War Game Exercise Demonstrates How Social Media Manipulation Works

CYBER RISK ENDPOINT SECURITY REMOTE WORKFORCE APPLICATION SECURITY NEWS War Game Exercise Demonstrates How Social Media Manipulation Works In an educational game called "Capture the Narrative," students created bots to sway a fictional election, simulating influence in real-world political scenarios. Elizabeth Montalbano,Contributing Writer April 14, 2026 5 Min Read SOURCE: TCD/PROD.DB VIA ALAMY STOCK PHOTO The 1983 film "WarGames" demonstrated how a teenage hacker could bring the world to the brink of nuclear war by thinking he was playing a game while actually manipulating military systems in real time. These days, however, manipulation of world events via malicious activity is often a game of technology-driven online influence rather than actual physical weapons, though the stakes can be equally as high. To explore how this manipulation via social media potentially can sway real-world events, a university in Australia had an idea: Stage a multiplayer war game that uses artificial intelligence (AI)-driven bots to manipulate content while engaging with users on social media to see how far the pendulum of "public" opinion can swing through online interaction alone.  Called "Capture the Narrative" and hosted by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, more than 270 participants from 18 universities throughout Australia spent a four-week period last year trying to manipulate an in-house social media platform called Legit Social. The goal of the game was to turn a simulated election in a fictional island in the South Pacific called "Kingston" in favor of one political candidate over another, with players creating bots aiming to promote content to favor one or the other. Related:Threat Actors Get Crafty With Emojis to Escape Detection The ultimate goal of creating such a competition — the work of Hammond Pearce and Rahat Masood, senior lecturers in the UNSW School of Computer Science — was to create an effective "cybersecurity capture-the-flag educational game" for computer science students that focused on social influence rather than traditional coding practices, Pearce tells Dark Reading.  "I wanted to have a platform where students could learn about AI misinformation online by interacting with, generating, and attempting to detect such influence," he says. Pearce will host a session at Black Hat Asia 2026 to discuss the outcome of the game, the lessons it has for how AI-generated fake content on social media can exert influence in the public space, and what technology stakeholders can do about it. Fake Election, Real-World Inspiration  The result of the competition — which ended up shifting the vote 1.8 percentage points, enough to change the simulated election outcome — has relevance for technology industry as well, particularly those companies that control the content being disseminated via social media, Pearce says. In fact, he says the game's creators were inspired by real-world instances of AI bots attempting to exert election or policy influence. One was a case of attempted election interference in Australia, where there was evidence that a pro-Russia operation attempted to poison AI chatbots with propaganda ahead of the 2025 federal election.  Related:Lies, Damned Lies, and Cybersecurity Metrics Another online campaign that influenced Pearce and Masood was one in which bots associated with the People's Republic of China (PRC) tried to sway the narrative around Australia's Voice referendum, a constitutional referendum in 2023 that aimed to give more political rights to indigenous people in the country, Pearce says. People in the US are no strangers to such online influence by external forces as well. The specter of the Russian online misinformation campaign designed to influence the 2020 presidential election still looms large over any major US election cycle. And with the rapid growth and proliferation of AI in the past few years, malicious actors have more tools at their disposal than ever to manipulate social media platform and influence public opinion. Custom Technology for Wargame The UNSW team created various custom technologies for Capture the Narrative, including the in-house social media platform Legit Social as well as "non-player character" (NPC) bots that consumed the social media feed. Related:Shadow AI in Healthcare Is Here to Stay Legit Social "was based on our experiences with the early years of Twitter [now known as X]," Pearce says. "It supports posting, reposting, replying, liking, tagging, embedding media and GIFS, and more."  The team used a Python back end and React front end for the platform, which also has a trending algorithm and a chronological feed, he says. The NPC bots, meanwhile, were developed with a custom Python framework to have more than 40 attributes defining their personality and beliefs, which could evolve over time. These "simulated citizens" using social media — which competitors were to persuade building their own bots, or "player characters" (PCs) — were powered by a network of 12 large language model (LLM) instances running concurrently, Pearce says. "The goal of the game is for the human players to build PC bots which persuade the NPC bots to change their voting intention in the simulated election," he says.  Lessons and Surprises Even as the players succeeded in achieving the goals of the game, they also developed technology applicable outside of the game scenario that demonstrates potential influence tactics for the real world, Pearce says.  These included the building of advanced AI bot systems for dynamic and adaptive spam; mass content scanning for sentiment analysis and identifying specific accounts to micro-target; and building closed-loop systems that continually adapt content and tone for maximum engagement, he tells Dark Reading. "The teams, when surveyed, provided interesting insights regarding the AI content and how they found they could see similar patterns in real social media," he says. The game also delivered a surprise in the quality and scale of the content generated by the teams on their budget, which was AU$0 to AU$100. "Between the millions of dynamic posts and the mass content scanning, we had multiple instances where our servers crashed under the load," Pearce acknowledges. All in all, the competition and its outcome not only provided a valuable tool for professors and students, but also can provide insight for technology providers, lawmakers, and other stakeholders for future AI and social media development, he says. One of those is that the gatekeepers of social media platforms "need to do more to ensure that AI-generated fake content designed to persuade and confuse is identified and removed at scale," Pearce says.  At the same time, everyone using the Internet has a responsibility to educate themselves on "how easy it is for such content to be generated and propagated autonomously and at scale," Pearce says, adding that the public sector should be actively involved in promoting and supporting this education for the good of all. Black Hat Asia APR 21, 2026 TO APR 24, 2026 | SINGAPORE Black Hat Asia returns to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore with a four-day program featuring specialized cybersecurity trainings with courses for all skill levels, a Summit Day, and the two-day main conference. Black Hat Asia 2026 will feature Briefings by experts from around the world presenting the latest research in cybersecurity risks, developments and trends, dozens of open-source tool demos in Arsenal, a robust Business Hall, networking opportunities, social events, and much more. Use code: DARKREADING to get a Free Business pass or save $200 on a Briefings pass. GET YOUR PASS Read more about: Black Hat News About the Author Elizabeth Montalbano Contributing Writer Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer, journalist, and therapeutic writing mentor with more than 25 years of professional experience. Her areas of expertise include technology, business, and culture. Elizabeth previously lived and worked as a full-time journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco, and New York City; she currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal. In her free time, she enjoys surfing, hiking with her dogs, traveling, playing music, yoga, and cooking. 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