U.S. Special Forces Want to Use Deepfakes for Psy-Ops
U.S. Special Operations Command, responsible for some of the country’s most secretive military endeavors, is gearing up to conduct internet propaganda and deception campaigns online using deepfake videos, according to federal contracting documents reviewed by The Intercept.
The plans, which also describe hacking internet-connected devices to eavesdrop in order to assess foreign populations’ susceptibility to propaganda, come at a time of intense global debate over technologically sophisticated “disinformation” campaigns, their effectiveness, and the ethics of their use.
While the U.S. government routinely warns against the risk of deepfakes and is openly working to build tools to counter them, the document from Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, represents a nearly unprecedented instance of the American government — or any government — openly signaling its desire to use the highly controversial technology offensively.
SOCOM’s next generation propaganda aspirations are outlined in a procurement document that lists capabilities it’s seeking for the near future and soliciting pitches from outside parties that believe they’re able to build them.
“When it comes to disinformation, the Pentagon should not be fighting fire with fire,” Chris Meserole, head of the Brookings Institution’s Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative, told The Intercept. “At a time when digital propaganda is on the rise globally, the U.S. should be doing everything it can to strengthen democracy by building support for shared notions of truth and reality. Deepfakes do the opposite. By casting doubt on the credibility of all content and information, whether real or synthetic, they ultimately erode the foundation of democracy itself.”
“When it comes to disinformation, the Pentagon should not be fighting fire with fire.”
Meserole added, “If deepfakes are going to be leveraged for targeted military and intelligence operations, then their use needs to be subject to review and oversight.”
The pitch document, first published by SOCOM’s Directorate of Science and Technology in 2020, established a wish list of next-generation toys for the 21st century special forces commando, a litany of gadgets and futuristic tools that will help the country’s most elite soldiers more effectively hunt and kill their targets using lasers, robots, holographs, and other sophisticated hardware.
Last October, SOCOM quietly released an updated version of its wish list with a new section: “Advanced technologies for use in Military Information Support Operations (MISO),” a Pentagon euphemism for its global propaganda and deception efforts.
The added paragraph spells out SOCOM’s desire to obtain new and improved means of carrying out “influence operations, digital deception, communication disruption, and disinformation campaigns at the tactical edge and operational levels.” SOCOM is seeking “a next generation capability to collect disparate data through public and open source information streams such as social media, local media, etc. to enable MISO to craft and direct influence operations.”
SOCOM typically fights in the shadows, but its public reputation and global footprint loom large. Comprised of the elite units from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force, SOCOM leads the most sensitive military operations of the world’s most lethal nation.
While American special forces are widely known for splashy exploits like the Navy SEALs’ killing of Osama bin Laden, their history is one of secret missions, subterfuge, sabotage, and disruption campaigns. SOCOM’s “next generation” disinformation ambitions are only part of a long, vast history of deception efforts on the part of the U.S. military and intelligence apparatuses.
Special Operations Command, which is accepting proposals on these capabilities through 2025, did not respond to a request for comment.
Though Special Operations Command has for years coordinated foreign “influence operations,” these deception campaigns have come under renewed scrutiny. In December, The Intercept reported that SOCOM had convinced Twitter, in violation of its internal policies, to permit a network of sham accounts that spread phony news items of dubious accuracy, including a claim that the Iranian government was stealing the organs of Afghan civilians. Though the Twitter-based propaganda offensive didn’t use deepfakes, researchers found that Pentagon contractors employed machine learning-generated avatars to lend the fake accounts a degree of realism.
Provocatively, the updated capability document reveals that SOCOM wants to boost these internet deception efforts with the use of “next generation” deepfake videos, an increasingly effective method of generating lifelike digital video forgeries using machine learning. Special forces would use this faked footage to “generate messages and influence operations via non-traditional channels,” the document adds.
While deepfakes have largely remained fodder for entertainment and pornography, the potential for more dire applications is real. At the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a shoddy deepfake of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordering troops to surrender began circulating on social media channels. Ethical considerations aside, the legality of militarized deepfakes in a conflict, which remains an open question, is not addressed in the SOCOM document.
As with foreign governmental “disinformation” campaigns, the U.S. has spent the past several years warning against the potent national security threat represented by deepfakes. The use of deepfakes to deliberately deceive, government authorities warn regularly, could have a deeply destabilizing effect on civilian populations exposed to them.