Pentagon Seeks 'Internet Meme Trackers'
Much like Justin Bieber fans, America's enemies use social media to communicate, spread rumors and coordinate. It's one of the few bad things about the internet. Now, the Pentagon is seeking "meme trackers" to figure out what's the hottest new thing in the American Enemy Blogosphere.
As social media play increasingly large roles in fomenting unrest in countries like Egypt and Iran, the military wants systems to be able to detect and track the spread of ideas both quickly and on a broad scale. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is soliciting innovative proposals to help build what would be, at its most basic level, an Internet meme tracker.
So, it will be sort of a national security BuzzFeed: What world leaders are putting funny captions over pictures of Barack Obama? Which "so-bad-it's-good" terrorist training video is going viral this week? What 90s cartoon characters are Middle East dictators forcing their populace to change their Facebook avatars to? The future of warfare is so tween.