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Rather than seeking to recuperate the ideal of a digital public sphere or lament its demise with the rise of social media platforms, in this paper I seek to identify the dangers of precisely this insistence to imagine the Internet as a public sphere. It is this curious insistence and persistence that, I claim, may feed into precisely those post-truth media dynamics such critical accounts worry about and rally against. The success of viral conspiracy narratives like Pizzagate and QAnon, as well as other forms of mis- and disinformation, hinges not (only) on the absence or distortion of a healthy democratic public sphere, as is typically assumed, but (also) on its persistence as an imaginary in an environment that obeys an altogether different set of logics, namely that of ‘communicative capitalism’ and ‘information warfare.’ Whereas the former has drawn most critical attention in connection to current post-truth dynamics (e.g., the effects of targeted advertising and the role of algorithms in creating polarizing echo chambers and filter bubbles), I will instead focus on the latter. The unique problem and ‘cunning’ of what I refer to as ‘post-truth conspiracism’ is that it draws on idea(l)s of digital publicness to establish its own epistemic legitimacy, as well as derive its unique powers of persuasion, while also mobilizing the full tactical arsenal of information warfare in a global attention economy. The resulting weaponization of digital public sphere imaginaries complicates attempts to recuperate the idea(l) of a digital public sphere as a solution to a ‘polluted’ information environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather than seeking to recuperate the ideal of a digital public sphere or lament its demise with the rise of social media platforms, in this paper I seek to identify the dangers of precisely this insistence to imagine the Internet as a public sphere. It is this curious insistence and persistence that, I claim, may feed into precisely those post-truth media dynamics such critical accounts worry about and rally against. The success of viral conspiracy narratives like Pizzagate and QAnon, as well as other forms of mis- and disinformation, hinges not (only) on the absence or distortion of a healthy democratic public sphere, as is typically assumed, but (also) on its persistence as an imaginary in an environment that obeys an altogether different set of logics, namely that of ‘communicative capitalism’ and ‘information warfare.’ Whereas the former has drawn most critical attention in connection to current post-truth dynamics (e.g., the effects of targeted advertising and the role of algorithms in creating polarizing echo chambers and filter bubbles), I will instead focus on the latter. The unique problem and ‘cunning’ of what I refer to as ‘post-truth conspiracism’ is that it draws on idea(l)s of digital publicness to establish its own epistemic legitimacy, as well as derive its unique powers of persuasion, while also mobilizing the full tactical arsenal of information warfare in a global attention economy. The resulting weaponization of digital public sphere imaginaries complicates attempts to recuperate the idea(l) of a digital public sphere as a solution to a ‘polluted’ information environment.

It is undeniable that forced migration and displacement is a “weapon of war.” To understand the ever-escalating refugee crisis in the world today and how it might be addressed, it is necessary to examine its “root cause(s).” Organized political violence in the form of either war or protracted armed conflict or oppressive dictatorial authoritarianism or totalitarianism are the prime drivers of forced migration and displacement in the world today. The most recent statistics on the world's forcibly displaced demonstrates their direct correlation to war and protracted armed conflict. The vast bulk of the world's forcibly displaced come from war torn countries. What is too often ignored in the academic literature on refugees and forced migration is that civilian non-combatants are often used as “weapons of war.” Mary Kaldor's “new wars” thesis is premised on the notion that wars and protracted armed conflicts defy solution because it is in the interest of the opposing combatants to continue the fighting, consequently, wars are characterized as “endless.” This has obvious implications for the continuous increase in the number of forced migrants in the world today. And, further, the “new wars” thesis postulates that civilian non-combatants are deliberately targeted during protracted armed conflicts or wars. Kelly Greenhill has presented evidence that “coercive engineered migration” is utilized to a State's advantage over another State. The weaponization of civilian non-combatants is a trigger for mass forced migration. Three recent cases dealing with genocide are offered as illustrations: Bosnia; Rwanda; and the Syria Civil War, with the Sieges at Homs and Aleppo. The article concludes with the consideration of the “endless cycle of war” that includes forced migration, smuggling, human trafficking, and other international crimes such as dealing in drugs and arms. All these elements are inter-connected and feed off each other and to be able to break this “endless cycle of war,” there must be a concerted and simultaneous effort to address all these things together. Only by doing so can we ever hope to achieve a “sustainable peace” and thereby end the use and abuse of forced migration and displacement as a “weapon of war.”

Technological progress has brought about the emergence of machines that have the capacity to take human lives without human control. These represent an unprecedented threat to humankind. This paper starts from the example of chemical weapons, now banned worldwide by the Geneva protocol, to illustrate how technological development initially aimed at the benefit of humankind has, ultimately, produced what is now called the “Weaponization of Artificial Intelligence (AI)”. Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) fail the so-called discrimination principle, yet, the wider public is largely unaware of this problem. Given that ongoing scientific research on AWS, performed in the military sector, is generally not made available to the public domain, many of the viewpoints on this subject, expressed across different media, invoke common sense rather than scientific evidence. Yet, the implications of a potential weaponization of our work as scientists, especially in the field of AI, are reaching further than some may think. The potential consequences of a deployment of AWS for citizen stakeholders are incommensurable, and it is time to raise awareness in the public domain of the kind of potential threats identified, and to encourage legal policies ensuring that these threats will not materialize.