00:00:03:05 - 00:00:31:17
Kyle King
Welcome to another episode of the Crisis Conflict Emergency Management Podcast, brought to you by Capacity Building International. I'm Kyle King and I'll be your host today as we discuss the following topic. Navigating the Information Maze and Crisis in Emergency Management. Now the role of information and its integrity is paramount in the landscape of crisis and emergency management. The advent of technology and social media has revolutionized the way information is disseminated, leading to a faster spread, but also creating a fertile ground for the propagation of misinformed motion and disinformation.
00:00:31:18 - 00:00:54:17
Kyle King
These distortions of truth can have serious implications in managing crises and emergencies where the right information at the right time can save lives and resources. In this new episode of The Crisis Conflict Emergency Management Podcast, we delve into the complex world of information, misinformation and disinformation, examining its impact on crisis and emergency management itself. Now joining us today will be our guest, Chris Kremidas
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Kyle King
Courtney, who is a globally recognized thought leader, futurist and policy influencer on addressing malign influence campaigns, defending democracy, disinformation and societal resilience. He has led efforts to develop policy approaches to protect and support democracy, equality and the rule of law in a fast changing world. As a seasoned international community builder, Chris originated and leads the EU NATO public private civil society exercises to bring together a broad spectrum of leaders to produce workable solutions to address emerging challenges to democracy and security.
00:01:25:03 - 00:01:40:15
Kyle King
Chris is also a member of the EU HYBE-Net and is a member of the NATO's Civil Experts group. Before we get into the conversation about sort of the overarching theme here, I think it's very good for us to sort of have a baseline understanding of the definitions for misinformation and disinformation. So at least we're working all from the same page.
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Kyle King
So can you elaborate a little bit more about the basic definition and what you're working with in your field?
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Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Absolutely. So primary difference between misinformation and disinformation has to do with intention. So misinformation is a mistake. You're passing a grid location of a water delivery point in the middle of a hurricane, emerge a post hurricane emergency, and someone gives you the wrong grid location. That's a misinformation or a news report that gets it wrong. Mistakes are made.
00:02:09:16 - 00:02:41:23
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
People are human. These things can happen. So there's no ill intention in misinformation. But it can happen now. Disinformation. Disinformation is where there is malign intention. So the disinformation is intentional information manipulation to serve a particular purpose, to divide and to mislead, to misdirect and to, you know, in this case, to make it more difficult for response forces to to deliver relief, to deliver supplies or whatever it may be.
00:02:41:23 - 00:03:04:06
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
So key differences there. Now, even if disinformation did not exist in a disaster situation where communication is difficult. Radios don't always work. They don't work over hills. Mistakes are made. So I think that's an important thing to understand, is even if we didn't have this information did not exist. Communications challenges will always be there, and information is.
00:03:04:06 - 00:03:27:03
Kyle King
Such a key and critical component of managing a crisis and emergencies or disasters. You know, whatever we want to call it. But I think there's been a significant impact in terms of information, use of information and public communications, and most recently with the advent of new technologies and specifically the rapid spread of information during a crisis. Can you talk a little bit to that point about sort of the impacts of the misinformation and disinformation?
00:03:27:08 - 00:03:46:08
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Absolutely. And it's a great question. So I tend to look at them as a challenge to governance, our ability to govern, deliver services. You know, you can't govern a community if you can't communicate with it. Right. All of these things that go into governing a township, a state, a county, a country, any of these. And so I come from a hybrid threats background.
00:03:46:08 - 00:04:06:12
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
So disinformation is one of several types of hybrid threats. You know, there's cyber there's, you know, giving money to political campaigns that do thing that all the whole spread tackling critical infrastructure. But right now we're focused on disinformation. So hybrid threats are a threat to governance. They seek to weaken a country's ability to govern itself for a political purpose.
00:04:06:18 - 00:04:33:03
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Now, trans national threats like organized crime are also a threat to governance, in that they're trying to create a system of impunity inside of that governing structure so that they can do their business, their illicit business, so they don't necessarily want to take the whole government down. Sometimes they do, but their main intention is, I just want to cut this little hole on the Fed so I can move money and drugs or whatever back and forth right up the legal fence.
00:04:33:06 - 00:04:55:02
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And finally it come to natural disasters, natural and manmade disaster. In this case, they represent a full spectrum challenge to governance. I always look at things in terms of as challenges to governance, but in this case, with a lot of hybrid actors will do is they look, they're opportunistic. They just don't you know, if there's a natural disaster, oh, this is a great opportunity to divide this society or divide this community.
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Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And they'll they'll be opportunistic in that way. So I think that's the first thing, is I frame it as governance. The second thing is that everything we do or do not do communicates. So our actions are words, how we prioritize, what part of the county is getting served first, who's getting water and food first, and why All of these things communicate something.
00:05:17:01 - 00:05:44:24
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And so I think that's the most important thing. I think what's the last natural disaster I was in myself was here. I live on the Isle of Japan, on the island, Greece. We had a mediterranean hurricane here almost three years ago. You know, power's out, water is out, New cell phones, spotty coverage. And the biggest thing that communicated to, I could say, for in our little neighborhood was late at night with the hammering rain, seeing the yellow lights of the electric company showing up to climb the poles to reattach things.
00:05:45:03 - 00:06:04:16
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
That was, you know, those the action communicated that the local authorities were on it before. We couldn't get any kind of message, what's happening? What's next? But seeing that relief being delivered and having our power turn on a few hours later, that spoke a lot. And I think when you think of these things in communication, it's not just words, but it's actions as well.
00:06:04:17 - 00:06:23:02
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And I think when it comes to modern crises, in particular natural disasters, what do you think about this information? There's really two targets one want to be concerned about. One is the general public, obviously, is you know, is are they getting bad information or is someone trying to mislead them and caused panic. But the second one is your own response operation.
00:06:23:07 - 00:06:45:15
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Right? So you have people who are monitoring social media to try to figure out what's happening, where the where is the flood going? Where is the fire going? You know, your own staff are also a target of disinformation. And so those are the two biggest things is it's not just about the public, it's about your own operation and how you manage and train and exercise your own response forces to be prepared for that.
00:06:45:18 - 00:07:05:13
Kyle King
I really like the governance angle. I've seen this conversation coming up more and more in terms of some of the work that we do. And if we're talking and you're also familiar with some of the stuff that we do, but you know, some of the national resilience strategy issues and we we look at these things, it really comes down from a national level, national security strategy down, national resilience strategies that these are all about governance.
00:07:05:13 - 00:07:27:17
Kyle King
And I find that is specifically very unique perspective, not just in the subject of governance itself, but the impact in terms of emergency management. If I draw that down to the community level and then I match that or sort of, you know, walk across the aisle and see the emergency management community and all the discussions about how we can be more effective and preparedness and response and recovery mitigation, all these different phases of emergency management.
00:07:27:17 - 00:07:46:14
Kyle King
There is a ceiling that's reached which is that that decision making level where in the emergency management community there's a sort of a lot of broad spectrum, sometimes vague responsibilities are given. You know, we have to manage this community, make sure to prepared public education, public information programs, all these things, all the planning and exercises and things like that.
00:07:46:14 - 00:08:02:16
Kyle King
But then it hits this level of what we would call governance. It comes down to authority, right? The ability to convene people, the ability to spend money. There is that governance layer, which is for me sometimes fascinating because in the emergency management community, some it's an authority issue and this is where you're coming in with that. This is attacking good.
00:08:02:17 - 00:08:23:22
Kyle King
The governance piece is part of the overall way that a community is responding or a state is responding to a disaster. I think that's really interesting and something that we're looking at even a little bit more just in terms of governance and its role within emergency management because it's very unique. Another thing that you said, which I found really fascinating was the use of disinformation for specific purposes.
00:08:24:02 - 00:08:47:21
Kyle King
So to carve out your own sort of tunnel in society, so to speak, if I could phrase it that way, and versus sort of undermining a government and trying to overthrow a government, I think a lot of conversations happening these days are about disinformation, sort of large scale overthrowing governments. Want your point about just as a means to an end is very I think, interesting when you're working in that response phase and you're working with communities and you see these things coming up.
00:08:47:21 - 00:08:59:08
Kyle King
I never actually really thought about the fact as somebody is trying to achieve the civic purpose or goal or to misdirect traffic away from a smuggling route or whatever the cases are. These are some of the things that you have heard of or seen before.
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Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Absolutely. So just to be clear, they are the ones who are interested in sort of carving out a path of impunity in the governing structures. Are the organized crime state malign state actors want to weaken the whole government or divide it or make it more difficult for them to govern. And I think it's useful to talk through a few examples scenario in a real world, examples where we've seen this happen.
00:09:23:07 - 00:09:49:13
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
One is a few years ago in India, in the Kerala region, there was flooding and there was something on social media. Someone posted a fake video about a very large dam in that region and they posted a fake video showing that the dam was leaking and about to explode, which it wasn't, but it created such mass panic in the region and put so many people on the road who didn't need to be that it really slowed down the entire response.
00:09:49:16 - 00:10:13:03
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
You know, and think about it, this being India, everything's had a very large population scale, right? And so you had response forces that couldn't get in to deliver consequences in this situation because of panic created by intentional disinformation of that sort. Right now in Moldova, it's not well known globally, but right now in Moldova there is a drought, there is a severe drought.
00:10:13:03 - 00:10:36:21
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And Moldova is, you know, a country of about 3 million people between Romania and Ukraine. You've probably seen it in the news that, you know, the Russians are targeting that region, but there's a lot of disinformation right now going into Moldova to divide the country over the drought, over who's being favored and who's better off with the drought and who is the drought being caused intentionally by the government.
00:10:37:02 - 00:11:12:19
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And so you're seeing sort of a it doesn't always have to be a very fast moving disinfo effort, but there is a disinformation campaign to divide Moldovan society using the drought as a lever. So this is a case of a slow moving natural disaster happening, drought that is being exploited by a foreign actor. And then of course you come to what we all lived through, the global coronavirus pandemic, and we all saw the role that disinformation play there, and not just in terms of, you know, vaccines or crazy things about Bill Gates shooting a chip into your head to track you or any of that stuff.
00:11:12:19 - 00:11:32:23
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
We saw the impact of that. We saw vaccine. We saw people turning down the vaccine from disinformation. And I used to cover that particular anti-vax stuff on the measles. Prior to that, we saw this happen with the measles. It was intensified when it came to the coronavirus and the vaccine. We had people refusing to take prudent measures in Europe.
00:11:32:23 - 00:11:54:22
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
We had people attacking and firebombing vaccine centers and other places. We even had and this has happened globally, but mostly in Europe, all the crazy stories about the 5G, you know, all the crazy conspiracy theories that were coming out of Russian platforms saying that, you know, you're going to be tracked by some kind of 5G chip. And so, you know, the 5G towers are a threat to you.
00:11:55:02 - 00:12:13:14
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Over 300 5G towers in Europe and Northern Africa were burned down as a result. And a lot of 4G towers, too, because, you know, who could tell the difference? So you had individual people who thought they were they need to look out for their society and they were attacking their own critical infrastructure based on disinformation during the pandemic.
00:12:13:14 - 00:12:35:04
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
These are just a few examples. So we've seen it. We've also, you know, probably some people in the states remember the hurricane sharks, a lot of those were coming from the Russians or Sputnik. You know, there's sharks on the road and flooding. And, you know, hurricane sharks are coming. We've also had during Hurricane Ian, you had Russian sites and platforms putting out messages saying that the government was abandoning victims.
00:12:35:04 - 00:13:00:11
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
So, you know, these are the things that are common narratives. So, you know, think about a natural disaster is a time of great social and governmental vulnerability. There's a challenge to governance. And so any social divides, historical social wounds in society, any income disparity, language differences, anything you could possibly use to divide people and be used in those situations, to divide people in narratives like the response is failing.
00:13:00:11 - 00:13:17:00
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
They're abandoning us. They don't have a plan. They don't care about us. They're prioritizing them. That neighborhood, not our neighborhood, you know, down to very some of the worst ones where people can say, oh, the water and food they're bringing you is contaminated. Don't take it right there. And you see the full spread.
00:13:17:02 - 00:13:19:02
Kyle King
It's great that you mentioned some of those strategies.
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Chris Kremidas-Courtney
I let's talk.
00:13:19:23 - 00:13:34:24
Kyle King
A little bit about that because it's fascinating to hear about you sort of identifying these things early on. It is seems like we very much know or like you assess your own community, you very much know where the weaknesses are. So what are some of the strategies that can be employed to combat misinformation and disinformation in a crisis?
00:13:35:05 - 00:13:55:16
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Not a great question. I think the first thing is, and this is something that places like Finland and Sweden do very well, and they do this from a federal level, and that is they make a great effort to educate their public about what the emergency plan is. They produce booklets, they have TV commercials. If there's a fire, here's what happens.
00:13:55:16 - 00:14:21:09
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And here who does what? They made a great effort to educate the public about these things. But I think it's worth going a step further. And that is when you do exercise, we all exercise response bring citizen aides in to observe, make them part of it. I think what's important about that is let more citizens see how it works so that when things are happening, they can explain to their friends in the neighborhood, Oh, no, no.
00:14:21:09 - 00:14:45:16
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Normally this is what happens. I have to do this and this here's why. The priority. The other thing is when you do exercise these scenarios, exercise misinformation and disinformation being part of your challenge. Don't wait until the crisis to face that challenge. You need to have a red team who knows how to have disinfo experts, who knows how to kind of create some nasty problem for you.
00:14:45:21 - 00:15:15:04
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Because if you exert, you know, if you make an effort to understand one of the potential messages in narrative, as you said rightly, they're pretty predictable. In most communities we know where the societal divides are. That's what they'll aim at. That's what this central actors will aim at. And so I think include citizens in the exercises, include disinformation and confusing misinformation and the exercise to force your staff to work through those, I think make disinformation experts part of the process.
00:15:15:09 - 00:15:38:01
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
There's another thing at Friends of Europe where I'm a senior fellow. We've been conducting the EU, NATO's private sector hybrid of resilience exercises for a few years now. And one thing we came up with in 2021 was the idea of information, first responders. So we all know what first responders are for fire, for medical, everything. But we came up with the concept of information, first responders.
00:15:38:01 - 00:15:59:17
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
So these are local leaders, informal leaders. Maybe they're the maybe they're the coach of the soccer team in the village and everyone knows and admires whoever. But you take individuals who already have a standing in local communities and you work with them. You make them part of your information plan. So you include them in your exercises. If they you know, if they can make it, they're usually busy people.
00:15:59:19 - 00:16:21:15
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
You make them part of your communications plan so that when you're putting out certain key messages that those local information first responders are part of the information response. Now, here's why that's important. There's something called the Edelman Trust barometer. They put out a they do a global study every year on who's who in society do we trust private sector, government, local, national, the whole bit.
00:16:21:15 - 00:16:50:05
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And year after year, they tell us that the closer to where people live you go, the more likely they are to trust that person, be it their mayor, be it their city manager, but more importantly, be it their informal leader in the neighborhood who's always out fixing things. Right. So it's not just official leaders, but informal leaders. And so, you know, I did an article a few years ago called All Resilience is Local or I talked a bit about this.
00:16:50:05 - 00:17:10:04
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And I think that's where it's really important that this information, first responders, if you can get a system of them and every township, county, whatnot, make them part of your plan. These are people they know they're more likely to believe them. It makes it a lot easier to debunk disinformation when it's someone they know personally versus hearing it on the radio.
00:17:10:04 - 00:17:30:18
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
You still need to put it on the radio, but having those information first responders is a very important aspect. And what happened after 2021 was in 2022, we actually had information, first responders during the pandemic in Sweden and Italy and a few other places who were actually serving us information, first responders to great effect.
00:17:30:18 - 00:17:55:08
Kyle King
It's actually pretty fascinating. So three sort of recommendations or key takeaways from this or that enhance your transparency, invite people into your your exercises. Let them see what's going on, especially local communities, you know, read, team, you know, play. We, as we all know, sort of the we know the divides in our communities play against those in an exercise and actually read team it and then of course local leaders community leaders or I think we can never escape that.
00:17:55:08 - 00:18:13:01
Kyle King
And I was in a country which I will not name, but where I was part of a larger regional response and the local communities. Long story short, local community leaders, religious leaders had absolutely this already, as opposed to somebody from outside their community. And it was so self up. It was so self. It was so evident that it was unbelievable.
00:18:13:01 - 00:18:29:22
Kyle King
And that was a real realization for me many, many years ago that community leaders at a local level are just basically a key to getting access to that community and for people to believe you. I want to sort of unpack something really quick, which is about the quality of disinformation.
00:18:29:22 - 00:18:31:09
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
So if we.
00:18:31:11 - 00:18:51:12
Kyle King
We've taken these steps to be transparent, we invite people in public perception to transparency. Always good, bring them in to look at the exercise and how the decision making process works. And then we read team that, you know, trying to create a scenario where playing against our own divides in our communities, there are a lot of that sort of disinformation we've seen has been sort of, in my words, comical, right?
00:18:51:12 - 00:19:22:10
Kyle King
So it seems just a little bit not believable. And it's not really that great. And it sort of seems to be playing on some some narratives that people follow, but also easily discernible from actual reality. So as the quality of information or the quality of disinformation gets better, is this going to be a concern like this, especially with all the AI technologies and videos and voiceovers and all these things like that, that we could, you know, really face a critical issue in the future discerning between truth and disinformation?
00:19:22:12 - 00:19:44:03
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Absolutely. And then a lot of work on that in the last year, how we're moving from a post-truth world into a post reality world with janitor of janitor of AI with something called conversational AI, which will be an AI that can sort of talk to you and get to know you and learn how to convince you personally. You know, to an extent that each person is living in their own miniature Truman Show.
00:19:44:04 - 00:20:10:23
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Well, that's a whole nother discussion we'll leave out. But I think in terms of disaster response, that sure, a lot of disinformation, narrative TVs and videos and things you see there are silly. They're cheap or we don't believe them. But a few people do. And that's the other thing. I think there's two things here. One is, you know, just because we think it's ridiculous doesn't mean a 2 to 3% of your population isn't going to buy it.
00:20:10:23 - 00:20:26:01
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And it doesn't take a lot of people. It doesn't take an awful lot of people to be convinced to disrupt your response. Right. You know, think about trying to fall asleep in a room with a mosquito. It's all a small thing, but it's buzzing around the room. So, you know, the little thing you put in a can of paint to stir it.
00:20:26:01 - 00:20:44:19
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
When you shake it, you know, it doesn't take a lot a lot of people to be convinced to have a larger impact. You don't need a majority of people believing these narratives for them to have an impact. That's one thing. Secondly is, yes, there is an increasing sophistication and the most believable disinformation machine has an element of truth in it, right?
00:20:44:19 - 00:21:04:08
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
So it's not a complete fabrication, but just enough of the manipulation to maybe make the population say, I don't know if I believe that. I'm not sure I believe what they're saying. So I think that's one thing. I also want to expand on some things I said earlier, and I think a great example or transparency is the country of Taiwan.
00:21:04:14 - 00:21:21:07
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
So what they do is they take their biggest critics and bring them into the meeting. They take the people who are most likely to stir things up against the local government and they make them part of the process. They bring them in. Well, here come be a part of it. See what we're doing, Here's what we're doing. We're not hiding anything.
00:21:21:07 - 00:21:41:04
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
They're very transparent. And because of that, they have a higher level of citizen satisfaction with political decisions on everything from parking to what happens with your data that gets taken for contact, tracing everything. So I think transparency's a big one, but take your local you know, your local critics are who's going to be the most critical in response.
00:21:41:04 - 00:22:04:20
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Invite them to the exercise, make them part of it. Right. So now they are seeing what's happening out there. Now, a lot of people listening myself, Chris, I think it's a good idea. But what we've seen around the world is the places that do that, they get better results. Because imagine the information first responder in a community who might be the last person you would expect to back the response forces to say, No, no, they're doing a good job.
00:22:04:20 - 00:22:18:15
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
This is now. This is how they exercised it. When I saw it. This is the this is the approach that makes the most sense and is able to help us the most. So let's get behind them and support them. And in fact, anyone that has a truck go down to this school and see if you can help them load things up.
00:22:18:15 - 00:22:35:08
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Right. Isn't that so much different than having a critic who was not part of the process, who doesn't trust it because they don't know, but they gain political power by stirring up trouble, saying, you know, they're not going to help us. It's a very you know, wouldn't you rather have someone maybe if all you could get them to do is shut up?
00:22:35:13 - 00:23:01:00
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Right. But I think that's worth it. And I think countries like Taiwan and Sweden and others have shown us how to do that. I think the other thing is hugely important is that a response that delivers is the best method of debunking disinformation. When people see you delivering, they see water flowing, the electricity's on, there's someone there going around checking on houses to check for injured, right?
00:23:01:02 - 00:23:26:08
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
People see what they see with their own eyes and action is the best way to debunk it. And I think one other there is a number of things. You know, this is a whole there's a whole training series you do with cruise and whatnot. But if you are a let's say you're the spokesman or spokesperson for your response and you're speaking to the media, what you don't ever want to do is don't repeat the disinformation narrative while you're debunking it.
00:23:26:10 - 00:23:48:18
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Say, well, you've been hearing rumors that the dams about to break and then the camera cuts off. You know, well, that isn't true. You want to give very positive responses. For example, if there is a disinformation narrative that the water is contaminated, you know, repeat the disinformation narrative, you say we test the water daily, it's clean. If that changes, we'll let you know.
00:23:48:24 - 00:24:09:24
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Now make sure you're testing the water. Right. But you give a clear claim. Yes, we're testing the water every day. Yes, it's clean. If that changes, we'll let you know. Next question. Right. Clear without giving any credence, without repeating that disinfo message, because when that happens, people get confused and they think because they heard you saying it too.
00:24:09:24 - 00:24:17:04
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Now do they believe it? What does that mean? So that's a whole nother session on the specific techniques.
00:24:17:06 - 00:24:31:05
Kyle King
But I think it's a valid point in. Thanks for clarifying that because I mean it's it's an issue of public trust. Right? And so if you say you're going to respond, you need to respond and do so accordingly. Otherwise you lose public trust and it doesn't take you know, what was the expression years ago when I was emergency services.
00:24:31:05 - 00:24:48:12
Kyle King
But it takes like decades to build trust and then like, you can lose it. And that's, I think, something that we all have to continually deal with. And if you're going to do the things like test the water, and I think of Flint, Michigan, and other places like, you know, you really need to be testing the water. You just can't show up and like drain from a faucet and be like, it's okay.
00:24:48:12 - 00:24:49:02
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
You know.
00:24:49:04 - 00:25:14:09
Kyle King
You have to actually be performing these things. Obviously, that's the foundation of trust as to do what you say you're going to do, especially, and most importantly, you know, as part of government and this governance conversation we're having. But I think the community engagement is just incredibly important because and I think specifically in this field of misinformation, disinformation, because of the fact that when we look at it from a national level, that seems a little bit too far away, seems hyper political.
00:25:14:10 - 00:25:30:06
Kyle King
But when you bring it down to a community level like this is your environment and these are the people you're living with and this is the community you're living when you're living in. And so I think that there is a the only way to mitigate sort of the rapid spread of disinformation is by active community engagement. What are your thoughts on that?
00:25:30:06 - 00:25:34:04
Kyle King
That seems to be, at least for me, one of the best mitigation strategies.
00:25:34:08 - 00:25:57:14
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
I think you're right on target because if you are not actively communicating and I'm not talking during the crisis, this is during the year, if you're not actively communicating with them, first of all, they aren't going to know who you are. Who side again. Is that Kyle from the fire department? Yeah. Yeah. So I think there needs to be a familiarity in the neighborhood, both with the authorities and the information first responders.
00:25:57:14 - 00:26:29:10
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And I think also during a crisis, if you do not communicate with your public, someone else will. Other people will know route people because, you know, in crisis or otherwise, two things happen. One is this psychological dynamic called cognitive closure, where people want to and they want they have a and this is built into our brains from the time we were, you know, living in caves as a survival technique, we need to have some kind of closure on what's happening.
00:26:29:10 - 00:26:50:02
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
We're going to seek a simple, comfortable answer. If someone else is giving that to the public and it's not you, that's a problem. Because once they seize on it, it's difficult to get them to believe something else. So I think that is information first responders and authorities get out there first to clear. And don't just be the face that shows up in crisis, be the face they know already or the voice they know already.
00:26:50:02 - 00:27:15:16
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
That's important. The second thing is you are going to have if you don't get out in front of it, you're going to have people who gain personal social status and power by making up stories or by holding themselves out as an authority. When they are not. And so, again, once that happens, it's difficult to put the toothpaste back in the tube, which is why be out front always be communicating everything you do communicates.
00:27:15:16 - 00:27:36:13
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
But I think the challenge is in situations where the power is out, right? Think of how difficult that is to communicate when there's no electricity or mobile services down, right? It's the people in the neighborhood who we're going to talk. What did you hear? Well, I heard this, so I saw a truck going by with this. Maybe they're doing that and the neighbors are all out talking to each other and speculating.
00:27:36:15 - 00:27:58:18
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Right. And again, this is where if you've already been communicated with. And while I remember about a month ago, there was an announcement they were talking about that they had a new system that was going to do this if there was a fire. And here's how they would tell us. Right. And so, again, you don't realize how ongoing public information efforts and have an impact in those moments when you have no communications with those people.
00:27:58:19 - 00:28:17:10
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Right. So whatever you communicated to them previously, you kind of hope they remember. But again, if you're really doing well and you have an information first responder in that part of the city who can maybe they're going around in a bicycle stopping and a neighbor goes going, okay, here's what's going on. Here's the story, Here's the latest. We're going have a new announcement around 4:00.
00:28:17:10 - 00:28:34:11
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
I got to kind of make the rounds for about a 12 block area. So it's might take me a while, But here's what's happening. Right. So that's a very different scenario than a watch. A neighbor speculating, isn't it? This is why I think something like information first responders is I think it's a pretty easy one to pull off.
00:28:34:12 - 00:28:35:08
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
No, I completely agree.
00:28:35:08 - 00:28:57:20
Kyle King
It's a it's a novel idea. And at least in terms of addressing a new and current challenges that we're facing on the information space, one of the things I want to circle back to real quick, because it just popped into my mind was is the ability to quantify disinformation impacts. And so you had mentioned like 300 cell phone towers, you know, because people went out and destroyed them and sort of eradicated their own communication capability.
00:28:57:20 - 00:29:02:12
Kyle King
But are we able to easily quantify the impact of disinformation?
00:29:02:14 - 00:29:22:10
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Very difficult or a lot of people trying to do that. And there are a lot of academics trying to do that. I think what you get is if you can quantify it, you'll quantify an event from three years ago because that's how long it'll, you know, 2 to 3 years to gather that, to get a grant, to study it, to gather the data, to go through the data.
00:29:22:10 - 00:29:40:23
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
And, you know, sift through it and figure it out. So what you end up looking at history and it's difficult to look at the present. And so, yes, there are people doing that. For me, the real challenge that I've been really looking at lately is the future with the new methods of communication. The Internet is going from two dimensional, three dimensional.
00:29:41:03 - 00:30:01:04
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
We are going from an interaction, active relationship with digital media, our phones and laptops to an interactive one. We're going to be wearing glasses instead of carrying a phone, and they're going to be in front of us. On the glass is going to be our email and advertisements and everything else. But it's also going to be looking at our eyeball to elect what we look at and for how long.
00:30:01:04 - 00:30:25:08
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
So the micro-targeting data is much better. So I think we need to really be get the fundamentals right now, figure out how to clearly communicate now. And like I said, even without this information, communicating clearly to the public and getting your own staff not to believe the first spot report they hear and learning, you know, be tough on exercising.
00:30:25:08 - 00:30:44:16
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
How you confirm these things before you're going to launch four trucks full of precious water out to a particular location or whatever it may be. You want to get used to confirming that, because a lot of the data there, you know, there are so many contractors coming around now everywhere selling us these platforms. All we're going to look at all the the social media and what and chatter.
00:30:44:16 - 00:31:01:02
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
We're going to tell you what's happening so you can respond and say, yeah, but all of that is what's being manipulated by malign actors and just and sometimes it's just by people who are are mischievous, who just want to mess with the system like the kid, you know, like it's the modern version of the kid who calls in the bomb threat to school.
00:31:01:02 - 00:31:25:20
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
So, you know, I think we have to get the fundamentals right. We have to ensure that our response staffs and coordinating staffs are very well versed and trained extra hard on confirming information, you know, and not just sort of taking things are running with them, of course, in in the moment during crisis. That's the time to be. We always say that's the time to be calm, the time to take a breath, get it right.
00:31:26:00 - 00:31:34:22
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
You're going to get it fast and right. But if you sacrifice getting it right for getting it fast, this is where you can let disinformation have a great impact on your operation.
00:31:34:22 - 00:32:02:03
Kyle King
Yeah, thanks for that. And I think also that the there's an ability to quantify, even say, a hyper local level. I mean, if you're sending out a response or sending supplies and a local militia or whatever, you know, block your supply route or they confiscate supplies because they think it should be going somewhere else, because they don't believe your response plan is appropriate based on whatever equities in the community or whatever the case is in terms of, you know, they feel like they're not being served or they're not part of the their needs are being addressed.
00:32:02:03 - 00:32:21:04
Kyle King
And so that's where, you know, even locally, you can quantify these things either through a delayed response, stolen goods, materials, whatever the case says, additional friction points in your response that you're having to deal with, and that's additional time, effort and other sort of issues that we have to contend with. It's a super fascinating discussion. And, you know, we could probably go on much longer about that.
00:32:21:04 - 00:32:38:17
Kyle King
But I think one of the things that we you've brought up is the information first responders and some of the work that you're doing. If we wanted to find out more about that and, you know, where can we find the work that you're doing? How can people get in touch with you if they're interested in some of these concepts or enhancing their community resilience by becoming better at information management?
00:32:38:17 - 00:32:40:12
Kyle King
Our communications, how can we reach you?
00:32:40:13 - 00:32:58:20
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Well, thanks. It's been great to be with you. And yeah, and those those instances you did mention. Yeah, at a local level, I think you can't quantify, but you've got to set aside resources to sort of track it and quantify it. It's been great to be with you here today. You can find me on LinkedIn at Chris Courageous Courtney and also you can find me on the think tank.
00:32:58:20 - 00:33:27:00
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
I work for where we conduct the exercises. And a lot of the articles is called Friends of Europe. That's Friends of Europe dot org, dawg. Also, you'll know I'm frequently involved in the Naval Postgraduate School, the Institute for Security Governance in Monterey, California, where we conduct various courses on resilience to hybrid threats. And these sorts of things. You'll find my contact information there on LinkedIn, and it's been great to be with you all, and I really wish the entire audience all the best.
00:33:27:00 - 00:33:37:18
Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Thank you for what you do. You know, what you do is so important to all of us and thank you for always trying to improve how you deliver these very important services to us.
00:33:37:19 - 00:33:52:10
Kyle King
Thanks a lot, Chris. I really appreciate it. Thanks for joining us today. And I certainly recommend reaching out to Chris. If you have any questions about misinformation, disinformation and the impact on our community response and emergency management, please reach out is a great resource. Thanks again, Chris, and we'll see you next time.
