The Cārvāka Podcast

Pakistani Influence Operations Targeting India

In this podcast, Kushal speaks with Prasiddha Sudhakar about her recent paper, where she explains how Pakistani magazines and other social media accounts weaponise the internet to polarise Indian society and interfere in Indian elections.

Follow Prasiddha: Twitter: @prasiddhaa_ Paper: https://www.cmu.edu/ideas-social-cybersecurity/news1/blog-posts/blog-sudhakar-pakistani-influence.html

#Pakistan #Islamism #KashmirSolidarityDay

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Duration:: 1h 9m
Broadcast on:: 21 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[Music] Namaste everyone. Welcome to the Charvuk Podcast. This is your host, Kushal Mehara. All right. So, my guest today is Prasiddha Shuddhaka. Prasiddha recently written a paper which was "Cybersecurity in Network Analysis of Pakistani Influence Operations Targeting India." This was for information security policy master's thesis. And I have gone through the paper in detail. And today we're going to be discussing that. For those who don't know Prasiddha has been on the podcast multiple times. She's worked in this very field of data analysis and online information warfare. A lot. We've had multiple discussions once on the kalsan issue. And previously on some other anti-Hindu bigotry on social media too. So Prasiddha, welcome. And how are you doing? And you're in India and I'm in America. Yes. Thank you so much, Kushal, for having me today. And I'm really looking forward to speaking to you about these findings. So, okay. Give me a baseline. What was the methodology as always? What methodology has been used? What are the datasets that we have used to analyze in this paper for the benefit of everybody who's going to watch this on YouTube or listen to it later on? And I hope so that it's a detailed explanation. So everybody understands because what happens is the classic accusation that could be hurled against you before we begin is, oh, your data set was biased to analyze. So go ahead. Right. So to give a little bit of background of how this project even came about in the first place was, ever since I got into this social media research space, which has been a few years now. One thing I've been very particularly interested in is looking at how foreign adversaries start getting involved in influence operations in domestic matters. So like take, for example, Russia, China, in the United States and how do they conduct influence operations, operate these fake accounts and what type of messaging do they really engage themselves in? Twitter used to publish a lot of public datasets about the subject which I used to analyze. And I think one of the limitations that I was seeing there was that not so much data is available when it comes to the space of India and Pakistan and other countries across the Indian subcontinent. So for a few years now, I've been examining Pakistani Twitter trends to take a look at what types of hashtags topics are trending in Pakistan on a day to day basis and seeing what specific topics are regarding India. So this is how this project first came about and I think there are two components to this. So the first is a analysis of halal magazine. So halal magazine is actually Pakistan's armed forces PR wing. And this specific magazine is given out to larger Pakistani society. It's given to a lot of their like the goal of it is to basically create better understanding of what exactly the military believes in. And I first came across this one just generally trying to understand like what type of messaging that the military was putting out in the first place. And I believe this was the first study that actually examined what halal magazine was saying. And specifically how do they depict portray India? How do they portray Hindus and what types of narratives are basically being constructed. And then using the taxonomy of what exactly is being said from halal magazine, then taking a look at Pakistani social media influence operations. So using that basically is a baseline framework and then looking at hashtags is sort of correspond with each category. Like for example, if we look at like furthering communal divides, you see hashtags like Islamophobia in India being trended across Pakistani Twitter and also in various other languages not just limited to English. So this was sort of the crux of the paper and in terms of methodology. What I sought to do was basically look at a wide range of data analysis or quantitative methods to examine the Pakistani data. So whatever was trending in Pakistan at the time was collected using the Twitter API and also a entire archive from just like the library of the halal magazine. And taking a look at topic analysis of halal magazine when it comes to looking at India and Hindus and more generally speaking like what specific topics that they're talking about using tools like social network analysis and then using the same strategies for when it comes to Twitter data. So looking at social network analysis, looking at also social cybersecurity frameworks. So social cybersecurity is a very new I guess field of science where basically we look at things like who are the main actors within the network? How is this maneuvering the specific narrative networks? Or also how is this changing within the network itself in terms of like the flow of information? So for example, which actors are the most influential? Which actors seem to be trying to engage with the entire community more? Are they trying to drive a narrative in a certain way? And if so, what exactly way is that tilting towards? So using the halal magazine as a framework, then looking at Pakistani influence ops and trying to identify what type of populations that it's targeting. So are these Pakistani users who are they trying to target with their influence ops? Are there any use of inauthentic activity? And one thing I think is particularly interesting and also really good that we have tools like for example chat GPT. So using chat GPT using this for data annotation where basically let's say you give it all the characteristics of an account and saying can you classify this as Pakistani or not? And the reason that this is effective is because for example, when we take a look at just things like location, that may not be effective enough in terms of just saying, okay, this is like originating out of Pakistan if let's say you have accounts that are saying, for example, with Pakistani flags in their bio or openly saying like, I'm a supporter of like X party or Y party within Pakistani politics. So this is what made this is how we basically found a way to classify the Pakistani actors in the first place. And basically my hypothesis was that I thought the Pakistani actors would be amplifying polarizing content from all different sides of the political spectrum within India. Similar ways to how there for an adversaries like I mentioned like Russia, China, for instance, do in the United States. We're just amplifying polarizing content from from the Republicans and the Democrats. But whereas this is actually not what the data suggests when it comes to Pakistani influence ops when it comes to India, I thought that there would be amplification, for example, of tweets from the I and C or the BJP. Whereas what I did see was that purely the hashtags that were amplified were hashtags like, for example, BJP is a threat to democracy or by by Modi, which kind of contradicted the initial hypothesis that I had. And also one of the other aspects that it's important to note is that in these last few years that I've been monitoring Pakistani social media, previously what we would see let's say a few years ago back when the PTI was actually in power was that during let's say India's Republic Day, you would see huge hashtag campaigns to basically say that India is not a democracy. You know, there's all types of violence against marginalized groups. There's violence against women. And so India, this is, you know, this is a fake union of India. This is not really a democratic nation. Basically critiquing Indian democracy with a lot of memes and hashtags that were flooding social media basically aimed to attract notoriety. So the thing is this has significantly changed in the last few years. I actually believe that digital forensic lab also put out their own study about the subject of Pakistani militaries covert covert Facebook accounts and meta also had reported on accounts they had taken down, which had been linked to Pakistani military and an analysis of that was basically the same exact thing that we had also been noticing with the PTI and other parties, these kind of social media influencers that were putting out these messaging on Republic Day or any specific day that was celebrated in India. And you were able to see that like this is very different to the way that the social media influence operations are now currently. In fact, this appears to be a lot more covert in the sense that whenever there's any type of trending hashtag in India, you immediately see like Pakistani actors that immediately pounce on these trends and like further try to like amplify these trends to create more polarization and division within the Indian society. So I hope that's, yeah, that's a first overview. Yeah, so on the hashtag that you mentioned, let me pull the bit up from your paper. So these are the hashtags that you mentioned. Damn no cressy day Kashmir solidarity day, Babri much the demolition boycott Indian products. This is very interesting. They want to boycott Indian products, but they want to play India in the Champions League. They want to play cricket with India. I don't understand who wants to boycott Indian products and play cricket with India. Isn't the Indian cricket team an Indian product too? So this is very interesting actually because there's also another geopolitical element to this, which is that this is actually not just being targeted at, let's say, you know, the overall like audiences that Pakistan seeks to like reach or like amplify this within also Indian Twitter circles. But the geopolitical element is that they're trying to amplify this particular hashtag boycott Indian products to other nations such as the Maldives and also Bangladesh. One of the aspects I've also noticed throughout this study was that the usage of tweets that are outside just the English language was very prevalent. Like for example, there were several actors that were disseminating boycott Indian products and also tweeting in the in Bangladesh basically. And you see that these individuals that are tweeting this are not just any types of, you know, Bengali authentic social media influencers, but they're actually being followed by members of the Pakistani embassy in Dhaka. So this is quite an interesting find and also something that can be further explored, which wasn't really possible with this research given just the scope of the hashtags that were taken to look at is trying to look at what exactly are the follower networks who is following who and using that to better understand what possibly could be the origins of a lot of these accounts. And I also do believe that there was a study I believe one or two years ago of the hashtag boycott Indian products, which was trending across, I believe, Arabic Twitter. And also that appeared to be from a Pakistani influence campaign seeking to tarnish India's relations with Gulf nations. Yeah, I just find the selection of hashtags now. When you look at these hashtags and you look at the number of tweets or the number of messages that are pulled, is there any sort of mechanism that is done for the IP addresses where they originate or for whether they are bots or whether they're not bots, like, how do you identify these things if I was to follow up on that? Absolutely. So when it comes to IP addresses, this information isn't publicly available from open source. So we can only go off of the information that's given from the Twitter API. But I will say that in terms of trying to identify bot accounts, there's a very specific algorithm called bot hunter, which is frequently used by researchers in just in any kind of social media research field that uses a algorithm that anything that renders a score, I believe, of anything higher than 70% is classified as a bot. And actually, with that point about the bots, there seems to be significant bot activity that is amplifying these trends. All of these Pakistani influence ops are significantly amplified by these inauthentic accounts. So when you take a look at, for example, boycott Indian products or even, like, buy by Modi or any of these others, you see that these bots also have tweeted in the past other hashtags that are very specific in Urdu to Pakistani politics. So you know that that's not some type of Indian account that's speaking about these subjects. And also, these bots appear to be targeting other users that are not Pakistani. And that's also clear from the data when we take a look at the social cybersecurity frameworks. What types of accounts that are being targeted in the first place? So this is like this bot hunter methodology is just quite common in the social media space. Okay. I'm going to put one more image up. Explain this hop ego network, India. What exactly does this mean? And what are we looking at over here? Yes. So what this is, is this was from Helal magazine, basically taking a look at the term like India from all of their, I believe archives going back for the last 10 years and taking a look at a term like India and what exactly it means, India, for Helal magazine. So you see India being associated with terms, it's a little bit small on my screen, but I can see if I can also pull it up. But basically India being associated with terms that are depicting India as like a fundamentally aggressive or. So clamp down, disempowered, travesty, egregious, occupied, intifada. They've got the intifada in India too. How did they manage that? Yeah. So one of the things that has come up a lot in Helal magazine is saying how India is clamping down on the intifada that is happening in Kashmir, for instance, that's one of the very frequent narratives. And if you go back and take a look at Helal's own magazine, you'll be able to find articles basically about this. And also just this idea that India is like clamping down on human rights, India is, you know, it's more mongering, it's creating hysteria, there's belligerents, you know, all these India also makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims. This directly comes out of Helal magazine. And you see that the way that this depicts India overall is showing it as fundamentally aggressive or fundamentally hostile. And also like juxtaposing it with terms like secularism and unity, which is basically saying how, oh, there's no like secularism in India, there's no unity, for instance, lots of notes also about the conflict, corruption, oppression, yeah. So that's basically what this is trying to say. It's very interesting how all of this works across the world, duplicity, adjudicate, brow be beat, you got to give it to the Pakistanis. I mean, at least they're good liars. It's extremely sophisticated also. So I think to any lay person that was taking a look at it, you actually wouldn't even be able to identify what exactly the malicious narratives are here in the first place. Because for that, there requires a significant historical context. Okay, I want you to explain this. I'm sorry. I read the reports. I have to make you explain these things. So the top and cosides similar terms explain this because I found this so interesting. This is social media 101 how to hijack social media 101. So what this is, is that what the ego network basically does is when you take a term and you train a neural network across it, and then you have a seed term which is India in this case, and you're trying to understand what all terms are very closely associated with India. And you see that these are the terms belligirous cases clamped down irredentist, for example. And what this does is this says, these are the terms that are most commonly associated with the term like India nullify hoax brazenly hysteria, significant use of a lot of these terms post India's abrogation of article 370. And what this basically tells us is again, this is the types of messaging that Pakistani military put out about India. And I think that this also, actually, Khushal, can I move on to showing you the exact same analysis for Hindu. If you scroll down, you're going to find sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, yeah. This is the one you're talking about, right? Yes. So this is also something very interesting is because when we take a look at the way that the Pakistani military depicts Hindus, I think this is actually more interesting than the previous one. They say that because this creates this fundamental idea that Hindus are an extremist, Hinduism as a whole is an extremist religion. It's simply got to do with majoritarianism, fundamentalism, extremism. That is also like significant mentions of like communal violence within India. Let's read the words so that religion, AIML, Muslim, Muslim, majority, Parsis, minority, Christians, Dalit, discriminate, caste, victimization, untouchable, Mahasabha, incense, constitutionalist, Mukherjee, Karamchand, not even Mohandas, Mohandas is separate, Karamchand is separate. Mahatma, Biful, Nakpur, Vivis section, then you have, oh, this is where the bigotry comes, the bigotry is here. So Brahminical, Pracharak, Rastra, Manch, Wapsi, Gao, Reconward, Yuar, Rama, Reconversion, Shiv Puri, Janma Bhumi, Homecoming, Vishva, VHP, Vidyarthi, Bhajurang. The words are so interesting. Very single keyword they use has been kind of what they say, weaponized. Weaponized, but also extremely exaggerated, right? So I think the way that, I think experts approach the study of anti-Hindu hate is something that needs to be fundamentally changed in my opinion, especially after this paper. I say this because the way that a lot of individuals speak about Hindu hate, for example, the idea of calling Hindus extremists or fascists or fundamentalists or majoritarian, whatever term like you see here, I think this idea is not only about Hindu hate, but this is fundamentally Pakistani military propaganda. So just to be clear that this is an analysis of halal's magazine, so you see that these narratives about Hindus being extremists, Hindus, like, for example, breaking down mosques, all of this is coming directly out of the Pakistani military. So you see that these narratives are the ones that are very central to the way that India and Hindus are described as a whole. So I think that when we talk about anti-Hindu hate, instead the framing should also be about how this is Pakistani state sponsored propaganda. Yeah, and for people who don't want to talk about these things and how online hate actually eventually goes into offline reaction is, well, there was a new report from the California Civil Rights Department, I don't know how many of you remember this, but it was basically a compilation and an analysis of, like, hate online, and it had some really interesting data where anti-Jewish incidents stopped the list at 36.9%, and anti-Hindu hate incidents came second at 23.3%, and anti-Muslim incidents were 14.6%. Now, I am not trying to create a correlation that it is just the Pakistani intelligent ops that has read this to happen, but listen, something very obvious is happening. The question, every well-meaning person that needs to ask is, and how about this? I think Kona had shared this image, so if you give me a moment, I will actually share the image from Kona's Twitter handle, and this is the one I am talking about. There were 2,118 contacts and actual reports of hate were 1,020. In one year since its inception, CA versus hate has seen 60,500 website visits, contact with nearly 80% of California counties, roughly 4 out of 6, agree to follow up for care coordination services, connecting people with 112 different types of services and support, and nobody should take these things lightly anymore. I still believe that most of these cases is just online fluff, how do I know that? Well, because I receive a gigantic barrage of it, because of my position as a content creator, I kind of receive a major chunk of all this hatred, but the point is that not everyone can handle it, these kinds of campaigns that are organized can lead to some serious repercussions. I want to know, my next question has to be on the repercussions, listen, you're an American, you're a Hindu American, are you worried about these trends and what impact it could have on you living in the United States of America or for Canadian Hindus, it's not like they are 20% of a society, I mean they are notoriously known for being the least violent of immigrants, which is a very good thing, I say notoriously in a facetious manner before someone takes me literally, as far as jail percentages are concerned, Hindus are the lowest, do you know how good Hindus are as immigrants? They are the most woke, that's how successful the Hindu migration story is, they are the first ones to become woke. Well, I think the thing is, when I think about real world implications of this research paper about Pakistani influence ops, honestly I see it less more as like implications in the United States except for one very specific category, which is these human rights accounts. So this is also a finding of this study, which is that these human rights accounts that are talking about let's say violence in India, or like communal violence in India or like oppression against minorities in India, these all appear to be also originating out of Pakistan, but not only just out of Pakistan, also appear to be bought accounts that are largely doing this. So what you see here is that a lot of these bought accounts for example, are then being amplified and picked up by let's say American influencers and actors and what types of perceptions that create about Hindus as a whole. And also when we take a look at anti-Hindu slurs for instance, you see a lot of it does come out of Pakistan and you also see that being picked up by white supremacist circles in the United States. So I think though going back to your question of what are the real world implications, I see this more for geopolitical implications within the Indian subcontinent. For example, this India out movement that's actually causing, sorry, that's actually gaining traction in countries like Bangladesh for instance, see if this was something authentic or organic, then that's a different question altogether. But this appears to be heavily amplified by Pakistan. These hashtags and also real street protests, you see people posting pictures of these protests are also largely coming out of Pakistani accounts and influencers. And also what makes this more challenging is the fact that who is monitoring these social media operations and reporting about them in a way that can actually lead to real world action that can be taken place. And I think that, yeah, go ahead. No, no, so I just wanted to pull up the section of your paper here where you talk about teams of Pakistani interference with Twitter examples. Now go ahead. It just backs up what you're saying. That's why I just want to. Right, exactly. So I want to go through each of those examples, let me also pull that right up. So this idea of what are exactly the themes of Pakistani interference, for example, next time that there is a very specific hashtag or campaign or any types of mobilization that's being taken place, what exactly are the themes and how can we better identify it. So for example, furthering communal divides, you see this hashtag mainly being amplified by actors coming out of Pakistan. If you took a look at a hashtag like free driven this song right now, you'll see that this is quite an old influencer so you may not see tweets that are so recent. But for example, this is encouraging balkanization of India and encouraging different separatist movements from all different parts of India. And I think also that's why this study was done in the first place, which is that ever since India became independent, you know, Pakistan has interfered, but within the realm of social media, this has significantly changed and as they become more and more covert, this becomes all the more important to report apart. So then Hindus as a perceived threat and then exaggerating human rights violations within Kashmir, for example, you also see like a synergy between not just social media activists, but also Pakistani government officials and embassies all around the world, posting in support of Kashmir Solidarity Day and creating very wide scale campaigns about the issue and once again exaggerating the human rights violations that have taken place in India, trying to create some type of diplomatic isolations, isolating India diplomatically through encouraging campaigns like for example, India out not just in Maldives, but also in countries like Bangladesh and generally cyber information warfare, when you see on Republic Day, the biggest trending hashtag is democracy day. And you want to take a look at why exactly that's the case, then you see images of basically accusing India not really being a democracy or being some type of fake union. And then economic undermining, for example, boycott Indian products and exactly variants in Bangladesh would do an Arabic and portraying India as the aggressor, scapegoating for Pakistan's challenges and also downplaying Indian security apparatus. So for example, any types of military wins that India has against Pakistan, you see that this is basically underplayed by the Pakistani state, for example, Indian Indian surgical drama following the Pulwama attack. So this is a framework for now being able to use this for further tracking and monitoring Pakistan's influence campaigns. Yeah, so it's very interesting to me, the influence operations. Now this is where it gets interesting. So you've seen Kashmir for Kashmiris using all these images where, I mean, this is so typical. The first one is like a angry Hindu crying, a hijabi woman. And notice every time it's a crying, a hobby woman, right? It's a crying, a hobby woman. So what the idea, the idea is is to portray Hindus as like violent and extreme as possible. So this was from the digital forensic lab. And they analyzed the takedown from Facebook back in 2020 of all of the like accounts on Facebook that were linked to the Pakistani military. But I would say that this is a little bit more old. I think Cushal, if you keep scrolling down, you'll see some the same exact memes prefer Twitter. Yeah, these ones, right? Yes, exactly. So you see this, for example, memes like this one, basically slicing off every single state of India as its own independent nation, India being accused of terrorism, for instance, also projecting, right? And these are the types of memes that were being like disseminated on Indian Republic Day, for instance. I will also say, this is such a Pakistani thing, India. So one of the other things though is that this was something that is a bit more old, which is in the sense that you won't see these types of campaigns take place as much anymore. In fact, it will be jumping on existing trends. You won't find this next finding in the paper. But if you take a look at, for example, hashtag like India not safe on just Twitter, you will find that largely these actors, not everybody, of course, it is originating and amplified coming out of Pakistan. And I will say that one of the limitations of the study also is that I believe 500 or more accounts were found throughout the entirety of the study. But when we take a look at the actual Twitter trends, which is how these hashtags were found in the first place, you'll see that the numbers would be in thousands, whereas only 500 accounts were discovered. And what this means or possibly could mean, which is what I believe would be the case, is that this is largely simply being retweeted and amplified by Pakistani accounts instead of organically trending a specific trend or tweet or hashtag, which means that existing trends are being hijacked by the Pakistani state, further polarized Indian society. Yeah, this political mapping is very interesting. Yes, so what this does is when you take a look at the hashtag, you see that this is not just being put out by just any social media activists. This is also being put out by, let's say, political actors and media outlets. And they all seem to be working in conjunction with interacting with one another, highly engaging with one another. And to further amplify the exact same hashtags and trends about India not really being the democracy or the amazing democracy that it claims to be. So how does this work? Like social media handles, organizational handles explain that because the map, I was not able to figure that bit out. Sure. So what this does is when you take a look at a hashtag like democracy day, what this does is it creates a network of all of the different actors that are that are tweeting democracy day and the edges in the graph basically represent the engagement. So like who is retweeting one another, who is liking each other's tweets, who's responding, who's quote tweeting, et cetera. And you see that they're heavily engaging with one another except media outlets appear to be sort of communicating within their own silo or just like amplifying one another. But you see heavy engagements between these social media influencers and also these political actors that are putting out this specific hashtag. It's a very sophisticated way of hijacking. Exactly, exactly, because you see it's a sophisticated way of hijacking, but it's also a very sophisticated way of operating because one thing I've noticed within Indian social media trends is that this appears to be done a little bit more in specific silos of certain like social media activists or groups, whereas here you see very close coordination with other like outfits, such as media outlets, political outlets. And it's not just limited, for example, just to social media influencers. So let's go further ahead. I mean, this was fascinating to me at least. So the Babri Majid demolition always spikes on a certain day, and then it just goes down, right? That's how it is. Yes. So what it was is on this specific day, you immediately saw like thousands and thousands of tweet with the hashtag Babri Mustard Demolition. So when you investigate this a little bit further, um, let's say you take a look at the graph, uh, partially, if you can scroll down, this one, yes, so you can see all of the notes that are in red are coming out of Pakistan. Um, and these are the ones that have been basically classified as Pakistani, and you see that these notes in red, they do have engagements and interactions with accounts that are not Pakistani or cannot be classified in entirety of what country of origin that they come from. So when you go ahead and further scroll down, you'll see that all of these accounts that are, um, originating out of Pakistan, can you scroll down a little bit again? Sorry. Yes. So for example, if you see actors like this one, um, basically saying that, you know, Hindi India is like one of the biggest five leaders of human rights and, uh, basically openly amplifying, um, uh, press releases from the Pakistani foreign office. And you also see, if you scroll down a little bit again, I just want to look at the hideous hat. Oh my God, what a hideous hat can somebody give her a hat, please, ladies and gentlemen, this girl needs a new hat alert alert. We have a bad hat alert. Aveda Rafi Kashmir, she was a PhD who wears a bad hat. I'm sorry. It's okay. So, so scroll, scroll down. Oh, so what you see here is, you know, also that this is, uh, inauthentic because these exact same posters are being posted repeatedly over and over again by these Pakistani actors seeing, you know, remember the 6th of December is the black day of Indian democracy. And you see this once again, being, uh, repeatedly posted. Hmm, let's scroll down again. Okay. What does this mean? I did not understand this because this is like some social media term that went above me. What is a bend category? Like bend agent maneuver explain this to me. So what Ben basically does is when you take a look at any sort of subject within social media, um, there are tools that do this type of analysis directly for you. Fora is one of them provided by Carnegie Mellon, um, and it basically takes a look at when you take a look at any set of social media information, what exactly is happening within the narrative. So like topics that are being discussed and what also is happening within the network. So you what you can do, um, like what things you can do by affecting what is being said and also listen talking to who is talking to whom who is listening to whom. So for example, the idea of engaging discussions that bring up a related or relevant topic, you know, discussions that encourage the group to continue the topic, um, positive maneuvers, negative maneuvers, it basically tells you who exactly is targeting who. I think the main interesting part of the finding, um, if you scroll all the way back, uh, I believe it's to Ben community assessment Pakistan. So scroll down on like two pages, keep going. Yes. So if you take a look at here, for example, the ones that have been classified as Pakistani, you know that they're Pakistani also because they're very specific hashtags that are way more polarizing. For example, like Hindu to a terror, VHP, yogi, for instance, compared to the other accounts that are, you know, authentic and actually talking about the subject. So what this suggests once again is. Oops. By jacking of existing topics within India and sorry, did you lose me? Yeah, it's okay. You're back now. Yeah. So the idea is, is that you see these Pakistani actors putting out a lot more polarizing messages in comparison to, um, other actors that are simply discussing the topic online. All right, so you know what is interesting in all of this is that it's not like people don't know how this is happening. My concern for this, uh, this kind of work is that this is my follow up question. Yes. Can this lead to citation in mainstream publications and media work like this? That's my main concern. Right. So that's also, I agree. Um, I say that because if you take a look at how famous the India out campaign as an example got, you see that it gained huge amount of popularity. It was covered by the entire press everywhere when it turns out that parts of it and like was heavily amplified through these Pakistani information operations. And so you do see real world implications of the way that this type of campaigns are being widely cited everywhere. I also believe, um, Al Jazeera had made, I mean, surprise surprise, had put out an article a while ago when there was a Pakistan influence operations targeting a cricketer. I'm sorry. I don't remember the specifics of it, but I do believe it was a year or so ago, um, targeting a specific cricketer and saying that this individual was, you know, uh, trolled by Indians. And in fact, all of the accounts that have been trolling the cricketer was from Pakistani accounts, but that immediately it was shown as, oh, but, you know, look at India trolling all their cricketers and in the communal violence on the rise, majoritarianism. Oh, you're talking about our steep singing, our steep singing. It happened with mama Chami and her steep sing both, right? Exactly. Exactly. And you see that being picked up by outlets like Al Jazeera, honestly, I don't see as much mainstream or famous Pakistani broadcaster, uh, Shazad Geshek from the Pakistan experience. And we did a joint podcast to ask me, Oh, what do you think of random people talking about mama Chami? I was like, I was very open. I was like, so are you saying there are zero bad people on a planet earth and what you're essentially doing is that one bad person leads to. So I always use this clip. I know it's in Hindi. So I apologize to my, uh, English language viewers, uh, in advance, but let me explain how bad analysis sounds like and, and why I share this clip as a perfect example, every single time is this is how bad analyses are, are, are conducted across the world. Okay. It's not just in India. It's this is classic one on one bad analysis explained through a comical scene in a Hindi movie. This is a movie called Piarki Eja. The scene is from 1960s or 70s, whenever this movie is. And this is what happens when everybody picks up cues based on anecdotes. Here you go. And I'm going to go to the next one. So, to translate it for people who did not understand what the scene is. So the son maemu with the two sisters and the father, the scene goes, the son is, um, going, well, this is the scene a man had given a dog a biscuit. After years, the man is drawing walking on the road. The dog sees the man. The dog gets emotional because the dog had never forgotten the man gave me a biscuit. The dog is crying. The camera then pants on the dog and then the camera pants on the sky and there is rain in the sky. And every single dog on planet earth is crying. This is what analysis on social media these days is. This is exactly what analysis on social media is. So when when somebody from Pakistan asked me, oh, but you know what, maemu was called names by someone, I was like, have you met bad people in your life? There are bad people everywhere. Can you extrapolate a story and say, just like if I was to go around looking at, uh, let's say, um, I'll give you another brilliant example from something very close to you, uh, your country. Uh, you know what, it breaks my heart because this is a portal that I used to read regularly, regularly. Why? Because this is the scientific American. So this is the scientific American just recently in, in a piece writing. Look at the words objectively speaking, we are living through a dumpster fire of a historical moment. Right now more than 1 million people are displaced at the risk of starvation in Gaza as are millions more in Sudan. Wars around the rise around the globe in 2023 saw the most civilian casualties in almost 15 years. You see the tragedy with this kind of data analysis is when you torture data enough, it will say whatever you wanted to say. So you take this extrapolation and you make it sound as if this is the worst time to be alive. But what is the reality when you look at a quantitative assessment, uh, it is the best time to be alive. India literally removed extreme poverty, millions of people are now joining the Indian middle class. Bangladesh has removed people at record rates from poverty, Bangladesh, by the way, and, and, and as if this was not enough, the next one, truth be told things were bananas even before the pandemic. Just think of the great recession, the 2009 swine flu pandemic and Brexit, a cat makes use terms like polycrisis and forced normal times to describe the breadth and scales of the issue we now face, oh my God, we're all going to die, everything is over. We're all dying right now and it doesn't end there and it doesn't end there. Look at this beauty, a common strategy to neutralize the social media problem is to make knowing about it hard often by restricting efforts to look into it, like scaling back COVID tracking in the April, the CDC ended the requirement that hospitals report COVID as mission admissions and occupancy data, removing one of the last tools we use to monitor what's happening. We now enter the blackout phase of epidemiology, road science, journalists, laureate Garrett on X adding quote, there will be patience, but there are numbers and whereabouts will be unknown. Disappearing is also accompanied by not alerting the public. For example, during the winter search, we heard crickets from the White House. In fact, as COVID positivity and death rates rose, tweets from the CDC director, Mandy Cohen decreased. This is what people have done to themselves. They have to use the old adage. People have become mental social media has made people mental. I will say one thing, which is that I think the problem is also that this specific subject is very understudied. I think there's a lot of literature, for example, about like trolls that are troll farms, for example, or bots coming out of India, but whereas when it comes to these other nations, there really appears to be hardly any literature or any scholarship about the subject and entirety. And I think that creates a problem, for example, when you see the way that the media covers incidences like in the cricket or whatever, you see that there are no studies that are kind of like debunking any of these phenomenons that they just simply proclaim to be truthful. You see, the best part about social media is you can weaponize it whichever way you want to weaponize it. Add to that the negativity bias that is literally evolutionarily encoded in all Homo sapiens. This is the perfect storm. And now you have notorious actors globally, whether it's whether it's Russian bots, whether it's Chinese bots, whether it's Pakistan, oh, I'm not saying India doesn't do it. And India doesn't, India just sucks at it. Look at the khalestani bots in all I have to say on Twitter. Now just think about it, okay, this Sunday, I'm going to be going on a memorial service, you know, giving my respect, paying my respect to the victims of the Kanishka bombing, right? Canadians passed away, I'm going to go on cue, khalestani bots under my mentions on cue. It is so obvious now that my next set, I want to focus for the next 20 minutes with you on what can we do to educate people because listen, I don't want to use the word radicalize it, but there is some level of influence that social media does have on, I don't know how to say this, otherwise stupid people. I don't know how else to say this. People are really stupid because if you believe these things, like I have a simple rule, right? You remember when I met you, I said I have a 72 hour rule that anything that comes on social media, I don't believe it for 72 hours. If you wait for 72 hours, 95% of it is fake, I have seen that it's usually fake. I think the thing is that with people's attention spans being so small, nowadays that when you see something on social media and something that also emotionally appeals to you, like for example, you know, stop the oppression in India, stop the violence in India, any sane person would be like, oh, you know, I don't want violence. What is happening when they don't actually understand that it's actually being exploited by a foreign nation that is seeking to create more polarization within India and also spread more information about a specific subject that happens within India. And so I think this creates just a big problem of like generally people not having the right tools to find out what the truth really is. And when it comes to taking, for example, a lot of research about a specific historical event or movement or whatever it is, it takes a lot of time to do that type of research. But unfortunately, in this day and age, that is becoming less, way, way, way less common. It's not cool or fashionable and normal to say that, oh, I looked at history books, I watched documentaries, I like read about a subject, instead it's just easy to say, oh, I watched a TikTok or oh, I watched an Instagram shorts about something. And now I'm, you know, the self-proclaimed expert. So I think this creates a huge challenge for when these foreign adversaries basically weaponize and take advantage of how short people's attention spans are in the first place. So how do you, as someone who looks at these data sets, immune yourself, what are the tips you use, what do you do, how do you say stay sane? So the truth is, I haven't had social media for several years now. Yes, so I deleted social media, like, I mean, I have my Twitter, but I don't really use it, to be honest. Any other platforms, I also try to limit myself as much as possible, simply because I don't feel like it's actually productive or adding any value to my life. But I think also, I will say that I am in the minority and I'm definitely judged a lot when saying things like this. But I will say in terms of like the wider problem of any type of foreign adversary or like influence operations, or you know, you have a rule of waiting 72 hours before really having any type of opinion about something that comes up first on social media. I think the way that the way that this should be tackled is having organizations and individuals openly putting out this information regularly. I know there are several really excellent OSINT accounts that are looking at all of this, talking about like influence ops. The only problem is that they don't appear to have a lot of, for example, relationships with more mainstream media outlets to actually cover their work and create more awareness to the wider public. Because it's one thing to have, let's say, an account that just tweets something and maybe it goes viral and then it goes, it's basically circulated in the exact same echo chambers. So that in itself, so that while it's good that somebody is raising awareness about it, this needs to be done on a significantly wider scale. Like some type of like monitoring system or like alert system needs to be created where individuals can see like this is what is trending and this like X number is being also amplified by foreign adversaries. You need analysts with tools that can basically detect that this is happening in the first place. So here's my bit because again, I am the old uncle now. I'm a 43-year-old and my beard is whitish enough for giving unsolicited advice to young people. But this is what I can do is I can tell people what I do, what I do, I have the 72-hour rule, like I've always said. 72 hours when you read a news report, wait for the, wait for all the sites to react. So let's say I'll give you the example in the political sphere in India, wait for wire and scroll to react, wait for Swaraje and another mainstream portal to react and then look at what all of them are saying, wait for more data to spill out and then after 72 hours, if you feel like having an opinion, then opine on it. Point number two, don't have an opinion. Yeah, that's something that years to be, you know, one problem I also think social media has created, that if you're not having an opinion, you're also being a horrible person by not speaking out for all the best. And I think that creates a huge problem because there are people who, like if you ask, if you ask me about a subject I don't know about, I'm going to say I don't have an opinion. But saying that you're like looked at as, oh you're not, you must not be very intelligent or you must not, you know, why aren't you like speaking up about this, right? You're basically harassed or bullied into speaking about a certain subject, when in reality we should make it more acceptable to say, no, it's okay, I don't, I don't know about a subject, but I'm obviously willing to learn more. That's exactly what I do. I don't have an opinion on things outside of my realm of influence. And number three, I always say this to young, young, young, young people, learn about different kinds of biases, learn about what a recency biases, learn about what a confirmation biases, learn about patternicity, learn about presentism, learn about all these things, different kinds of things that you can use to break down when you, when you comment, I'm not even saying when you analyze something because I don't consider myself to be an analyst, I consider myself to be a commentator, I do commentary. So even when I am doing commentary, my commentary has to be backed by some level of reality. So why did I use that clip is because we live in strange times on social media, you can have a clip daily of some fire somewhere in some corner of India, and you can extrapolate by saying all of India is burning. When in reality, it's nothing. I'll give you an example. So where I find biases on both sides, right, in our Indian or Indian origin people discourse. I'm in Canada right now. Are there calisthenies in Canada? Yes, there are. Are they a good 15% approximately of the Canadian Sikh diaspora? Yes, they are. You know, I'm in Canada and I get people calling me, they do it out of love and affection. I get that, I get all of it that they're really concerned about my well-being. So they'll call me, oh my god, what's happening there? I'm like, what's happening there? I said, I don't know what's happening there. And they're like, no, these calisthenies are tearing the Indian flag. I was like, that's within the rights. They can stab the Indian flag. They can stomp on the Indian flag. That's what free speech is all about. Your hurt sentiments don't matter. But you can, you can, you can criticize them too. No, but they will kill you. I was like, well, first of all, they're classic bullies. If you stand up for yourself, most of them back out. And secondly, don't, don't assume that, you know, the Canadian state has completely collapsed. If not, I use another example often with young Hindu kids in India who will say, oh, India has gone to the dogs, look at this Muslim and they'll share some random Muslim video or my left wing young friends who will share some random Hindu video. I'll be like, look, nothing is happening. I'm like, the problem is you only share the first video of the person, the Muslim committing the crime. You never share the next video, which is that Muslim eventually got caught, law and order did its thing. So these are the kinds of things you should a not have an opinion on these things. Learn to manage your biases. Look, I'm also biased. We're all biased. People who think as idiots, they're idiots. Honestly, you have to be the biggest lie sold that the global media, which I have no shame in saying global left leaning media sold to all of you was that there is something called neutrality. There is no such thing as neutrality. It is a sham being sold to everyone since time immemorial, which is why through this podcast, I try to do these kinds of discussions where listen, if if it was not for me, and I say this with no shame, it does not me being arrogant. This report would not be discussed. The entire Indian political landscape, YouTube landscape will not care about this report written by this young girl, because all of you are lazy jackasses who don't care. And I'm shaming you. Yes, I am shaming you using my platform, none of you. And she also knew that I will only reach out to Cushal because nobody will bother to read it. I think it's, I think this is not, this is not something specific to this report. I've seen this a lot more with many other people who are researching or studying this field, which is that an idea of something going viral is about who is being the most sensational or dramatic, whereas when it comes to research reports or studies, I feel like the same types of, I guess, attention or intrigue, I guess, is not really given. And that's simply because people are not interested in reading about research or something that can be used, for example, as evidence. Instead, it's about who is the most sensational, who can appeal to your emotions the most in comparison. So I do understand that what I wouldn't say is something that it bothers me, but I will say for general society, it's not a good thing when you don't pay attention to the research or the evidence or the data. Instead, simply speak, like, for example, what you're saying about hurting sentiments. That doesn't really, like if someone said that, I'd say, I'm sorry, your feelings are hurt, but why is that the case? Instead of actually just holding that as legitimate and fundamentally, your perspective is correct, if you see what I'm saying. Yeah, if you cared about Pakistani interference in Indian affairs, you would actually study a report like this and then create a counter strategy, right? That's what you would do if you really cared, but now you don't care. This, Joe Rogan literally came up with the perfect term for this. We are truly in the era of recreational outrage. We outrage because we feel good about it. We don't want to learn. We want to outrage. This is like, I get up in the morning. I feel frustrated. So I find the corner where humanity is not going to judge me and I go and yell. This is this is what people do online now because they think the neighbors are not going to hear them. So they go and blur it out on social media. This is on social media. Nobody gets bothered. They think, but they don't realize everybody is getting bothered, but anyways, we'll take a couple of questions. So somebody says, this is an attack on South Indians. Many South Indians and other Indian NRIs, why South Indians are not NRIs or what I do understand. They had to mention the subset. It's very interesting. Very interesting. Yes, all these South Indians and foreigners don't understand the nuance and threat that Pakistan is to India. What could be done to make it clear to everyone? Read reports? Yeah. I mean, it's hilarious also that they're saying South Indians. I mean, where do they think I'm from? So anyway, you're American. You're American. No, I'm South Indian too. South Indian American. No, I'm Indian. I think you're more Hindu than most Hindus. I know in India. So I think the thing is, this is what I was seeing before, which is that this needs to be taken to the mainstream media. And actually, different types of centers need to be commissioned by all different types of nation states to be able to better understand the threats that they experience across social media. And this needs to be done in a conceded way and also a very transparent way. And I know it's difficult. We've also talked about this idea of biases, neutrality, and so on, but truly report on everything. It shouldn't be just that you're hand picking and choosing what you're reporting upon. And like we said, it's not as if India has never done any influence operations of their own or had bots of their own. Nothing like that. There are many studies that talk about this. But the difference is that the difference is that this particular subject of Pakistani interference, or let's say even Chinese interference, is a topic that's not been studied as much. So why is it not been studied? Because it's not, like no one has done it before, first of all. And secondly, there are no like types of resources or tools that I'm discussing. All right, good. Somebody wants you to be hired for the information and broadcasting ministry. Well, what they don't realize is you're an American, you can't be hired in India. You can't work for the government of India. They don't realize that. Yeah, she's American, ladies and gentlemen. I believe this will have serious implications for Hindus in America and Canada exactly how Jews are being harassed and hurt today. If India goes to war with Pakistan tomorrow or a sort of skirmish in Kashmir thoughts, very good question. First of all, this is such an intelligent question. I'm really impressed. So XDS, excellent question, and also something that I didn't put in this report simply because the scope of the data was like far too big. But I will say that one of the other aspects that is coming out of this that's very disturbing is the use by these terrorists living in Kashmir that are posting videos of all of their atrocities. And they seem to be circulating across several Twitter outlets, which honestly didn't really exist much before 2024. And you see that this type of propaganda from terrorists, like why are they posting this on a more mainstream platform like Twitter in comparison to let's say remaining across telegram is because they want people to know what they're doing. Like take this RIC attack. Those videos were circulating all over social media. So I think this is going to have serious implications because we see this with other terrorist attacks that have happened in recent times. And in terms of what exactly will happen with, let's say, mobilizations that take place in America or other places, while this could be the case, you know, we're going to see this type of propaganda being circulated, you're going to see Pakistani state actors also getting involved. You will also see encouragement of mobilization against India in all of these western countries in the same way that we've seen with other different groups. Yeah, okay, somebody has questioned me. Won't waiting for 72 hours always put us in a reactive mode all the time while another narrative has run rampant at that time. Listen, first of all, I'm in no team. When I'm giving you an input, that's an as as a consumer of news. How should you consume news? If you're part of some war, war machine, obviously you're going to run counter narratives and they're going to run narratives. That's always there. I mean, it would be rather naive to assume that the Indian government or in the Indian state, irrespective of whether Congress on BJP has been power, let me be categorical. And irrespective of whether the Republicans or the Democrats are in power, every state apparatus has its narrative program. What I was saying is when you consume news, you have to have a functioning level of sanity for your own personal mental health. If you wait for 72 hours, you can have a better truth. And then what you can do is you can have better data and you can share your references and create better substact posts, blog posts, short videos, Twitter threads, Facebook posts, etc, etc. Your posts will be more accurate. Again, I don't like to say these things because I come across as a pompous jackass, but multiple journalists actually, you know why they tell me to share reports and articles, they've told this to me offline every single time. You say because you have cultivated an audience of actual readers. So when you share something, we get higher clicks and retainership on the website because you actually wait. So most of the times people who watch you are like, he has done the wedding. So we don't have to do the wedding. First of all, even I could make mistakes. So you should not follow the rule with me too. But the point is that when you follow a rule like that, it's a harder route to take. But then you'd give up a much more dedicated follower base that actually is more like I always say, the average IQ of the Charvok podcast listener base is very high is because they believe in the principles that I follow. And you have to be above the average intelligence level because you have to wait. Waiting needs patience. It's again a kind of a discipline thing. I just am patient when it comes to consuming news. I just patiently wait. And when I wait, I get to the truth far better. So I was giving you tips for internal consumption, not external consumption. And also the reality is that you don't need to comment on every single thing. I think the thing is like an excess news consumption can really get to you. And there are just more things in life than just simply looking at the news all day and like giving opinions every single subject, right? And the truth is nobody is a subject matter expert in like every single thing. So there's no need to be giving your opinion on everything. Yeah. And the last question, this is more like a comment. If the Khalesanese disrespect the Indian flag, Indians can do the same with the Khalesani flag, but there is the Nishan Sahib, which is why Hindus don't do it. So good, the Hindus care about their own culture. That's why we don't do it because we don't want to insult the Nishan Sahib. But there are multiple ways. You can, you can do it. You can criticize Vindramal, you can criticize Paramar, you can criticize all the things, you can call them out. I mean, what's the big deal? You don't have to do a tit for tat. Sometimes tit for tat is not the best strategy. You can, you know, you can nuance your strategy. But anyways, before we wrap it up, Presidah, is there anything else you thought we could have covered that we could not from the report? One last thing I will say is that with a lot of these human rights accounts or media accounts that appear to be coming out of Pakistan, the thing is some of them have a big following. Others don't. And for the ones that don't and may just pass off as researchers to like, oh, well, you know, this is a very low signal. This doesn't really matter. It's not actually gaining any traction. The question is, it's like planting seeds, for example, that will soon grow into trees. These accounts can slowly gain huge amounts of following. And I think that this really emphasizes the need for serious monitoring of all of these foreign influence ops that target India or any country for that matter, simply because we're really entering in that age of information warfare. And I think that without serious monitoring, there's no way to even protect or give a question you asked before, like, how do we respond? Well, how can we respond when we don't even know what the problem is? And soon, these influence ops are going to get more and more covert, making it even harder to detect in the first place. So there needs to be a beginning for a solution. And that should be now. You know, as far as Pakistan is concerned, in the last few months, this is the fifth report of a person being lynched or don't alive or murdered in broad daylight over blasphemy. You know how pathetic that society is, ladies and gentlemen, this is the mother of the person who was yes, accused yesterday of blasphemy. Listen to this 40-second clip. [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] This is how pathetic Pakistani society is. Let me translate the Punjabi for you. This is the mother of the man who was lynched for alleged blasphemy in Pakistan. She's so scared for her own safety and the safety of the rest of the family that lives in Pakistani Punjab that she's disowning her son. They made her do this video at a time where her son was burnt alive. She must have loved her son. Look at the expression on her face. Look at what the mother has to go through. This is what the reality of Pakistan is. This is Pakistan. And some geniuses on Indian social media want us to copy Pakistan. They want blasphemy in India. You know, I'd rather be dead than live in India that has this level of blasphemy laws. You cannot be like them. Pakistan is a failed state of failed society, failed people. Exceptions apply. But overall, on average, they are a pathetic society. My words, not procedures. But yes, my words. They are a pathetic society. They are clueless muppets who go around lynching people, killing them, doing all these things. All they are built on is hatred of not India. Let's be crystal peer. Pakistan was built on the hatred of the Hindu. They hate the Hindu and they will try their best. But for the Hindu, the solution is not become like them. Become better than them. Showcase to the world that we are a better society. We are a far more evolved society. We don't want them, which is the same. I always say, calisthenes. Basically, what are calisthenes? They are Pakistanis who wear a turban. That's all they are. They are Pakistanis who wear a turban. That's all they are. So I will leave you guys with this somber note. But once again, in the description of the podcast, you will have to sit the X handle. I know she doesn't use X, but you can still go follow her. You can also click the link to the report. You can go read it. And if you really care, you will take excerpts from this report. You will share this report in your circles. You will explain this to people in your own circle. That's how a proactive person would respond. That there are citations in this report. This is backed by actual data. And then, if somebody even after all of that does not agree with you, it's fine. Move on. You've done your bit. Prasita, thank you very much. You're doing fantastic work. I look forward to talking to you again. Thank you so much once again for having me. All right, guys, we'll wrap it up. Once again, you know the drill. If you like the Charva podcast, like this video, subscribe to the Charva podcast YouTube channel, leave a comment in the comment section. If you're an audio listener, you can leave a rating in the audio only platform wherever you listen to this. And if you want to support my podcast, well, there are multiple ways you can do it. You can start by reading my book, Nastik, why I'm not an atheist. It's available on Amazon in every single country, wherever you are. Or you can join the membership program on YouTube, Patreon, Fanmo, wherever you want to join. I'll see you guys next time. Until then, Nastik, take care. Bye-bye.