Help wanted to combat social media threats.

• Author: Machi, Vivienne
• Position: Global Defense

The Defense Department must work with Silicon Valley on ways to deter the growing weaponization of social media by state and non-state actors, experts said.

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The United States has been slow to invest in areas such as data processing and analysis tools that could help war fighters counteract online recruitment to violent extremist groups and state efforts to spread disinformation and propaganda online, said Adam Sharp, former head of news for government elections at Twitter, during a recent conference hosted by New America, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

President Donald Trump's recently announced "skinny" budget significantly increases funding for the military, but is "disproportionately focused on more traditional warfighting, and not on... figuring out how to maintain the U.S.' edge in these information processes," he said.

Social networks and internet applications including Facebook and Twitter have become woven into battlefield operations and are "a driving force" in national elections, including the United States' 2016 presidential election, said Peter Singer, strategist and senior fellow at New America.

The first battle to reclaim the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State, or ISIS, was kicked off with a Twitter hashtag, #AllEyesOnISIS, "like a new movie or a video game," he noted.

The Defense Department needs to update its training environments to face...