Open Topic - Synthetic and Game Environments for Information Resilience Training and Exercises

OUSD (R&E) CRITICAL TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Trusted AI and Autonomy OBJECTIVE: Develop synthetic and game environments for information resilience training and exercises to understand and mitigate Foreign Malign Influence (FMI). DESCRIPTION: Foreign Malign Influence (FMI) campaigns pose a significant risk to DTRA and related US government (USG) programs by targeting them with disinformation and propaganda. Information resilience is crucial for understanding and mitigating FMI risks to missions such as building capabilities for counter-proliferation and biosafety. Information Resilience is the ability to proactively anticipate, prepare, and adapt to changing global information environment conditions and better defend an agency, its people, and its partners in the face of foreign malign influence activities. Instilling information resilience skills in the workforce requires ongoing training and exercises that provides awareness of the evolving information environment, threat landscape, and mitigating actions. Games and synthetic environments can bring an immersive experience that improves learning and the user experience far beyond what is possible with more static, less interactive text- or video-based training aids alone. Serious games have been used for establishing awareness of the information environment and threat actors. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been used to generate scenario-driven, realistic synthetic social media environments (e.g., via large language models), create agents that can dynamically respond to user interactions, and thus increase realism and customizability of training and exercises for a variety of missions and scenarios. PHASE I: Phase I effort will identify available and emerging concepts and technologies for fostering information resilience and develop a prototype training game that addresses FMI in a relevant mission space. The survey will examine relevant games and gaming technology and their applicability, realism, customizability, user engagement, configuration effort, data requirements, and other relevant factors. Phase I effort will also create or adapt a proof-of-concept information resilience game or game-like environment for training purposes and conduct an objective assessment of the game and the game development effort. Phase I will deliver the game software and documentation along with a final report. PHASE II: Phase II will effort focus on evolving the Phase I proof-of-concept into a prototype that can also support information resilience training in exercise context. This will require modifications to support increased realism/fidelity and exercise-specific pedagogical objectives, scenarios, and data. Phase II will deliver the software and documentation along with a final report that includes an objective assessment of the training software in an exercise context. PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: The performer will refine the Phase II prototype by increasing its applicability and usability to support a broader range of mission training/exercise scenarios and training objectives. It is anticipated that the company will be able to leverage the innovative technologies associated with this topic to provide compelling strategic gaming products for the commercial market. REFERENCES: 1. Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Foreign Malign Influence. Retrieved June 17, 2024, fromhttps://www.dtra.mil/About/Foreign-Malign-Influence/; 2. U.S. Department of State Global Engagement Center. Disarming Disinformation: Our Shared Responsibility. Retrieved June 17, 2024, fromhttps://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/; 3. Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Breaking Harmony Square: A game that inoculates against political misinformation. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review.; 4. Jiang, J., & Ferrara, E. (2023). Social-LLM: Modeling User Behavior at Scale using Language Models and Social Network Data. Archiv Preprint.; KEYWORDS: foreign malign influence, disinformation, training, synthetic environments, serious games, PAI, information environment, AI