Guido Crosetto even goes so far as to suggest hybrid warfare as the cause of the violent clashes that occurred over the weekend in Milan and other Italian cities.
The Defense Minister spoke at the Defense Procurement Forum underway in Rome: "These events," he said, "are profoundly different from those experienced in other eras and are the result of what I call a hybrid war that someone is bringing to our nations using unconventional tools like TikTok, other social media, and YouTube, without the West realizing it or reacting in any way."
"If three out of ten young people participated in those demonstrations," Crosetto emphasized, "we're not talking about Maranza, second-generation Italians. If six out of ten participated in them, it's because over the years they've been subjected to a counter-education somewhere, not from family or school, which has instilled in them values, ambitions, a worldview, and reference points that conflict with the society we live in and with democratic rules."
A war that "none of us has ever fought before and that we are suffering," the minister emphasized, expressing his deep concern. "Some nations, having studied the minds of our young people with algorithms, know much better than we do how to influence them. Because when you've dealt with content that interests them, with the reactions to that content, you've collected data for years and years, you've seen the reactions, and with Artificial Intelligence you have the ability to study them, perhaps increasing analytical capabilities through quantum technologies, you have a very powerful weapon: that of instilling in people's minds ways of thinking that they believe are their own but that derive from highly sophisticated manipulation. And when I see things like what happened in Milan, my concern grows."
Therefore, the minister concluded, "it's time to address these issues from an industrial and technological perspective, because they require answers as much as a missile network, an anti-drone network, or a nation's naval, land, or air capabilities. These capabilities don't hit physical targets, but rather strike something deeper."
(Unioneonline)
