From Cyborg Propaganda to Malicious AI Swarms: Cognitive security and the new architecture of influence
Date:
Talk at Norway’s National Security Conference (NSM) on hybrid influence threats and defense strategies.
Abstract
Online influence operations are evolving from isolated fake accounts into persistent cognitive attack infrastructures. In this talk, Dr. Schroeder explores two emerging threat models: ‘Cyborg Propaganda’, where verified human users are used to disseminate centrally coordinated, AI-generated narratives, and ‘Malicious AI Swarms’, which deploy coordinated, adaptive artificial agents across platforms. By collapsing the boundary between authentic and engineered collective behavior, these hybrid threats degrade a society’s signal integrity, situational awareness, and trust. The presentation will outline why traditional content-based defenses are breaking down and propose a new defense doctrine focused on coordination detection, cryptographic provenance, and agent-based simulation to protect democratic resilience.
Key Topics
- Cyborg Propaganda: How verified human users amplify centrally coordinated, AI-generated narratives
- Malicious AI Swarms: Coordinated, adaptive artificial agents operating across platforms
- Cognitive Attack Infrastructure: The evolution from isolated fake accounts to persistent threat systems
- Defense Doctrine: Coordination detection, cryptographic provenance, and agent-based simulation
Resources
Presentation
Related Papers
- How malicious AI swarms can threaten democracy (PDF) — Science Policy Forum article on AI swarms and democratic resilience
- How cyborg propaganda reshapes collective action — Research on human-AI hybrid influence operations