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LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media Hardcover – October 2, 2018
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By Amazon and Foreign Affairs Magazine
Through the weaponization of social media, the internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real‑world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. War, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battle space that plays out on our smartphones.
P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking tackle the mind‑bending questions that arise when war goes online and the online world goes to war.
Delving into the web’s darkest corners, LikeWar outlines a radical new paradigm for understanding and defending against the unprecedented threats of our networked world.
- Print length416 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherEamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- Publication dateOctober 2, 2018
- Dimensions9 x 6 x 1.5 inches
- ISBN-101328695743
- ISBN-13978-1328695741
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Backed by over 100 pages of notes, LikeWar is sober, deeply researched, and still compulsively readable. Comparisons to On War and The Art of War are apt, while likely optimistic—given the accelerating pace of technology, any reasonable futurist can expect to see their predictions become obsolete in three to five years, or maybe two. But even if the specifics change, the principle holds: Disruption is coming, and we are not ready. It’s frightening, but as individuals, we are far from helpless. As Singer and Brooking conclude, “Social media is extraordinarily powerful…. Yet within this network, and in each of the battles on it, we all have the power of choice.” —Jon Foro, Amazon Book Review
Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month
An Amazon Best Book of the Year (2018)
Featured on NPR, CBSn, MSNBC, PBS, and ABC News Radio, as well as in The New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Popular Science, Rolling Stone, Forbes, Atlantic, Wired, Slate, Politico, Gizmodo, Foreign Affairs, Defense One, Vox, The Daily Beast, Adweek, and more
“A compelling read . . . [LikeWar] is not a warning about tomorrow’s war—it’s a map for those who don’t understand how the battlefield has already changed.”
—Washington Post
“Seriously. If you use social media in any capacity, you should read this.”
—The Verge
“Extremely timely and fascinating.”
—The New York Times, New & Noteworthy
“Terrific and alarming . . . Wow.”
—SE Cupp, CNN
“Reading LikeWar will help you to avoid being part of this Internet of Idiots . . . While students of history, strategic studies, political science, and international relations will all find LikeWar on their required reading list, anyone else who wishes to understand the world we live in must add LikeWar to the top of the pile on their nightstand.”
—Forbes
“Whether it's his fiction and nonfiction, his work as a TRADOC 'mad scientist,' the interviews he's done with defense media, the pages of Popular Science, or some other venue, P.W. Singer is the Army's must-read thinker.”
—Army Magazine
"...an in-depth account...Through a series of engaging profiles the authors, P. W. Singer and E. T. Brooking, explore the new reality and consequences facing each of us as we attempt to interact with the larger world via social media. Well organized with a vernacular easy to follow, Like War seeks to show us the hazards we are already encountering on a daily basis...this is an excellent book for anyone regularly utilizing social media, in particular the modern warfighters seeking a better understanding of information warfare and the terrain in which it is fought."
—Journal of the Joint Air Power Competence Center
“Backed by over 100 pages of notes, LikeWar is sober, deeply researched, and still compulsively readable. Comparisons to On War and The Art of War are apt.”
—Amazon, Best Book of the Month (Oct)
“'Russia is not the full story," Singer tells Codebook. 'Russia is just a chapter in a larger book.' Singer, a researcher at the New America think tank, means that both figuratively and literally. His and Brooking's book, 'LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media,' comes out today. It may be the first study to link Mexican cartels, ISIS and reality TV villain Spencer Pratt.”
—Axios
“A fantastic read.”
—The LoopCast
“The picture Singer and Booking paint of how social media is being weaponized is compelling, and one that ought to give pause to any practitioner in the field of national security. I am reluctant to be so effusive in my praise, but this is truly a must-read book.”
—Lawfare
"...a blueprint on how to think, operate and survive in this operational environment."
—Army Magazine
“It’s clear that the information in LikeWar is vital to our national security; however, that’s not the real reason why I enjoyed the book so much. I liked the book just because it was highly readable and entertaining.... It’s a fun read, sure, but best of all is that every time I put down LikeWar, I felt that I had learned something new and important....This book and the information it contains is that vital. I highly recommend it for anyone with an interest in national security, international relations, journalism, or history.”
—NewsRep
“...Essential reading if today’s Leaders (both in and out of uniform) are to understand, defend against, and ultimately wield the non-kinetic, yet violently manipulative effects of Social Media.”
—US Army Training and Doctrine Command
"....being ignorant of, and worse yet denying, these real threats to our cohesion as a country and to the global community of citizens, is no longer a choice and every individual, every organization, every country has to decide what role they will play in this battlefield and bears responsibility for the ultimate outcome. Reading LikeWar may be, for many, the right first step."
—CipherBrief
“This book deserves a place on the bookshelf of every corporate strategist and government leader.”
—OODA-Loop
“LikeWar is an eye-opening literary experience. Most of us access social media in some form on a near-daily basis, but do we really understand the phenomenon?”
—Modern War Institute at West Point
“Although the book is titled Like War, it isn’t so much about warfare as about how social media is affecting society broadly: how we consume information, why social media is so addictive, how it has been capitalized on by social movements, celebrities, politicians, terrorists, and states. It’s worth reading for the history of the Internet alone, which bounces along as vignettes about individuals that personalize the story (they clearly apply the elements of effective social media they identify: narrative, emotion, authenticity, community, and inundation)...A valuable primer on where social media came from and how its currently being used. It also has some useful suggestions for taming its effects.”
—War on the Rocks
“...Fantastic. LikeWar includes interviews with everyone from Michael Flynn to Spencer Pratt. It doesn't get better than that for a national security/reality tv-watching nerd like me.”
—Just Security
“This timely work provides a fascinating and often frightening portrait of the many ways social media is being weaponized and used to manipulate . . . This book is extremely well documented. Librarians will be especially heartened by the authors’ assertion that 'information literacy is no longer merely an education issue but a national security imperative.' VERDICT An important first purchase for all collections.”
—Library Journal, STARRED review
“Important resource...more than 100 pages of source notes attest to the thoroughness of their research, and Singer and Brooking have gone to very dark cyber places to bring these facts to light, analyzing ideas and organizations that may give readers nightmares and that can catalyze actual violence. LikeWar should be required reading for everyone living in a democracy and all who aspire to.”
—Booklist, STARRED review
“Few grasp the real threat Americans face on their favorite social networks in the course of their daily experiences. Through amusing vignettes and plenty of pop-culture references, the authors take us on a wild ride featuring everything from reality TV stars to Russian missiles. My take? Like and share.”
—Crispin Burke, Task & Purpose
—General Michael Hayden, former Director of the CIA and NSA, author of The Assault on Intelligence
“Online technology has outrun our social intuitions about its power. In vivid prose, Singer and Brooking offer insight into the ways that social media can be used to manipulate beliefs and attitudes for self-serving purposes.”
—Vint Cerf, co-inventor of the internet, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
“Much as Clausewitz did for conventional war, LikeWar lays out the new 21st century principles of war. Mixing fascinating stories and the front edge of research, it explains the twilight battlegrounds of politics and war on social media—a frightening future where truth is the first casualty, and our fundamental values are deeply at danger. I loved it.”
—Admiral James Stavridis, US Navy (Ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander, NATO
“My films have specialized in realistic horror. LikeWar is scary as hell, as it shows how people can be manipulated online to make our worst fears come true.”
—Jason Blum, producer of The Purge and Get Out
“Through a series of vivid vignettes, LikeWar shows how the internet has become a new battlefield in the 21st century, in ways that blur the line between war and peace and make each of us a potential target of postmodern conflict.”
—Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History, Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University
“The internet has fundamentally reshaped the way humans interact; by extension, it has reshaped the way humans wage war. This book is timely, but the takeaways are timeless.”
—Ian Bremmer, Founder of the Eurasia Group, and New York Times best-selling author of Us. vs. Them
“In LikeWar, Peter Singer and Emerson Brooking incisively document how the use of social media and information operations are fundamentally changing the dynamics of global conflict and competition, while threatening the foundations of democracy. While the 2016 elections showed the power of social media and its manipulation by our adversaries, Singer and Brooking provide a wakeup call to the wider challenges facing us, requiring that all Americans adapt and respond.”
—Senator Mark Warner (VA), Ranking Member-Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
“LikeWar is the best, most comprehensive book to appear on a phenomenon that has turned into the greatest threat to electoral democracy since the 18th Century.”
—Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former President of Estonia, co-chair, World Economic Forum Global Futures Council
“Singer and Brooking have produced a compulsively readable and insightful account of what social media is doing to our democracy and to our relations with each other. If it were fiction, their description of the battleground the Internet has become would be scary. As reality, it is terrifying.”
—Professor Sir David Omand, former UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator and Director of Government Communications Headquarters
About the Author
W. SINGER is a strategist at New America and a consultant for the U.S. military, intelligence community, and Hollywood. He the author of several best‑selling books, including Wired for Warand Ghost Fleet.
EMERSON T. BROOKING is an expert on conflict and social media. He served most recently as a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and has written for the Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and Popular Science.
Product details
- Publisher : Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (October 2, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 416 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1328695743
- ISBN-13 : 978-1328695741
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 9 x 6 x 1.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #620,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #478 in Social Aspects of Technology
- #10,672 in Engineering (Books)
- #27,735 in Social Sciences (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the authors

Hi! My formal biography and links to all my books and articles are at www.pwsinger.com but the short version is that I am someone who loves to read, and hopes to write books that people love to read too.
You can also follow me on twitter @peterwsinger

Emerson T. Brooking is a Resident Senior Fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, focused on disinformation, technology policy, and electoral security. He has advised numerous U.S. military commands and government agencies regarding the evolution of information warfare and public diplomacy. Emerson was named to the Forbes "30 Under 30" in 2018 and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Emerson's first book, LikeWar, explores how social media has changed war and politics, just as war and politics have changed social media.
You can find all of Emerson's writing (and contact him) at https://etbrooking.com.
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That's the slogan of InfoWars, the incendiary conspiracy news network and nutritional supplement marketing firm. And while Alex Jones is wrong about almost everything, he's right about that. In LikeWar Singer and Brooking ably synthesize a sophisticated picture of information warfare in 2018, drawing from sources as diverse as Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, and ISIS, to argue that the internet has lead to a blurring of lines between consumer, citizen, journalist, activist, and warrior which threatens the foundations of liberal democracy. The tech companies which built these platforms and profited from them must grapple with the politics of their technologies, before we all reap the whirlwind.
Computer networks and smart phones connect billions of people, allowing ideas to flow faster than ever before in history. Sometimes, the results can be impressive. The Chiapas Zapatista movement in 1994 was a dial-up and fax version of a network insurgency that managed to bring enough international opprobrium on Mexico that the government blinked, and reached some kind of political accord (Chiapas is complicated). More recently, Eliot Higgins and a team of open source analysts at Bellingcat managed to track down the exact BUK missile system and Russian soldiers responsible for shooting down MH 17 in 2014.
But there are a lot of dark sides. When people connect, the emotion that spreads most rapidly is anger. Lies spread five times faster than truth. Musicians can use social networks to directly connect with their fans, and ISIS uses it to connect with alienated Muslim youths worldwide. Social networks sort diverse citizens into filter bubbles of people who think alike. Eliot Higgin's careful open source intelligence has a paranoid fun-house mirror version in the QAnon conspiracy, where Qultist decoders find hidden messages from an alleged 'senior white house source'.
And then there is the matter of information war, an area that even now, after years of offensive cyber operations, liberal democracies still don't understand. Hostile propaganda slips into Western news networks and major platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are infested with bots. LikeWar can even take a personal toll. Over the course of writing this book, General Michael Flynn went from forward looking full-spectrum commander to head Trumpist conspiracy cheerleader to indicted and plead out felon. Flynn's fall is complex, but it can't be separated from the internet. If the trolls got him, what chance does your idiot cousin stand? The counters, 'citizen truth teams' and senior emissaries to groups vulnerable to recruitment, seem like thin reeds against the coming maelstrom of noise.
LikeWar starts with Clausewitz's dictum that war is a continuation of politics by other means, and there are clear links between cyberspace and physical space. Intensity of hashtags impacted the subsequent intensity of Israeli airstrikes during attacks on the Gaza strip. ISIS used propaganda to create an aura of invincibility that outflanked the defenders of Mosul, while Russia denied that its 'little green men' were even in Ukraine. But the difference is that cyberspace is constructed space rather than natural space. The networks are built, maintained, and owned by real corporations and real people. The internet grew from an anarchic specialized scientific network to a major engine of commerce and communicate with little deliberate government oversight. Section 230 absolved American companies of responsibility for policing content, with major carve outs for copyrighted IP and pornography. Yet as concerns over cyberbullying and counter-terrorism rose, major networks adopted digital constitutions that were permissive towards speech and censorious towards erotica. Policing content is and was possible, but always took a back seat to growth and engagement, the guide stars of Silicon Valley.
The future is if anything, darker. Advances in machine learning and AI allow ever more realistic bots, computer generated DeepFakes where a politician can be programmed to say anything, and personalized targeting of people with exactly the propaganda they'll believe. There are defensive counters, but if I might draw military analogies, what we saw in 2016 was armored warfare circa 1918: clearly the future, but not yet a mature system. Given the pace of technology, we only have a few years before digital blitzkrieg.
I'm extremely online, and I've been following this space for years. I've presented at multiple conferences on this topic, including Governance of Emerging Technologies and Association of Internet Researchers. LikeWar is the book I wish I'd written. Cognizant, forward looking, and deeply researched, it is vital reading for anyone interested in technology or politics.
My only reservation is that I wish the sources were better linked in the text, instead of being buried in static endnotes. Maybe the next edition will push an update.
Read this book and you will never look at the internet, governments, or social media the same again.
Who knew that social media could turn average folks into global warriors, with former World of Warcraft addicts foiling war crimes from thousands of miles away? And let's not forget the unexpected warriors – rapper-turned-jihadist PR czars and Russian hipsters waging infowars against the West – it's like a cyber soap opera!
But wait, there's more – China even has a smartphone app to police its citizens' thoughts – talk about big brother on steroids! LikeWar is like a crash course in the web's darkest corners, exposing the truth and burying it at the same time. So buckle up, folks, because the future is networked, and LikeWar is the ultimate guide to surviving the social media battlefield!
Social media has quickly been adopted as a way for us to remain connected with friends and family, but it is also the place most Americans get their news. The authors spend significant time discussing the development of the internet and then the evolution of social media. As the various menus of media grows, so do those who attempt to use such media to sway our opinions. While Singer and Brooks extensively covers the Russia use of social media as a way for them to influence politics around the world, from the British Brexit vote to the American elections, they have also looked at how other countries have used social media for their own purposes. Truth and fact checking that used to be expected by the established news media is now out of the window. And because everything is based on algorithms that few understand, social media can be used to make the outlandish seems true (why else, would so many people like something is it wasn’t true).
Of course, it’s not all about “fake news.” Some countries want to limit the news their citizens receive. China, in a way to only let its people know what the party wants them to know have created a firewall to control unwanted information which has led to humorous stories. When a study published under the title of “the Panama Papers,” which documented how many in the upper echelon of the party were stashing money overseas, Chinese firewall quickly blocked anyone from seeing anything that mentioned Panama. For a while, an entire country ceased to exist, at least according to the Chinese internet, under the internet police changed their blockage from anything Panama to “Panama” and other key words.
At the end of the book, the authors argue that social media companies (most of whom are U. S. based companies, need to be more responsible for how their technology is used.
In a perfect world, I would recommend this book, or something similar, to be read by every voter. But then, a perfect world wouldn’t have such issues with social media!
Top reviews from other countries
This well written, evidence based book - it has a good wadge of citations at the back - turns the floodlamps on on the murky world of Russian bots, troll farms and information manipulation.
Buy this book to read yourself, but also with which to whack your friends when they share toxic memes and fake news.

