United States to prepare for it to Front conflict in the future that also some of the panelists this morning else also referred to this The paper actually is divided into three parts three sections for first section Tries to examine the geopolitical new reality characterized by the US exit from hegemony and the rise of non-western actors The second section you devote is devoted to the character of the Russian Chinese partnership with no limits or friendship with no limits Or friendship or partnership of a new type as they actually characterize this and the third section is As devoted to implication to some study of implications the implications for strategic planning and missile defense of like space cybercooperation and Research and development cooperation and also economic industrial integration So our major argument goes To the point that the Russian Chinese Actually partnership has already passed certain, you know Yeah, like kind of Broiling point and now they are at the stage of the changing attitudes to a new proactive behavior So if only like four years ago this partnership China and Russia try to actually be active in those areas where actually United States was trying to withdraw and Especially after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan Russian Chinese partnership found out that it could be probably doing some more and making this semi-aligned so quasi-aligned more, you know, you know proactive Second point is that shift from the global collective partnership mantra which actually Russia and China had been advocating for some time To taming and non-cooperative America by accumulating some critical mass of global systemic influence to leave America No, no choice by by cooperate This enforces straightforward counterbalancing strategy of Russia at China their partnership in is gaining a new momentum strategic security issues have moved to the center of this quasi-aligns and We have been talking for a long time pretty long time that actually the Relationship between China and Russia Had been based for a long time on mostly political kind of mutual understanding rather than economic understanding So now we have the enhanced security aspect of this a new era of counter counterbalancing against the Western dominance Means that from previous practice of delegating Responsibilities to each other in their respective regions toward a possibly backing each other in all aspects of security We've described the operational context I just put place the major dimensions of how Russia and China are looking at the Situation and the global environment and there are a few points here five points The thesis of destructive America which America is seen as agonizing declining hegemony Acting irrationally and unpredictably The second point is the so-called Russia and China's savior nations trying to actually secure secure global stability third point is that the American demonization thesis of Russia as in China with their political system as actually Hurting or threatening the American domestic political institutions political system and values fourth point is so-called Instrumentalism after special after the Trump US had to address the problem of Western solidarity and by demonizing Putin and see the United States modified the foreign policy has become instrumental for restoring Western unity and securing domestic bipartisan consensus and The five fifth point which has seen and actually interpreted by the Russian and Chinese leadership is the problem of crisis management now under the current circumstances In the crumbling world order neither liberal Originally cooperative or institutions based means not classical bipolarity era deterrence mechanisms properly work to manage the crisis We've actually Sorted out laid out some pillars of the more than an alliance partnership Which in these pillars include the danger of America's desperate attempt to safeguard global supremacy These are kind of drivers which inform the Russian and Chinese actions the so-called thesis about the power value dichotomy in US behavior and the need to dismiss America's block mentality logic this power values dichotomy we described in the paper which means that it's actually the Chinese theory that despite the actually the increase in power and when a country becomes a great power and it doesn't necessarily Should not necessarily be converted into some sort of aggressive behavior So the values should be should dictate and inform some restraint of a great power That's what actually China is trying to do the imperative to foster Multi-polarity and manage great power relationship under the auspices of the United Nations Advocating the international order and the Russian Chinese campaign again Western rules based order, especially the such elements of this rules-based order actually conserved which Go to commitment based order and sovereignty as a responsibility of governments before their populations Sign the Russian self-perceived role of global of global peacemakers Mentioned this and advocates of economic globalization and strategic complementarity within the framework of loose alignment a couple of quotes Just telling us that these the current stage of reproche ma is mostly dreaming by the fear of war one of the presidential advisors and very respectable Actually pundit in Russia Sergei Karaganov quoted in 2018 Russia in China need a joint strategy to strengthen peace There is no need to wait for some someone's attack the threat of war is in the air and Karaganov just couple of weeks ago Just tried to explain the war with Ukraine, which was unavoidable conflict with the West is just beginning It's not the end of the conflict, right? and Three aspects three areas of security challenges We actually were paying attention to and I hope my colleague, Professor Goltsin will elaborate more on this the prospect of Problem of strategic stability and I just posted the major points there the problem of economic security and these are also the drivers of like joint and enhanced cooperation between the two parties and especially the problem of cultural security and We had some panelists earlier mentioned the actually impact or possible threat of the Western political institutions and and values to the actually the regimes political regimes which was established in both Russia and China and And I'm well now passing my the floor to my colleague. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. It's a it's a real honor to be here I'll be trying to show you some of the evidence that we're seeing Including on the the Ukraine conflict This evidence will be adding to the paper it's not most of it is not in there yet But here you see I watched Chinese military TV basically every night and I can tell you that it's very favorable toward Russia, you know, whether talking about the this threat from NATO so-called or You know here they're showing kind of Russian weaponry that's been captured in the lower left or a you know precision strikes so called in on the right lower right and destroyed Ukraine tanks so but I think it's fortuitous to have had the deputy of strategic command here the general this morning, I think he Gave us a wonderful introduction here because he I think elaborated on the very extensive Chinese nuclear build-up that we're now seeing and We assess that this Chinese build-up, you know may well have Russian characteristics And here are some of the evidence to suggest that Russia has been sorry. China is sort of learning at the knee of Russia and just Taking in all kinds of information including about very you know kind of esoteric doctrinal principles like on the lower right about using the use of interference buoys to egress your So-called boomers, but look on the upper right. That's an iskander seems to be very that weapon I think I fear is probably on the minds of the deputy of Stratkom But if China goes in for that kind of approach to nuclear weapons, I think we're we're all in trouble But let you know just to outline here what China is doing And and how this could be impacted by Russia-China relations. You see You know some discussion of the build-up why they're undertaking this build-up but I want to emphasize and this is the same article from a very prestigious institution in China, but you look on the lower on the top left there how it's he's explaining that You know China doesn't have the enormous striking nuclear striking power that Russia has so you begin to see that maybe this is what they aspire to and Indeed that's what the article kind of lays out and we see that across Chinese sources now But here you can see them drawing on that perspective of the Cold War and also thinking about Tactical nuclear weapons as you can see we can talk more about those But what we see is that Russia and China seem to be coalescing, you know Not only in their perspective, but but taking concrete actions on the right You see an article in Skled where they were discussing the implications of early warning cooperation And and these Russian strategists are outlining. Sorry, I don't have the quotes there But I can refer you to them, but they're outlining how useful this actually is for Russia and not just for China and then there's talk about working together in the Arctic even going so far say Maybe you know Chinese submarines could base out of the Arctic So that you know, I wouldn't say that's a likely possibility in the future, but you know can't rule it out But here's some more evidence just how closely their views align here Here you have Chinese strategists saying gosh We need all of these tactical nuclear weapons that Russia has also and on the right you see a discussion of their Very very closely aligned positions on missile defense I know we've had some discussion of Georgia already today Well, here's a Chinese battle map of Georgia and this should I put this up to remind you that Boy, do the Chinese want to get their hands on these kind of After-action assessments right including in Ukraine. So I think that's going to be a factor going forward They they want to know what's going on so that they can improve their own forces and one more point I want to make we've talked a lot about NATO here today, but not about China NATO But here this is I took the screenshot in 2017. They're talking about the Korean crisis actually But you can already see China not having a very good feeling for NATO and that has only grown worse So that's a factor too, but let me just summarize here With our kind of final takeaways here. We see this as a kind of tacit alliance or quasi alliance We call it we think it's both deep and broad You know We do see a fundamental convergence of worldviews We kind of think Russia is sort of a cornered secondary power But but that this could be kind of a turning point in their convergence as well And I would say we think you know Russia more or less has to accept its junior status And then there's this question I'll just end on this point because it's it's quite interesting although I think it's still quite speculative this issue of Russian military of China's Potential military assistance to Russia and and I would say we've already seen some concrete signs that this probably won't happen That is you know the Chinese have denied it pretty forcefully, but but if it were to come about We might understand why oh there's my got my own timer here just one one more point I say to test equipment to learn those battlefield lessons to gain market share and to earn credit Of course for a Taiwan scenario and last but not least you know it to our estimate China is not ready to to watch Russia be defeated and We'll try to prevent its collapse whether it can prevent its collapse is unknown, but but they will try to our estimate Thank you very much Incredible food for thought ladies and gentlemen up next. I have the very distinct pleasure of introducing doctor Manin Maninikian Who teaches national national security in homeland defense as well as graduate level courses in intelligence Disaster assistance management national security affairs and terrorism Maninikian received her BA in Russian from Wellesley College and a master of philosophy from Oxford University in the United Kingdom And holds both an MA and a PhD in political science From the University of Michigan She is taught at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk and is a former US foreign services officer with service in the Netherlands Russia and Bulgaria Let me just Switch the paper here for you and we'll be up and running Thank you so much for that kind invitation to speak to all of you. It's always great to be back at Norwich again The last time I spoke here I also spoke about disinformation and that was seven years ago in another conference And so when I found myself thinking about this topic I found myself kind of asking that question about continuity and change what has changed in disinformation and what is the same So what I'd like to do in the paper today is If I don't run out of time do four things just briefly tell you what disinformation is And then I want to talk about some of the technological issues I want to describe this notion of technological affordances and explain what it is about the internet today what it is about the environment That makes in I think disinformation so much more effective than it's really ever been in the past We know that the Russians are masters of disinformation and they've used it for years But now they're using it much more effectively and they're using it in a much more targeted way So I'll give you some examples of old disinformation and new information And I'll really compare and contrast the two. I wrote this paper kind of before the Ukraine blew up And so I'm not going to be talking about Ukraine. I'll give you a little bit of a break I actually what I wanted to do was to think about two different cases where Russia has been involved in Basically a medical crisis and the first example is something called operation Denver, which occurred in 1983 Back then the Soviet Union Soviet intelligence ceded disinformation Mostly through a newspaper in South Africa that they had a relationship with called the Patriot And they ceded this lie that the AIDS virus had been created as a biological weapon at Fort Detrick in Maryland You know with cooperation with the CIA and that it was a racist bio weapon, which was specifically engineered against people in Africa and the developing world And so I wanted to compare that with kind of lies that they're sitting today having to do with kovat Is it the same story or is it a different story and what makes it different and I argue that Today disinformation Is segmented we can actually identify about 16 different kind of themes and variations having to do With kovat and who created it and who's lying and who's telling the truth Versus kind of the one sort of big lie that came out in 1983 On the other reason that disinformation is so different today is because back then it was pretty much linear It was you sort of uh, you know, you were an intel guy You kind of wind and dine the editor of this newspaper that you'd basically been supporting for all these years So there was a heavy investment There was a heavy financial investment in creating this Kind of seed that was then going to send this disinformation message out And the thing is that I refer to it as dumb information as opposed to smart information that basically it was almost like If you were conducting a Psychological operation and you were you know flying a plane over an area and you were dropping something You know leaflet out of a plane You don't actually know who's going to pick up that leaflet You don't know whether or not they're going to read it And you don't know so much what they're going to do with that information Whereas today we have a lot more analytical tools To see who's actually reading a tweet or an instagram post with facebook post and whether they're liking it and whether they're retweeting it And what are their specific characteristics? What do we know about the purchase that that idea is actually having? So that's kind of what I want to kind of take you through briefly So disinformation is just false information about a country's military strength or plans Disseminated by a government or intelligence agency and a hostile act of tactical political subversion So it's information that's deliberately misleading But whether we're talking about 1983 or whether we're talking about today often There's some kind of grain of truth or some form of Kind of pre-existing conspiracy conspiratorial thought that people might have that that disinformation then latches on to So if you are someone in south african 1983 you might know that the united states had a race problem, right? They'd had race riots So to then say sort of you know the u.s. Government created this weapon for racial reasons It wouldn't be totally outside the realm of possibility. You know probably 99 Percent it's wrong But there's some grain of truth that they're able to build on so that's the same whether that's 1983 Or whether that's today The idea that disinformation is primarily about Subversion it's a system of calling the values and principles of a system Kind of into questions so that idea that it's about kind of degrading the legitimacy of an adversary Sort of the soviet union in 1983 wanted to degrade the legitimacy of the united states by saying see They're not really a democracy. They're creating a racist bio weapon and furthermore they're lying And that can be very much true today as well So I start with this picture and if anybody's ever worked at the pentagon They've heard this before this expression. They use it a lot. They say when all you've got is a hammer Everything looks like a nail and essentially what that means Is if you have one type of weapon you're going to be predisposed to do certain things And there are going to be other things that maybe you're not going to do as well With that weapon so when we think about the technological affordances designed today That sort of create disinformation and help us to disseminate it The idea is that certain constraints exist and as I said what you can do is a function of the tools you have available Another term that's really important when we think about disinformation today is this idea of emerging technologies An emerging technology is something that's going to have vast political economic and social significance And it's often very unpredictable and if you read my whole paper I talk a lot about something called customer relations management software And its software is a service that you subscribe to It's created by basically you're outsourcing your customer relations management your database management Your mailing list things like that to someone outside your organization and they often store your data as well And what I argue in this paper is Customer relations management software allows you to create a list of users people who have engaged with you and your product You can track their engagement with you and their product And at the end of it you could sell them sneakers or you could sell them a lie about us foreign policy You can use the same software to do both things. So it's a dual use technology and when we talk about sort of customer relations software as an emerging technology nobody ever really thought Gee people are going to use this to schedule disinformation posts One thing that's really important Is the fact that the people that have created this didn't intend for it to be used as this purpose And as a result as the general talked about this morning He said, you know that there are these security risks that are coming. They're coming about That uh commercial and private companies need to be drawn into this conversation about security And this is a really good example of the ways in which companies need to be aware And they need to be doing more to kind of fight how this Software and things like that are being used Uh, there was a last week There was an article about how this company sales force was called in by the january 6th commission in washington And it was because someone had used sales force to create a list of people to invite them to the insurrection And what's interesting is if you do the ethical training on sales force There's a lot of stuff about money laundering, but there's actually nothing about you know People might attempt to use this software to organize an insurrection because that was really an unintended consequence So the social media environment has easy costs of entry. It's really cheap to get an account Anyone can play It's non hierarchical. We have this thing called the epistemology problem.  This idea that everybody's sort of an expert in whatever the topic of the day is This idea of the attribution problem often stuff shows up online. We're not really sure where it came from Lately a lot of the russian disinformation appears to be coming from portugal. I have no idea why And finally this idea of the four v's associated with big data Velocity how quickly information changes online veracity the difficulty of knowing whether or not it's true The great volume in the great variety So in other words, there's a huge attack surface today for disinformation back in 1983 It was basically a newspaper and today it can be any number of different types of social media The reason I have a picture here of porch furniture is again I want you to remember just like a lot of this software can be used to sell your piece of porch furniture It can also be used to sell you disinformation Today we talk about sort of the democratization of social media as well That has nothing to do with sort of democracy as a form of government really what it means Is you no longer need a phd in computer science to perform a lot of these activities online And one thing that we're starting to see more and more. It's not only can you use something like commercial Customer relations management software, but you can use an add-on that has Artificial intelligence added in the artificial intelligence components can run an analysis They can see which of your various messages are the most effective And then they can go on and they can basically boost the most effective messages for you And so we could be moving towards a future where disinformation is happening and there is no human in the loop It's possible that there can be an algorithm that's choosing the most effective messages And it's boosting those the most quickly The other thing about this when I talk about democratization is the idea that adding this ai to your Messaging program really can be done by anyone It's not terribly complicated to use a lot of these programs now Uh So when I say that we have dis smart disinformation today, I really mean three things When we think about uh smart weapons, they often have these three characteristics. They're remote guided You don't need to be in the place where the uh kinetic activity is taking place And in the same way you don't need to be in the same place where the disinformation is taking place They're precision guided You can choose often a pre existing group of people who are going to be Particularly predisposed to reach your message So for example when we think about covet one thing that's different about the disinformation there is russian Disinformation merchants trying to sell you that lie. They specifically reached out to groups that Had already indicated that maybe they were refute raxi and refusers So they were able to find groups that they could then message in and kind of attached their messages to So in this way we have this sort of uh Kind of symbiotic or parasitical relationship with other groups that might provide particularly fertile soil for that message So you're no longer just kind of throwing those seeds into the air You're choosing specific targets And then finally this idea that just like a smart weapon is dynamic It can change its trajectory in mid course as it gets more information That's true as smart disinformation as well What we see and we can track even with the recent Ukraine is ways in which sort of the russians are changing their messaging There may be a kind of throwing out a theme. It's not working particularly well And so instead they're choosing a different one So here are just some quick slides and I got all of these From a website called socialbearing.com if you like to look at this stuff It's fun. We can see here a hashtag of Of hashtags that are kind of often appear together And so if you look for sort of who used biden's war and the way they used it You can see how it was sort of piggybacked on to existing Messaging and you can also see that half of these tags Were in castilian spanish, which seems a little unusual So this may have been some form of a buy of You know bots or something like that occurring this interesting hashtag not in my name Which appears to be used by russia's uh ministry of foreign affairs. They want people to say it's not my war They want americans to say I don't want to okay. I'll finish up I'll contribute to the war in ukraine and we see the way in which this hashtag has been sort of dumped onto other existing conversations And so as we said it is also dynamic And then finally this idea of sentiment analysis It's possible to look at unstructured data on the web using a variety of programs To figure out whether the tweets are favorable or unfavorable and kind of which way the wind is blowing So this information today, it's a lot more dynamic. It's a lot more fast moving And it appears often to be a lot more effective. So thank you for your time Thank you very much for our third presentation in this afternoon's session I have the pleasure of introducing dr Shanesh who is a uh murrius gladoski a curie actions research fellow the department of sociology and social anthropology central european university Vienna in austria She is currently hosted by the john and mary france's pattern peace and war center as a visiting scholar And is a senior fellow at the center for global resilience and security at norwich university She holds a phd in systemic functional linguistics from the university of sydney A most recent work investigates russian disinformation campaigns on twitter and the links between climate change and violent extremism Joining her is mr. Perry who's a research associate Pardon me a research associate with the norwich university john and mary france's pattern peace and war center His research interests include information warfare international migration and social cyber security mark holds a master of arts in international policy and development from the middle brie institute of international studies in monterey california Thank you if i could invite you to the podium folks Okay, first of all i'd like to thank um all the organizers of this conference for Obviously organizing a very timely uh conference, um and for giving us the chance to present our researcher today We are both very honored to do so I hope we're one slide ahead here So today we'll be discussing weaponizing the syrian civil war russia's twitter war on terror Um now dr. Sinesh and i have come to this problem set In part by recognizing a gap in the way many researchers are looking at information warfare On one side we have this rapidly booming number of studies leveraging computational linguistics and data science methodologies to identify the Key themes topics phrases sentiments and network characteristics of mis and disinformation online However, many of these findings are not then connected to How information functions As part of coordinated information operations and their strategic purposes On the other side of this gap. We have this established and very robust body of literature Discussing russia's strategic doctrine of information warfare and how it's waged around the world But many of these studies do not then show how uh the strategy is manifested in real data, um happening in real time So in order to try to thread this needle, uh, we approach the subject to analyze the linguistic anatomy of russian information warfare on twitter Such that what is being said can be better connected to why it's said and what its strategic Import could be First research question here. How did russia frame its own involvement in the syrian civil war? Secondly, how did russia portray the international coalition's involvement as led by the united states? And following this we'll have a discussion as to how tactics and strategy in the information space Appears to connect to kinetic operations on the ground So the data on the information side. We have a corpus of tweets accessed from twitter's information operations archive Um in this case, we have a hundred accounts comprising Of accounts linked reliably to the russian gru and internet research agency Which were banned that then subsequently released to researchers in this archive um Something important to say about these is that they are covert and unattributed meaning they're not attributed to the russian state Um, but rather their troll accounts pretending to be real people on the grounds journalists Observers Here we see the key statistics of our data. We have over 50,000 tweets close to two million words And this is all between 2016 and 2020 On the kinetic operations side our data comes from the arm conflict event and location data project It's an open source data source For which we can filter by time period. So we're matching up 2017 to 2020 in both of these analyses Um, and we can also filter by actor primary targets and event types such as battles Violence against civilians riots strategic developments, etc So with that i'll hand off to dr. Sinesh to introduce our linguistic methodologies and analysis Thank you mark Um, so, um professor gozdev I'd like to pick up on your comment previously you described what happened in syria on the ground So our perspective today is to describe what happened happened in the information space simultaneously So we'd like to bring a linguistics perspective that often Is missing from the study of information warfare. Maybe except for computational linguistics and sentiment analysis studies And we hope that we can show you how linguistic analysis can offer quite a fruitful framework for the study of information operations Our Methodology is called the corpus assisted appraisal and cluster analysis But today we don't have time to introduce you to the entire framework. So we only focus on the corpus linguistic methodology which enables automated Quantitative analysis of linguistic data To process really large data sets. Sorry, and it also enables qualitative analysis of language in its context So the software that we use is called sketch engine And you see all these different functionalities, which I don't have time to explain Today we'll focus on what's called word list and concordance analysis So typically the first step in processing a really large data set with corpus linguistic methodology is to search for Uh more the top 10 or 20 most frequent words in the corpus The software also gives you a frequency per million count Which means that in every one million words words a particular Expression on word is mentioned that many times. So in this in our data set we found Basically four semantic categories That concern the united states russia And then you see references to people and civilians And also to terrorists and militants So we wanted to explore especially these four semantic categories in further detail So um the four clusters that we found concern the human Collective of terrorists and civilians and the collective entities of the united states And russia and now we're going to show you some actual examples from the data set to see How russia portrays the involvement of the united states in the syrian conflict and how they portray their own involvement So the next step in corpus linguistic analysis after performing Um big data searches typically includes concordance analysis, which means That we can search for the most frequent words. So in this case We perform the wild card search for the words militant and terrorists that have more than 3000 hits in the data set the asterisk means that we can search for different forms of the same word Whether it's singular or plural We can search for references and synonyms. So if the if the data set includes lots of references to different terrorist groups like isis For example that that can be included in the search We can input a list of search terms in into the software and find All the references to them So another function that we typically use When we do concordance analysis is this advanced context filter function, which means That we can filter the context for a particular entity in this case We filtered the context of the tweets for the united states And that includes several references like you can see highlighted here in these in these illustrative examples like Russians referring to the united states as the americans The u.s military base u.s military instructors the united states u.s intelligence agencies and an range of references to the u.s What we identified when searching for militants and terrorists and their synonyms and references filters for the context of the united states Is that the the verbs trained and recruit kept coming up over and over again So basically the first message that we identified as an information tactic Is that the united states is recruiting and training militants and terrorist groups in syria Imagine this i'm only showing you Selected concordance lines, but this strategy Was recurring in thousands and thousands of tweets in the data set So the second information tactic relates to the united states killing civilians We perform the same kind of analysis searching for Wildcard searches including references to civilians the local population syrians people etc etc And filtering the context for the united states We identified that the the one verb that kept coming up constantly was killed And again, this is based on thousands and thousands of tweets So the second information tactic that Russia deployed in this information war in the context of the syrian civil war Portrayed the united states as a civilian killer typically the way we do data analysis using corpus linguistics methodologies that we move from the quantitative data to the qualitative data and then back So then after after finding these Two clusters we reprocessed the data set With the word sketch function of sketch engine So you can see that the verb kill had more than 1300 hits in the dataset And this verb collocates most frequently Sorry, most frequently with civilian and people and again filters for the context of the united states These three confirms are finding previously that we we found based on the qualitative analysis now quantitatively So then we moved on to looking at tweets that Portrayed russia in a certain light and their involvement in uh in uh, syria In this case again, we searched for the words militant and terrorist But in in this time we filtered the context for russia and the all the synonyms that russians used to describe themselves You can see here russian aerospace forces russian air force russian air defense system So often they talk a lot about their capabilities And then filtering the context for russia the verb that kept coming up in relation to The keywords militants and terrorists is destroyed and killed and eliminated So you see here examples like russian aerospace forces killed dozens of militants and then they list Different geographical locations for example So this was the third information tactic that we identified in russian information warfare in the context of the syrian civil war russia portrays its its own involvement as the ones that killed the militants and the terrorists and in fact They entered the syrian civil war saying That or claiming that they are fighting international terrorism We rerun the data set using the quantitative analysis again So we found that the verb eliminate for example Collocates most with the words terrorist gunman groups Mercenaries etc. So these three confirms again how russia is portraying itself as The killer of terrorists in syria And the final information tactic that we'd like to show you today is um How russia portrays its involvement when it comes to the local syrian population So when this performed wildcard searches for civilians and refugees the local syrian population Filtering the context again for russia We found that one word that kept coming up in thousands and thousands of tweets was the word humanitarian So we were interested to see that result like what's russia got to do with anything humanitarian So here you can see examples like the russian military provided humanitarian aid to the people of Isam in hams And and this was the fourth information tactic That we identified and then when we performed the final quantitative analysis Searching for the word humanitarian you can see it most often collocates with the word aid convoy assistance catastrophe corridor crisis intervention Etc etc etc so When trying to summarize our findings We called the information tactics that russia used to portray the united states as a sort of in a in a light that Shows the moral inferiority of the united states as terrorist recruiters and civilian killers And you see that these information tactics can be realized by recurring linguistic patterns saying the same thing Over and over again. So terrorist recruiter is realized by direct mentions of the united states Recruiting and training militants and terrorists a point. I want to make here is that In these information tactics the name of the united states is always put up front There is no doubt about the actor who is Named in these Information tactics the same strategy is used for civilian killer. The u.s. Is Killing x number of civilians. This was the same recurring linguistic pattern in in the data set And in contrast russia is portraying itself as more morally superior to the united states And also military militarily more capable Because they are the ones that destroy and kill militants and terrorists. They are the terrorist slayers And they are also morally superior because of their humanitarian intervention. So we named this fourth information tactic russia the humanitarian And now i'm handing back over to mark to sum up Okay, thank you ester Now these information tactics continue to possess a bit of strategic ambiguity. Perhaps when seeing only an information space But when we consider What russia was pursuing on the ground kinetically at the time clear image emerges The first thing to note here. Well, the top chart here shows the main targets of russian military intervention over time The gray indicates terrorist targets blue civilian and orange other opposition groups And we can see right away that despite the information tactics claiming russia was in Stereotified terrorism terrorism remained a Consistently minimal focus of the operation as opposed to civilians and other armed opposition groups And these first two russian centric information tactics align with initial ramp up periods in 2017 And later in 2019 and the humanitarian tactic in 2017 even appears to lag slightly behind increases in civilian targeting Which would align with what nato strategic communications would call perhaps The russia's fog of falsehood attempts to obfuscate civilian casualties Likewise, uh, well one and two appeared as force justifying tactics in ramp up phases three and four America centric tactics continue rather progressively over time and interestingly enough in 20 late 2018 early 2019 when there's a sustained lull in operations during a a sustained Demilitarization agreement between russia and turkey we see this these two information tactics take over and from then onward They remain the dominant information tactics I'll try to wrap this up quickly here With this context in minds, uh, we consider information tactics to cluster into two strategic narratives That in turn align with established strategic aims of the kremlin in the international Competition space so firstly russia tries to project itself as a global superpower That's russia's super power strategic narrative, which is realized in our data Through tactics one and two and likewise they also seek to undermine the influence of the west in the international competition space realized by tactics three and four And so what so here are final conclusions, uh, what do our what does our research? Have to do and what can it do in the broader field of information warfare study? Firstly again as our colleague the naval war college noticed, um The russia didn't have to be everywhere physically and I would suggest perhaps at least in part That may have been helped by them being aggressively present in the information space And when they're in the information space constructing these narratives, they create these virtual realities That enable the pursuit of kinetic objectives often in direct contrast to how events are framed in the information space Secondly, we see consistent discrepancies between claims targets and actual targets That's a consistent and complementary relationship there and thirdly if we think about how this Has implications for ukraine, uh, we continue to see russian information warfare Make use of these diametrically opposed symbols of innocent civilians and violent extremists Be they terrorists terrorists or neo nazis and their narratives And again, although it's anecdotal at this point We could even say that the sequence appears similar where troop buildup and initial invasion ramp up Seems to align with um these force justifying Tactics that frame the russian invasion as protecting against protecting innocent civilians against neo nazis and potential genocide And we again see consistent discrepancies between claims neo nazi targets and actual often civilian targets And lastly future research Because our information tactics and strategic narratives are fundamentally made up of recurring linguistic patterns We believe there's strong potential for future research to construct models that can recognize and detect emerging strategies and tactics As as they emerge in real time And secondly, we hope that our research can contribute to pushing information warfare scholarship closer to social cyber security perspectives Meaning the focus is on targets that are human and social rather than Strictly informational and infrastructural in the cyberspace So with that, we look forward to hearing questions and comments Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen at this point I would like to invite our discussant dr Mark parker to come up and share his comments on what he's observed from the three wonderful presentations this afternoon Dr parker is an associate dean of computer of continuing studies and associate professor in of interdisciplinary studies He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from florida state university And his phd from the university of mariland baltimore county His area his area of specialization is technology mediated communication in education and the workplace Thank you, dr parker Thank you, dr. Reed and uh, I would like to express my thanks to all of the scholars Who are on Our panel today both for the the terrific research that they've done and also for joining us today To share some of the results of that research in the context of of our conference As I was listening to and and absorbing what was being said I noticed an interesting an interesting pattern Starting here among the the various presentations I noticed in particular that Dr. Manjikian's Presentation that her research struck me As doing a very good job of setting the stage For what all of the panelists were talking about today She took a look at a disinformation campaign from the 1980s She mentioned specifically the disinformation campaign surrounding aids in the african continent And she looked she compared and and contrasted that to to what was done more recently With the with the covet outbreak And she looked at it instead of looking at it from the point of view of rhetoric She was looking at it from the point of view of the impact of the technology Which is something that I think although we're all aware of it and there have been There was a large body of literature dealing with the nature of the technology how it's changed how it's impacting human communication And so on this is actually I think an excellent way of setting the stage Dr. Manjikian for for what your fellow panelists were talking about today I would particularly draw your attention and if for those of you in the audience Are among our student body those of you who are younger you've grown up in this information environment you've grown up With technology that allows text and allows narrative to be multidirectional To be constantly changed constantly modified To be what I believe dr. Manjikian referred to at one point as a force multiplier It increases the the both the speed and the range of information It's no longer a case of a single document written by a person That is archived that moves forward the changing and dissemination of which is very slow and very painful The information environment that you're used to operating in is multidirectional It is a different type of text than from one of those of us who are older are used to dealing with So the I don't think it could be overemphasized the fact that the technology has changed and it continues to change And it changes the way Information or in the case of dr. Manjikian's work disinformation Can be can be put forward and promulgated Dr. Manjikian I can understand over the last couple of weeks. You were probably strongly tempted to take a look at your crane I imagine that may be outside of the scope of what you have but In any event I imagine you're seeing some things coming true with the the work that's being done On disinformation in ukraine Moving then on to uh, dr. Jenesh and uh to mr. Perry They took that larger Idea of dr. Manjikian's about the changing nature of the technology the disruptive and the amplifying nature of the technology And they they did a very good mixed methods research study Into one particular technology social media and one particular platform, which is twitter Again de-emphasizing rhetoric and looking more at the idea of of computational linguistics, which I understand has a smaller corpus now and which is probably long overdue In terms of uh, uh being a way of looking at this Um, it's it what really struck me about that is the fact that picking up on dr. Manjikian's theme The impact of something like twitter when it comes to Taking the the the high level foreign policy of a nation like russia Trying to come up with this narrative of the decadent west Is in general and the decadent united states in particular is falling apart Therefore it's causing chaos and disruption throughout the world Whereas russia is is is a little bit firmer and and is able to do both humanitarian and military success That struck me in particular and it's worth keeping that in mind as you reflect on this And then finally dr. Coldstein and dr. Kozareff They brought us back up to that that's sort of high foreign policy level. They're talking about foreign policy Decisions being articulated particularly as it relates to china and russia And they're evolving relationship and again coming back to this idea of the the theme of the technology how these things are communicated Right down into disinformation and information warfare We have the phenomenon of the official pronouncements of foreign policy by by two nations Both individually and together and that is going to have to be translated down through technology Through media through other kinds of channels And the other members of the panels i think have shown just how powerful that can be As a disinformation tool perhaps even a disinformation Weapons so i was very pleased at at how all three sets of of Viewpoints actually came together on this idea that in russia in china As over and opposed to the west and and to the united states There are two very different narratives About who's good and who's bad and there are a great many different ways of trying to push that narrative out As dr. Mangicki and said to increasingly targeted audiences For that information to be absorbed and possibly passed along so i think all of our I think all of our our panelists for doing that For those of you in the audience as you reflect on what you heard today from our various panelists I would ask you to keep that idea of the technology in mind Partially because it is a force multiplier for disinformation and for information warfare But also remember the fact that the technology can be helpful for you as well Irrespective of whether you're going into the military space the government space the private space whatever it may be Just as the technology is increasing the rate and and the power of of disinformation Throughout the world particularly to places where there is already a pre-existing bias to believe Certain types of disinformation You've seen that the technology is also emerging as a tool that can be used to augment your own critical thinking your own critical analysis Of the information that you're hearing your own attempts to try to sort through this tidal wave of information that you're constantly getting as a result of these new Emergent disrupting technologies There are techniques available Particularly the big data techniques that that dr. Zanesh and mr. Perry talked about Uh The communication environment has changed it is going to continue to change And I think that the type of of work that our various panelists have been doing to try to To show the ways in which the technology is changing things This is going to be an emerging area for all of you again irrespective of what sector you're going to be operating in So I I ask you especially our students in the audience to continue to draw upon your own Critical thinking your your own critical analysis of what's happening around you But also to invoke the use of tools whether technological or mathematical or both To try to deal with this large amount of information to sort through what is uh information? What is disinformation? What is misinformation? And um with that I think i'm going to cut my uh remark short because the questions that our students ask are always more interested than my comments On everything so thank you very much everyone Okay, well, thank you. Thank you very much dr. Parker for your for your comments very much appreciated at this point Indeed as dr. Parker said this is time for for questions So I would certainly invite anyone that has any questions for any of our wonderful authors here today to come To come down to either microphone There's one to one on my left and one on my right or again one on your left and one on your right as well I suppose so if you'd like to please come along and form an orderly queue I'm happy to take questions and direct them as appropriate While we're while we're waiting for for people to uh to come down I would just like to to put one or two questions forward to Firstly to dr. Kozarev and dr. Goldstein and so a little Little outside the the scope perhaps is this question But but Putin achieved what nato has been trying for for many years to increase germany's expenditure on its on its military Germany is now third only to the u.s. And china and expenditure So as you've certainly noted the the the close-knit relations between china and and russia Do you feel that there's going to be a a a shift in the nature of the u.s And its allies like perhaps working more closely with Germany perhaps and Maybe foregoing things like the so-called special relationship with the uk and other existing pieces Do you see a change in that or do you think it's just a general strengthening of nato going forwards? Yeah, I mean, I think you're exactly right that unquestionably the One of the results of the war thus far is this dramatic strengthening of nato so that you know That's what seemed to be completely contrary to putin's objective. So, um, you know, I think as was said this morning that seems to be If not a total fail close, you know as far as the larger dynamics there between china russia China nato, I I think it I fear that it is a kind of You know those of us in the field we call it the security dilemma, you know, which is it's hard to pinpoint who is threatening whom and it is You know, there's been I'll just give you an example in the china is very concerned about this Alkist deal you may have heard of that with the australia uk and And the united states working together a nuclear submarine. So but what was shocking is that when the alkis was First rolled out last year The russians took a very very strong position which was kind of odd because you know Russia has plenty of nuclear submarines and they're not really You know, maybe this in a way. We could even be good for russia, right more nuclear submarines go toward the asia pacific But you know, you could see The russians wanted to make it clear almost to their chinese friends that they were Viewed this as a dramatic threat. So, you know, my impression is this is I mean, it's almost a chicken and egg question as to which But but we are certainly moving in a way toward toward a kind of new new enhanced bipolarity or Or you might call it a new cold war Okay, great question. We will definitely see the Changing role and change the role of germany and the near future It's a Matter of big concern in russia and I believe that now especially after chancellor Schultz Said that now we should not blame germany any longer So we have some other other to blame for war in europe So and there's a big, you know, you're a question for russia and especially given the German policies Mostly based on some values rather than geopolitical calculations Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your answer. I'll defer to to yourself, sir Hello, um cadet break. Uh, my question was for mr. Goldstein and mr. Koizyrev So my question was how dedicated is china to a russian alliance? And at what point does russia become a liability? And then furthermore from a global perspective as russia only as strong as a sino russian alliance Or do they warrant a considerable threat on their own? for for china russia has been since the early 2000s as Non-asian ally a non-asian partner Because china honestly has not been you know gaining lots of many allies Both in in that northeast asia and in other parts of the world So I thought probably for the chinese leadership since the early 2000s the Rise of russia and especially centralized putin's vertical of power Served as a good like a role model an example for their own kind of advancement and also modernization of their own institutions So they considered putin as a aspiring rising statesman Concern about the russian national interest. So in terms of cultural civilizational and probably despite the differences in languages They about the kind of common past in terms of communist past and in terms of the role of sovereignty and Their perception of the unique way of democratization they call For example the russia and china calling themselves as a democratic democratic country sound like the west What just what the west actually Has been talking about russia and how the west has assessed the russian and chinese political system So I think that that alliance is valid not only from the strategic perspective as a potential area a kind of Backing a strategic area for the chinese if they encounter with the united states But also is from the political and cultural standpoint as well Yeah, just quickly comment. I mean Yeah, I think we generally People are in the west seems to us underestimating the nature of this quasi alliance. I mean, I've been wondering why this occurs Part of it clearly is you know our understanding of the sign of soviet conflict And we we've badly misread that and so I think we've kind of overcorrecting the other way But I think also we look at it kind of with ideological lenses. Maybe sometimes and that that Doesn't necessarily help but there's also a lot so much happens in russia china relations that we don't really see It's not reported on but you know, you have to either read russia or chinese. I think so that's a problem too So but the last part of your question You know I we can get into this more tomorrow But I mean russia on its own is it is it on its own a threat? That's a really good question. I mean You know part of what we're seeing is just how weak russia is right? I mean You know think about that They spend so much on nuclear weapons and all these kind of high tech weapons You can see their conventional forces seem to be you know getting substantially weaker than than maybe we thought So it really is an interesting question that russia on its own Maybe not really not that much of a threat. You know, germany can handle it if you will Right but but in combination with china I think there maybe we Do need to be concerned because the two powers I think are quite complimentary in many ways Oddly, you know, we could go into that more but there I do think You know, this could be dangerous for us national security this combination. Thank you. Thank you Thank you very much. I believe you next sir. Would you care to ask? Thank you dr. Reed? And thank you to everyone for taking the time to deliver your presentations and research today I thoroughly enjoy them as I'm sure everyone else did and the question that I will pose isn't directed toward anyone specifically Rather anyone will take a stab at it So big tech companies have been said to have taken a stance on the russia-ukrain conflict by preventing russian state media on their platforms As a means of preventing the spread of myths or disinformation More recently the same companies have allowed more quote hate speech on their platforms directed towards russia While this all may be authorized under section 230 of the communications and decency act Do you see big techs involvement as positive negative or quite possibly as virtue signaling? Thank you I'll happily invite, uh, dr. Sinesh. It seems like it's in your and mr. Perry's wheelhouse if you wouldn't mind taking that one Thank you. Sorry to put you on the spot Can you hear me in the back? Yeah, okay, great Yeah, so we've seen in the last last few weeks that um sputnik for example and russia today have been banned in lots of european countries and on lots of big tech media platforms that that is you know That was you know, that was a really interesting development to see how quickly these platforms moved when in the past We had serious problems with hate speech for example being allowed to proliferate So if you think about various armed conflict around the world not just With the current war in ukraine, but also think about for example, miamar and the uh, rohingya Genocide and and how facebook or twitter or instagram allowed allowed hate speech to proliferate and and we have seen spikes in um incitement to violence on these platforms and then with the current war in ukraine These these companies have moved fairly quickly in comparison to previous armed conflicts What i've seen i've been focusing mostly on eastern and central europe when it comes to spiking hate speech For example in in relation to the war in ukraine and you know I was born and raised in hong kuri which is also It was part of the russian sphere of influence or the soviet sphere of influence I should say so we share a history with ukraine to a certain extent and uh, it seems that um, Hungarian trolling compared to for example russian trolling and and the ira or other Troll factories that have spread disinformation on Various social media platforms what i know this personally looking at hungarian trolling Is that there has been it seems like the the trolling is on steroids at the moment Which to me as a hungarian is very interesting to see because we've you know, it seems like These trolls have forgotten uh, the historical um Memory that we have about the soviet union for example and previous invasions into our own territories as well So the The strategic narratives are seem to be the same There is a lot of negative Talk about The united states being in decline In central and eastern europe it's also complemented by anti-eu anti-european union discourses So it's almost like the west is composed of the united states The european union and nato and then central and eastern europe somewhat seems to be stuck in between ukraine and russia and then the west so This information has been spreading about the same so the same kremlin talking points have been spreading on eastern european platforms Um, and I feel looking at also, you know hate speech in general and eye research violent extremism And I compare the united states to western europe and eastern europe and then I look at australia and and try to make global comparisons And what i've seen with big tech and global um social media platforms is what I identify as an english language bias so This changed in the last couple of weeks when sputnik and russia today have been banned but These big tech companies have been focusing mostly On tweets or facebook posts in english And they really lag behind in looking at other languages and how hate speech can spread in other languages And they are not prepared to deal with this issue. So that's that's something that um, I personally noticed in my own research thank you Thank you very much I think of the interest of time we'll have enough time for at least one more question possibly to Mr. Lozato And miss julia night. I think we might be able to take your question too Good afternoon, uh cadet lozato. So my question is for any of those who are presenting on disinformation Understand that in cyber security and cyber warfare different nation states will have Different government bodies that conduct their operations different advanced persistent threats And sometimes don't those aren't always coordinated or they use different tools and methods And i'm curious if the same thing sort of carries over into information warfare How coordinated or integrated are these sorts of information warfare operations in russia? Dr. Manjikian, uh, would you would you care to to cover that one? Thank you Do I have to turn this on? Yeah, um, what we see is uh, uh, there was a report that came out from the state department last year And they talked about the disinformation ecosystem and part of the reason they use that term ecosystem is because there are so many different actors In the beginning, uh, sometimes there would be people, you know in places like china who would kind of volunteer to participate like in the DDoS attack or something like that I'm not completely convinced that anonymous is actually just a random group of individuals Uh, I personally wonder if there isn't some kind of covert support by some form of nation state for anonymous Because they awfully they seem to be awfully good at what they're doing. Uh, someone must have trained them But furthermore what we've seen with russia is There were reports last week that uh, if indeed they had been outsourcing a lot of their trolling to troll forms outside of Russia once the currency situation hit The trolling went down significantly and a lot of people said that's because they can't afford to pay the troll farm That's an Istanbul or wherever it is Uh, and then finally there was a discussion about the role that public relations firms might be even playing in things like trolling The idea that you could outsource it to a public relations firm and there was an issue with uh A firm in london that had been doing some work for the russian government that some people thought, you know, wasn't wasn't quite ethical So we see public relations firms. We see, uh Kind of other kind of commercial things like troll farms that are being outsourced We see some degree of people acting as volunteers Uh, and so that's why they use the term ecosystem because it really is a whole conglomeration of different types of actors They probably have very different norms governing how they behave and what they do Yeah, can I just add one thing there um that The way the russia approaches information warfare is is highly integrated as you say and that ecosystem you can kind of think of as a spectrum too from Over attributed sources like from government officials state run news media all the way to kind of black covert unattributed Information operations conducted at these troll farms Or just domains that spring up And then in the middle you have this gray area of Media sources that that kind of pick up on the seeds planted At either ends and pass them along So I think in in one respect that also points out some of the limitations to the question that was raised before you where While things like deplatforming Certainly have some short term effects When this thing is so holistically integrated across multiple sources and multiple types of attribution You know one or even a couple platforms, you know labeling and banning probably isn't it isn't enough in that case, but Thank you very much. We have time for one more question and miss julian if you wish to or uh, thank you very much Make it a good one. Uh, good afternoon. Uh, could that be duke? Uh, as ukrainian myself, I have encountered, uh, various Russian propaganda and Recently in this month's russia blog twitter Today the official blocked instagram and facebook and recognize Metacorporation at extremist My question is how do you think will Russian behavior in media space change considering late Last news and war in ukraine I'll leave this open to volunteers. I don't wish to to take that one I just like excuse me. I just have a small comment. I think that all russians will continue using Those platforms through bpn. So it will be no problem I mean my question is not about russians It's obvious that they're gonna continue using the services But rather will do you think russian government will change their behavior in media space? following the blockage of All the media sources Yes, there knows about this more You're closer to russia I I don't expect they'll change the way they wage information warfare Uh, simply based on on how it's going right now. Um, I think Uh, one common misconception that that we have that I've had for sure and I think many of us do is to look at the use of disinformation Still through this kind of persuasion lens Where of course the goal is to persuade an actor to change behavior But that's not really necessarily how russia goes about using information in the information space. Uh, the goal isn't Always and often isn't a persuasion So I don't think they'll be dissuaded just because many of their Current narratives are being widely debunked. Um, I think I think they'll continue to try new things out Okay, thank you Please join me in offering a very warm round of applause to all of our panelists and our discussion to dr. Parker. Thank you


This is FDA Patient Safety News. In this edition, we'll take a look at a glucose monitoring device that doesn't use a needle stick, which is now approved for children. The recall of a gonorrhea test kit that may lead some patients to being retested. How to prevent burns when using forced air patient warming systems and a new FDA website and liposuction. These stories and more on this edition of FDA Patient Safety News. Welcome to the program. For the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, I'm Mark Barnett. And I'm Anita Rainer. Let's start with our new products bulletin board and tell you about some devices FDA recently approved for marketing. You can find information on all FDA cleared medical products on FDA's website. In a previous program, we talked about a new glucose monitoring device for adult diabetics that's worn on the wrist like a watch. Now this device is also approved for adolescents and for children aged 7 and older. It's called the Glucow watch G2 biographer, and it's made by a California company named Cygnus. This device is different from the usual glucose monitor because it doesn't use blood drawn through a finger stick. Instead, a small electrical current from the device extracts a tiny amount of fluid through the skin. Then a sensor on the back of the watch measures the glucose level in this fluid every 10 minutes for up to 13 hours. These glucose measurements are stored in the device and can be read by the patient. A built-in alarm can be programmed to go off if the patient's glucose level reaches dangerously high or low levels. By supplementing regular finger stick measurements, this device provides information on glucose trends, and that may help patients and their health care providers better manage their disease. But remember, this device is not intended to replace the regular blood glucose meter. Finger stick tests are still going to be needed to calibrate the device, to cross-check a patient's glucose levels, and to make treatment decisions like changing insulin doses. In a recent talk paper, FDA announced the approval of a device that treats degenerative disc disease by helping to fuse vertebrae in the lower spine. What's different about this device is that it uses a genetically engineered protein to help build bone tissue during the fusion process. Conventional devices generally use a bone autograph taken from the patient's own hip. This device is made by Medtronic sophomore Danek of Memphis, Tennessee, and it's made up of several components. One component, called the LT cage, maintains the spacing between the vertebrae and it temporarily stabilizes the diseased area of the spine. The other component, called the infused bone graft, contains the genetically engineered protein that will eventually form bone and grow into the vertebral space, permanently fusing that area of the spine. It also contains a scaffold made of bovine collagen for the protein to grow on. The decision to approve this device was based on a clinical study that showed that the device was as safe and effective as the same fusion cage component filled with autographed bone. Both methods produced successful fusion in approximately 90% of patients at 24 months. The manufacturer will continue to investigate the product to check for possible long-term side effects, including those on the immune system. The study was performed at multiple sites and it consisted of a randomized arm which included 143 patients who were given the infused bone graft LT cage device and 136 patients who were given the same cage and the standard bone graft. This device should not be used on patients who have an allergy to titanium, titanium alloy, or bovine type 1 collagen, patients who have had a tumor removed from the area of the implantation site, or patients who are still growing. And since the effects of the genetically engineered human protein on a developing fetus are not well understood, the device should not be used on patients who are or may be pregnant. Here's news about a product recall. Abbott Laboratories has initiated a worldwide recall of some of its laboratory kits used to diagnose gonorrhea. The kits are unreliable because they may give false negative results. The recall includes 32 lots of gonorrhea test kits that were distributed to hospitals and laboratories in the first six months of 2002, from January 11th to June 24th. About 750,000 tests are affected. Abbott has notified clinical labs to stop using the affected test kits and to destroy any remaining product. These labs are also advised to contact the health care providers they serve and have them determine if their patients need to be retested. A retest should be offered to patients whose test results were negative and who were not already treated. Repeat testing should be performed on fresh specimens, not on retained specimens. Abbott Labs will reimburse expenses associated with repeat testing. If you're a physician and you have questions about this recall, you can reach Abbott Labs at 1-866-233-0471. Consumers or laboratories with questions can contact the company at 1-800-527-1869. Our website has more information on this recall, including a list of the affected lot numbers. In our last broadcast, we told you about a recall of human allograft tissues processed by Cryolife Incorporated. FDA ordered this recall because Cryolife had not validated procedures to prevent infectious disease contamination during processing. Therefore, it could not ensure that its processed human tissue was free from fungal and bacterial contamination. You'll find the newest information on the specific products affected by this recall and on product availability by going to our website. Forestair warming systems are often used to maintain normal body temperatures in patients before, during, and after surgery. They're an effective way to keep patients warm and prevent complications from hypothermia. These systems deliver heated air through a hose to an inflatable blanket that covers the patient. With the blanket attached, the heated air is evenly distributed across the patient's body. But serious burns can occur when the hose isn't attached to the blanket. Without the blanket, the heated air can be extremely hot and concentrated at the hose nozzle and blow directly onto the patient's skin. Burns can also occur if the patient's skin comes in direct contact with the hose surface. This practice where forced air warming is applied without a blanket is called hosing or freehosing. Hosing has caused first, second, and even third degree burns. The most serious report we've received to date describes a burn that resulted from the process that was so severe that the patient's leg had to be amputated above the knee. This kind of injury can occur with any forced air warming system that's supposed to be used with a blanket but isn't. There are plenty of warnings about the risks of hosing in manuals, in printed instructions, and on-device labels. ECRI has published a hazard report specifically warning about this problem. Yet despite all these warnings, hosing still occurs. In one manufacturer, Augustine Medical has begun a campaign to help spread the word about the dangers of hosing. The company has developed a website called stophosing.com where you can get more information on hosing and you can request educational materials like pamphlets and posters and warning labels that you can put on the hoses. The website also gives tips to help prevent hosing, such as storing blankets in a location that's close to where they're going to be used. The primary message is clear and simple. Always use a blanket with forced air warming. These days, most health professionals have heard about the problem of electromagnetic interference, or EMI. That is, it's the hazard that's created when electronic devices like cell phones interfere with certain electrically powered medical devices like infusion pumps. Most hospitals already have signs warning patients and staff about using electronic devices in certain areas. Yet interference continues to occur, and although it's rare, patients can be injured. One interference incident is described in an FDA article entitled, Don't Answer That Cell Phone. It appeared in the June edition of the journal Nursing 2002. It explains how a patient in the ICU was receiving epinephrine through an infusion pump when a visitor received a call on her cell phone. When the call was answered, the pump increased the rate of the drip. This gave the patient an unintended bolus of medication that led to epinephrine toxicity. But cell phones are not the only source of electromagnetic energy that can cause interference, and infusion pumps aren't the only medical devices that can be affected. For example, interference has been reported with powered wheelchairs, monitoring equipment, hemodialysis devices, and cardiac devices. The article in Nursing 2002 summarizes the precautions you can take to avoid EMI related problems. First, educate yourself about the potential for electromagnetic interference with medical devices, and learn how to recognize problems when they occur. Urge your facility to use standard procedures to prevent EMI, particularly in areas where critical care devices are used. Be sure to supervise the use of radio transmitters near electrically powered medical devices. Place signs prohibiting cell phone where there are many critical devices in use. And when you do see an incident of EMI, be sure to report it. You'll find a lot more information on our website, including FDA's recommendations on preventing EMI problems. Now for the part of the program called Patients Are Asking, that helps you answer questions about medical products and procedures that are on people's minds. Today we want to let you know about a new FDA website for consumers on liposuction. It gives an overview of what patients can expect before, during, and after the surgery, as well as information they should have before making a final decision to have the procedure. The site explains what liposuction is, what type of doctor performs the procedure, ideas on how to choose the right doctor, the risks involved in the procedure, and FDA's role in regulating liposuction devices. There's also a liposuction surgery checklist intended to help a person determine if they're a good candidate for the procedure. The website encourages patients to educate themselves by knowing the potential risks involved and to ask their doctor questions if something isn't clear. The Liposuction website also links to other sources of information. For example, patients can link to professional organizations, such as the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, and the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Another link is to an article in the magazine FDA Consumer, in which the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery offers some additional guidelines for people considering liposuction. True or False, MedWatch is a special timepiece that's used to keep track of when patients take their medications. False, MedWatch is a system that health professionals or consumers can use to report adverse events with medical products to the FDA. You can reach MedWatch through our website. True or False, FDA conducts laboratory and clinical testing on a new medical product before allowing it on the market. False, FDA requires that the testing be conducted by the manufacturer who wishes to market the product. FDA's job is to review the results of these tests and decide on whether the product can be marketed. Now for the broadcast where we let you know about recent publications on patient safety or medical error. This time we want to tell you about recently updated guidelines on how to prevent infections when using intravascular catheters. The guidelines were published on August 9th, 2002 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of CDC's MMWR recommendations and reports. If you insert intravascular catheters or if you're responsible for surveillance or infection control, you'll probably find this comprehensive report useful. The guidelines point out that intravascular catheters are indispensable in modern-day medical practice, particularly in ICUs. Although these catheters provide necessary vascular access, their use does put patients at risk for local and systemic infections. These guidelines provide background information and specific recommendations on reducing the incidence of bloodstream infections from intravascular catheters. Here are some of those recommendations. Train health care providers who insert and maintain catheters. Use maximal sterile barrier precautions during central venous catheter insertion. Use a 2 percent chlorhexidine preparation for skin antisepsis. Avoid routine replacement of CVCs in order to prevent infection. And if the infection rate is still high despite all these strategies, use short-term catheters that are impregnated with antiseptics or antibiotics. These guidelines also identify performance indicators that can be used by health care institutions to monitor success in implementing these recommendations. Well that's all for this edition of FDA Patient Safety News. Remember, you can get more information on all the stories you've seen here today by visiting our website. We also urge you to use the website to report problems you've encountered with how we learn about problems so we can alert others. We'll be back next month with another edition, so watch for us. Until then, for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, I'm Mark Barnett. And I'm Anita Rainer. See you next time.