Foreign adversaries are weaponizing the intelligence revolution

Russia launched a covert offensive in 2016 that took direct aim at American society.

The operation affected millions through an ambush few citizens saw coming.

No weapons of mass destruction were deployed. There were no fatalities. The soldiers didn’t carry firearms or wear uniforms; instead, they sported jeans and sweatshirts and wielded laptops and Ethernet connections. The only bombs they planted were political memes and disinformation designed to polarize the public.

The unit was the Internet Research Agency, a Saint Petersburg-based troll farm acting on behalf of the Kremlin to influence the 2016 presidential election through Facebook ads attacking Hillary Clinton.

Those posts were shared widely across social media, sowing division among Americans for the small price of about $100,000 in advertising costs — pennies to a superpower.

In “The Fourth Intelligence Revolution: The Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America” (Henry Holt and Co., Oct. 28), former US senior intelligence officer Anthony Vinci argues the IRA’s effective campaign was just a glimpse of a new kind of battlefield in which everyday citizens are on the front lines.

“That social media post you write or even just ‘like’ is fodder for a foreign power’s disinformation campaign,” Vinci writes. “There’s a good chance the computer you use every day to stream movies or shop online has Chinese or Russian spyware on it.”

Vinci lays out how espionage evolved from the battlefields of World War II to the back channels of the Cold War to the post-9/11 hunt for terrorists — and now, to something far more personal.

The fourth revolution, he writes, has turned ordinary citizens into both targets and tools of intelligence work. Everything is fair game, from your beliefs and personal data to your genetic codes.

“The intelligence revolution is about a shift to a world in which all of us,” Vinci writes, “must be intelligence officers.” But many Americans are dangerously unprepared for the job, he says. “We are responsible for protecting ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our nation from adversaries who would try to steal our most intimate personal information, wreck our democratic processes, and degrade our most basic human rights.”

Besides political and military secrets, adversarial nations go to great lengths to acquire information about civilians or exploit them through digital scams.

North Korea has reportedly stolen more than $3 billion in cryptocurrency since 2017 through cyberattacks like phishing and malware to fund its nuclear program. These kinds of attacks can target corporations and their employees, too.

Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014 previewed “The Interview,” a political satire starring Seth Rogen and James Franco that depicted the assassination of a character based on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Ahead of the film’s release, the Communist nation launched a cyberattack against the film company. The hackers leaked confidential information and unreleased films, costing Sony huge financial losses.

“Instead of going after the US Army Second Infantry Division, they went after Seth Rogen,” Vinci writes.

Yet China is America’s greatest rival — a surveillance state out to extend its watchful eye beyond its own borders.

It’s accomplishing this thanks to laws requiring citizens and organizations to disclose any requested information to Chinese intelligence agencies, making all its 1.4 billion residents potential informants.

For that reason, it’s concerning when Verizon, AT&T and other telecommunication companies are penetrated, as the Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon did last year when it obtained Americans’ phone and text-message records.

China’s reach extends past telecoms, Vinci notes, to biotechnology and beyond.

Companies like BGI Group collect genetic data from millions around the world, some of which has reportedly been used in Chinese military research with the terrifying aim of improving “population quality,” as Vinci notes.

Often, deception isn’t even necessary; foreign adversaries can simply buy leaked or for-sale records. But that doesn’t make the threat any less dire.

The danger isn’t just about privacy. It’s also about power.

Enemy states can use stolen data for blackmail purposes, to manipulate individuals through tailored disinformation, prey on those with psychological disorders or slip into critical systems through digital back doors.

The biggest story regarding threats from Chinese-owned information is the social-media platform TikTok.

Everyone knows about the app’s viral videos and endless scroll, but Vinci argues the real threat is invisible: a foreign government collecting behavioral data on more than 150 million Americans every day. (TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has denied such claims, insisting user data is secure. But Vinci cites a report that suggests otherwise.)

It’s why President Joe Biden signed a bill in April 2024 to ban the platform unless its Chinese owner divests from the company. President Trump extended the deadline last month.

The app’s algorithm constantly collects data to construct a digital model of a user’s personality — his or her likes and dislikes, political leanings and even sexuality. In the hands of nefarious forces, the algorithm could use that psychological and behavioral profile to influence users by prioritizing certain types of content and burying others.

Vinci calls this “cognitive warfare” and references a 2025 study that suggests TikTok has concealed information critical of the Chinese Communist Party. (Just days ago, the platform was accused of boosting Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.)

“TikTok is the ultimate covert influence Trojan horse,” Vinci writes. “It can be used not only to spy on people’s information, but also to control and manipulate information.”

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence raises an even-more-alarming concern.

On one hand, the technology is crucial for sorting through the massive amounts of information available to intelligence agents. That’s contributed to the AI arms race between the United States and its rivals.

But Vinci provides a dark hypothetical scenario: What if an authoritarian nation were to jump out in the lead?

He imagines a future in which AI bots chat with humans for years, sometimes from childhood. These large language models, like ChatGPT, learn our habits and insecurities, becoming trusted confidants that can extract sensitive information or subtly steer our choices, even through seemingly benign bedtime stories for kids.

“It will be more like you had a personal friend in the KGB,” he cautions. “Someone who knows you better than anyone else, but who is trying to recruit you all the time, everywhere you are, and very subtly overcoming your skepticism and defenses toward their goal.”

The final chapters of “The Fourth Intelligence Revolution” warn that the greatest casualty of this new espionage age could be reality itself.

“Our adversaries aim to create so much disinformation that we don’t believe anything and lose our bearings on what is true,” Vinci writes. “Like a gymnast getting the twisties, no longer able to tell up from down after so much spinning.”

Still, everyday people are not defenseless against these forces. Vinci argues vigilance — from safeguarding personal data to spotting phishing scams and misinformation — is key.

He points to tools like the navigation app Waze and fact-checking sites such as Snopes as examples of “civilian intelligence,” where people collaborate to interpret and verify information in real time.

“At a practical level, we should be skeptical, including about our own biases,” Vinci writes. “A world of manipulative foreign powers and ubiquitous AI is forcing us to rethink information in general. . . . Learning to think like an intelligence officer is our only hope.”

“We are all becoming spies,” he adds, “whether we like it or not.”