Joel Finkelstein, co-founder and founding director of the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), spoke to a June 29 Middle East Forum podcast (video). Finkelstein, a Princeton-trained neuroscientist, studies and analyzes the psychology of online hate and extremism. The following summarizes his comments:
It is disorienting and makes it difficult to understand our own motivations to the point that “we can’t tell how we’re being controlled.”
In 2017, while researching basic principles of brain networks involved in learning and consciousness linked to predictive behavior, Finkelstein observed that his Princeton colleagues, “in a department that prides itself on independent thinking,” were expressing political “slogans and slurs” in ways that to him seemed “politically unrecognizable.” Finkelstein extrapolated that the same phenomenon he observed within the lab was widespread across the culture because “the same networks that dominate our brains and predict behavior appear to be operant in social media.”
Finkelstein began studying the problem of “network contagion”—the replication of mindless behaviors and activities resulting from social media networks that exploit “information disorder” when false or misleading content spreads. Misinformation, disinformation, and even factual information shared to cause harm challenge the common belief that the human mind develops its own ideas because “we’re more like neurons in a social media brain.” It is disorienting and makes it difficult to understand our own motivations to the point that “we can’t tell how we’re being controlled.”
In such a chaotic environment, information disorder often proliferates through supply chains—hostile nations or groups who sow distrust to maximize information disorder and create a “mob mentality.” Similar examples existed throughout history when innovations such as the printing press increased access to information. The disruptive consequences of that transformation in information technology “led to revolutions, it led to inquisitions and censorship.” The “ideological entrepreneurs” of the day used antisemitism even then to further their own goals and “organize and orchestrate mob mentality.”
Similarly, today’s anti-Western and anti-American forces aiming to weaken Western values use antisemitism to organize protests across America post-October 7. NCRI analyzed some of these 501(c)3 groups by using machine learning and large language modeling to investigate groups such as the ANSWER Coalition and the People’s Forum. Such groups were largely responsible for instigating protests that shut down bridges, roads, ports, and airports and culminated in violent confrontations with law enforcement. These groups use anti-Zionism as a rallying cause, with rhetoric playing on antisemitic tropes and targeting Jewish institutions. In a well-rehearsed process, after violent protesters are arrested, lawyers at the ready secure their release.
Singham directed much of the assets he received from the sale of Thoughtworks to organizations that undermine the U.S.
NCRI discovered that Neville Roy Singham, a tech mogul and founder of the former global consultancy firm Thoughtworks, funded many of these organizations. Singham, who sold his company to the Chinese Communist Party government (CCP), is tied to Maku Media, a CCP intelligence and marketing firm “whose job it is to launder the Chinese reputation in the Global South.” He is married to Jodie Evans, head of Code Pink, an anti-war organization that uses a similar anti-Zionist framework in its protests to spread antisemitism.
Singham directed much of the assets he received from the sale of Thoughtworks to organizations that undermine the U.S. For example, these funded groups organize protests at data centers which are involved in artificial intelligence and other national security issues. Financial backers of these 501(c)3 organizations, which are “run by a purported Chinese asset pouring hundreds of millions of dollars” into them, exploit the U.S. tax system by taking a deduction on their tax returns.
An ongoing federal investigation is looking into whether the Singham network violated U.S. sanctions by funding Code Pink’s sponsorship of influencer and Marxist Hasan Piker’s trip to Cuba. The network also collaborated with the Iranian regime’s senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members in Latin America to raise money for such staged events. Livestreams and posts by influencers like Piker, who makes a “mockery of our democracy” and foments the idea that “there is dissent and false conflict in Western civilization,” generate millions of online views.
Investigations into these organizations had looked past the latter’s “Trojan horse” methods of using anti-Zionism and antisemitism as a “successful decoy” to distract the public and “tell you what this is not about”—increasing information disorder. An example of “staged events by foreign actors” took place during the post-October 7 Columbia University protests when antisemitism was used to heighten information disorder. The organizations behind such events work with Cuba, Venezuela, China, and IRGC information assets across South America. They also reach out to educators to import anti-American ideologies into the U.S. and foment violence against law enforcement.
After NCRI testified before the Senate and House about Singham, the Department of Justice announced a grand jury to investigate the veracity of the evidence presented.
After NCRI testified before the Senate and House about Singham, the Department of Justice announced a grand jury to investigate the veracity of the evidence presented. Compiling evidence against foreign actors involves looking for “instructive relationships” or “narrative convergence.” When various narratives that mimic sympathetic state media messaging coalesce, large language modeling reveals evidence of narrative convergence and identifies the actors “on behalf of a foreign hostile force.” In addition, “forensic financial analysis” determines the financial relationship “between payment structures and the use of that kind of influence.”
Tik Tok, a private company owned by Byte Dance, is another component in the supply chain. It is headquartered in China where the CCP influences the company’s domestic operations and requires it to cooperate with CCP intelligence requests. NCRI’s tools of information science and social analysis revealed that post-October 7, the CCP was manipulating Tik Tok’s algorithm by ginning up anti-Zionism and antisemitism—decoys to create anti-American and pro-Chinese ideas. NCRI’s evidence was peer-reviewed and “cited by Congress, cited by the Senate, [and] cited by the Supreme Court.”
Whenever anti-Zionism and antisemitism are employed as decoys, what is in fact happening is a “moral inversion” within our imaginations “that create the grounds for support for the DSAs [Democratic Socialists of America], for the Singhams, [and] for the Tik Toks of the world.” These entities use the language of “justice, human rights, and anti-hate rhetoric” to garner support and build a following.
NCRI also found that the response to the antisemitism being generated is actually counter-productive. By participating in the perverted discourse being promoted by these organizations, “fighting hate accelerates the problem.” Moreover, pushing back on the basis of hatred is a distraction. When people hear any group crying out for special treatment, “it creates the appearance of self-interest.” Data assembled by NCRI show that it actually “empowers the narratives about who a hateful person is rather than what is right and what is wrong—it turns the conversation towards mob mentality [of] who is a good person versus who is a bad person.”
To counter this information warfare, “we need a new sensibility about human autonomy”—both mental and spiritual.
The best defensive weapons are truth and speed. Explaining the facts about how we are being manipulated is essential, “and surfacing that faster than adversarial narratives can distort [truth] is going to be the key to being able to win in the modern information age.” Those two approaches build systems that fight against the underlying problems that have taken the public imagination hostage. Those problems “actually [constrict] the ability of Jews and other vulnerable communities to live freely.”
To counter this information warfare, “we need a new sensibility about human autonomy”—both mental and spiritual. Cultural pressures over the years that included COVID, the growth of social media, and the hours spent by children in front of their computer feeds, create “not just a supply problem from entrepreneurs who seek to manipulate people, but a demand problem from people who have become attached to a spectacle and lack agency in their own lives.”
Policies that address human agency and redress the problems that social media introduces require U.S. intelligence agencies to “lead the horse to water from the bottom up.” Provide intelligence to the public so that people understand what is happening, thereby creating opportunities for law enforcement, policymakers, and others to act.
