Digital Confidential: Flood the Zone

From the Archive

In his first column on politics and digital technology, Damian Collins MP writes about flood zones, the deep state and why Silicon Valley is evasive over fake news

Andy Reid, head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, the NFL Super Bowl reigning champions, likes to “flood the zone” in his offensive plays, sending more runners into an area of the field than the defenders can cover. This makes man-to-man marking impossible. Like many sporting terms, it has found a home in politics, in particular thanks to Donald Trump’s former strategist and Cambridge Analytica investor, Steve Bannon. In 2018 he said that “the Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit”. We see this strategy in play in the US with the constant attacks on the mainstream media, where the term “fake news” is used against stories Donald Trump doesn’t like, regardless of validity. The president’s own remarks can also be a source of confusion. For example, in August, without providing any proof that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was intentionally delaying coronavirus vaccine trials, he said: “The deep state –...

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