Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) warned during a Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing this week that the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) is using state-of-the-art AI to create “deep fakes” to destabilize the U.S.
Deep fakes are photos and videos that have been digitally manipulated to alter voices or images or other aspects of the content to appear authentic in an effort to deceive whoever is viewing the material.
“The threat of disinformation, weaponizing information against the United States and our allies to divide us, divide our citizens is on the rise,” said Ricketts. “It’s especially so because we all have access to [smart phones] now, so citizens and policymakers all have access to that through social media or other sorts of platforms. But the idea that our adversaries would try to use disinformation to devise is not new.”Ricketts mentioned that the Soviet Union during the Cold War spent billions on disinformation campaigns as part of their statecraft to destabilize the U.S. and U.S. allies at the time.
