We Protect Us: Cyber Persistent Digital Antifascism and Dual Use Knowledge

Abstract

Beginning in 2018, US cyber defense architects began promoting the doctrinal strategy of Persistent Engagement (PE), amending a 2015 cyber policy based on deterrence. The PE doctrine encourages cyber soldiers to be quick, nimble, and aggressive—not waiting for an attack to defend against, and instead, maintaining a posture of constant agitation, infiltration, presence, and persistence. Although unintentional (and highly contentions), this cyber approach mirrors the strategic logic of contemporary, digital, antifascists in their efforts to disrupt and deplatform far-right activists online. The proactive, ‘defend forward’ approach offered by PE shares notable similarities to antifascists’ efforts to ‘go where they go’, and to confront the enemy in all venues and on all platforms where they are present. Through interrogating digital antifascists’ online efforts through the lens of cyber persistence and a whole-of-nation-plus approach, the cooperative proximity between State prosecutors and anti-State leftists has fostered a palpable tension deserving of serious inquiry and consideration. The purpose of this intervention is to critically probe these parallel functions, and the interplay between the State and non-State. Although such a comparative analysis shines an unacknowledged and often undesirable light on activists’ efforts, the incorporation of their research in intelligence efforts and State prosecutions is undeniable, and begs the question: How can we critically interrogate the unintended role anti-carceral, abolitionist, antifascists’ dual use knowledge plays in intelligence gathering and law enforcement?