Weapons of Mass Disruption Dr. Tamara Schwartz
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- Technology
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We live in a VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous – where the only constant is change, complexity is growing, and all the ambiguity this creates is making us feel anxious and uncertain. The world is being disrupted over and over again, and the risks previously categorized as “unknown unknowns” have become commonplace. Everywhere we turn, Mount VUCA is in various stages of volcanic eruption. Join IQ4U’s Dr. Tamara Schwartz and her invited guests in this new podcast exploring the intersection of globalization, technology, business, ethics, and social change as we learn to live with Weapons of Mass Disruption.
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Social Engineering Disrupted! How Deepfakes are Changing the Threat
Social engineering is a behavior as old as humankind, though the terminology is traced back to Dutch industrialist J.C. VanMarken in 1894. Van Marken believed that the world needed people who could handle social (human) problems, in much the same way that engineers handled mechanical problems. Today social engineering is understood to be behaviors and methods used by hackers and other bad actors to gain the trust of targeted individuals in order to access money, property, or information, often involving impersonation of those who are known to us. Just as people are finally beginning to understand the threat of phishing emails, generative AI is changing the social engineering game with the rise of Deepfake technology. On thisepisode of WMD, Dr. Tamara Schwartz is joined by Dr. Matthew Canham, a former Supervisory Special Agent with the FBI and co-founder of Psyber Labs, a technology start-up specializing in deepfake analysis and the psychological information operation strategies being employed by attackers. You can find them at https://deepfakedashboard.com/
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Textbooks Disrupted! Developing a Textbook on Information & Disinformation Literacy
Most textbooks are pretty dry. They lay out a lot of facts, but they are rarely engaging. When beginning the project to develop a textbook for the CYB 100 Infowars class, one student suggested that the book should try to re-create the classroom experience students have at York College. In order to do that, students were included at all phases of the development process, and one student in particular collaborated on the development of the book by creating all the visual content. On this episode of WMD, Dr. Tamara Schwartz talks with her collaborator and student, Natilie McCallick, a senior cybersecurity management major at the York College of Pennsylvania about the experience they had while developing their new textbook on Information Warfare.
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Piracy Disrupted! GPS Spoofing on the High Seas
There has been a significant increase in maritime traffic in the last few decades as supply chains become more and more robust. With more targets of opportunity, there has been a parallel rise in piracy around the world. GPS has been an important technology to impact maritime navigation, but emerging technologies are not just facilitating better maritime travel, they are aiding piracy with capabilities like GPS spoofing. On this episode of WMD, Dr. Tamara Schwartz is joined by York College of Pennsylvania student Alex Kemble, a cybersecurity major and ship technician, as they discuss the impact of GPS spoofing on the maritime industry,
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Boundaries Disrupted! Redrawing the Map
Boundaries come in many forms. They can be physical, verbal, psychological, emotional, virtual, and machine generated. Boundaries can be the subject of nation state conflict. They can be something you discuss while lying on your therapists couch. Boundaries come into play when we talk about establishing “work-life balance.” Since the launch of the Internet, boundaries have been changing, and Artificial Intelligence is continuing to push our proverbial boundaries. On this episode of WMD, I am joined once again by the author of the Polymathic Being Blog and recently published book Paradox: Book One of the Singularity Chronicles, Mr. Michael Woudenberg, as we become cartographers and explore the changing landscape of global boundaries.
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Students Disrupted! Cybersecurity Majors Begin “Adulting”
One of the best parts of being a college professor is seeing students grow from recent high school graduates into young professionals. Students in the cybersecurity management program at the York College of Pennsylvania are required to complete a research project into a cybersecurity related topic of their choice. The students choose really interesting topics including the ethics of technologies, data privacy, the Dark Web, cyber risk, and just about anything you can imagine. On this episode of WMD, Dr. Tamara Schwartz hands over the WMD microphone to York College of Pennsylvania cybersecurity management students Matt DeSoye, Ty Foster, Jack Griffin, Colin Harris, and JJ Soyke to discuss their research and how it impacted their professional development as they head into their final semester, look for their first job, and begin “adulting”!
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Identity Disrupted! The Potential Impacts of Deepfakes
Who owns your face? What about your voice? Or your natural body movements Have you ever thought about what makes you uniquely you? The recent actors’ and writers’ strikes brought the potential impacts of AI to public attention, and the actors’ guild was particularly concerned about deepfakes because an actors, voice, appearance, and body movements are part of their proprietary brand, and every time they work, what used to be their personal property is captured on film as data. The very same data that can be used to create deepfakes. If we as humans can’t “own” what makes us uniquely who we are, and instead we become the property of anyone who captures our likeness, how do we maintain our unique identity? On this episode of WMD, Dr. Tamara Schwartz hands over the WMD hosting position to York College of Pennsylvania cybersecurity management student Allen Yang who will explore the potential benefits and harms of deepfake technology.