Podcast: National Security and the Challenges of ‘Deep Fakes’

I am excited to share with you another video from LENS’ recently completed 26th Annual National Security Law conference.

Erin Wirtanen, the Chief Counsel for the Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI) for the Central Intelligence Agency, spoke with my colleague Shane Stansbury about the growing problem of so-called “deepfakes.”

As many readers know, the concern over deepfakes—digitally manipulated images and videos of people saying or doing things that are not real—has grown in recent years, including among those in the national security community.

In this fascinating and lively discussion, Ms. Wirtanen methodically walks through the different types of technology that are used to make deepfakes and the ways in which audio and video images can be manipulated.  She also employs actual videos (including one she herself made of yours truly!) to help explain the technology.

Ms. Wirtanen also describes the different types of threats that are posed by deepfakes, including to the Intelligence Community, and she considers some of the solutions that have been employed by both private companies and the government to combat the problem.  She and Professor Stansbury weigh the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches.

If you are eager for a substantive yet easy-to-understand (and quite entertaining!) explanation of both the technology behind deepfakes and the challenges that they pose for the national security community, you will definitely want to watch (or listen to) this one.  You can find it here.