Mr Tom Sear

Cyber Manipulation Research and Advice. Government reports and testimony to Australian and New Zealand Parliaments on Cyber Manipulation of Elections 2018 -

Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters Inquiry into and report on all aspects of the conduct of the 2016 Federal Election and matters related thereto. The Parliament of Australia. Several key recommendations were undertaken and adopted by the Government. 

PhD work explores digital commemoration and the warfare information space (notably interpersonal and social media-based communication) over the last century. It has a particular focus on the convergence and reflexivity between the memory of nodal conflicts from the twentieth century, contemporary war and media ecologies and gaming within planetary scale computation. The purpose of this interdisciplinary research is to advise IT specialists, military personnel and educators how to maximize information tools within future conflict, by applying historical, social science and digital theory lenses to the analysis.

Cyber security is increasingly concerned with the cultural and social dynamics operating in digital space. Historical data, popular recollection of war and commemoration are potent forces that both connect and polarise society and social media. They are also forms of cultural memory that can be mobilised or attacked in information war.

Commemoration has emerged a central dynamic of information war (IW).  Memory, articulated as digital information enters the cyber domain of mass influence. Today, the internet offers a chance to personalise our commemoration by choosing when, where and how we take part. Increasingly the past, present and future blur together. Contemporary conflicts are commemorated as soon as they occur, using words and imagery from the past. The faces of soldiers and nurses from 1915 appear on our screens alongside those from 1945, 1965, 2005 and 2015. This capacity for simultaneous, personalised correlation beyond the realms of conventional Westphalian sovereignty, creates a new opportunity for state and non-state actors to use information in a cyber-security environment. Indeed, in one of the most well-known cases of Cyber War, the 2007 Estonian incident, it was the removal of a bronze memorial to Soviet era soldiers that triggered the cyber-attack.

Coordinating influencing, measurement and the identification of priorities to ensure consistent messaging in the cyber realm is an increasing focus of international defence partners. The functions, definitions and authorities within contemporary militaries PSYOPS (now known as Military Information Support Operations [MISO]) Information Operations (IO) and Strategic Communications (StratComms) increasingly overlap in the cyber realm. Providing cohesive, complementary approaches in the information realm is now a major challenge for national governments. 

Strong ties to USSOCOM/JSOU

Publications Coming Soon
Under review  

Article in invitation-only first edition of The Journal of Digital War https://www.digital-war.org/ 

 ‘What if Facebook had existed a century ago?’ The First World War and Planetary-Scale Social Media Platforms in the Connective Centenary, Special Centenary Issue, First World War Studies (Taylor & Francis) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIw_g5Oyx2o 

Forthcoming

2020            ‘The True Story of Ah Q’: British decline, American power, the rise of Chinese nationalism 1918-1923  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqUKtAEAhLo 
2020            Article in invitation-only first edition of The Journal of Digital War https://www.digital-war.org/ 
2020            Occasional Paper: Cyberstorm, JSOU Press, USSOCOM