Political Security

Political security refers to the protection of political systems, democratic processes, and the ability of societies to engage in truthful, free, and productive public discourse about matters of shared importance and legitimately implement broadly just and beneficial policies.

Threats to political security include disinformation campaigns, election manipulation, erosion of trust in institutions, coordinated inauthentic behavior on social media, information manipulation, and—increasingly—AI-enabled attacks that target voting behavior, political decision-making, and public opinion formation.

The emergence of AI capabilities (synthetic media generation, micro-targeted persuasion, large-scale information operations) introduces new dimensions to political security challenges. Machine learning can be used to generate realistic deepfakes of political figures, automate and personalize disinformation campaigns, identify and manipulate swing voters, and create information floods that obscure truthful content.

Key papers

• The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation — Analyzes AI-enabled political security threats including deepfakes, automated disinformation, denial-of-information attacks
• Russian disinformation operations — Case study of coordinated disinformation campaigns in political contexts
• Political polarization and ideological echo chambers — Relationship between media ecosystems and political polarization

Related topics

• Disinformation — False information designed to mislead and manipulate
• Deepfakes — Synthetic media as a threat to political credibility
• Election Integrity — Protecting democratic elections from manipulation
• Media manipulation — Techniques for influencing public opinion through media
• Synthetic media — AI-generated audio, video, and text