Resilience is what the great strategist of online warfare Taylor Swift described as the ability to “shake it off.” More seriously, resilience is the ability to weather the storm, either by making attacks less effective or by recovering so quickly as to nullify their goal. That is what makes it so crucial; it creates what is more technically known as “deterrence by denial.” We think of deterrence as coming from Cold War style retaliation, which was a fear of punishment, but it can also come from the attacker deciding not to attack because they don’t think it will work.

This holds true whether you are talking about a traditional cyber threat that involves the hacking of a network or what we call “LikeWar,” the hacking of people on the network. Both have such low barriers to entry that we’re not going to be able to deter all of them away through a fear of punishment alone. We’ve got to build a more resilient ecosystem to protect against these harms.

About a year after the 2016 election, I testified before Congress and outlined 30 nonpartisan actions that we could take to secure us in cyberspace. Sadly, many of the representatives were unwilling to look me in the eye as I testified about what was, essentially, an attack on American democracy. And that is issue number one: getting past our sense of denial, which only aids and abets an enemy. After we do that, there is a wide array of actions that can be taken, too many to list here, but they break down into the role of government, the private sector, and the individual. Each has a role to play, just as they would on issues ranging from public health to natural disaster preparedness.

For the government, a key starting point is the creation of a strategy that cuts across government agencies and addresses multiple threats. Since 2016, there have been varied actions, but there hasn’t been any unifying vision or plan. For example, in the fall of 2018 we had an improved strategy and action taken by NSA/Cyber Command against Russian disinformation, which was missing in 2016. But neither the State Department or the Department of Education have the same level of preparedness. And not to mention the fact that we can’t frame this issue as Russia-related only.

They can and will be targeted. The key is to have a plan beforehand to defend themselves and their campaigns. There are certain best practices that should be implemented, indeed many of them already used by their peers in the 30-plus other national elections that have been attacked in other countries since the U.S. election in 2016. A key issue is to not just feed the fire of disinformation, but figure out when to respond and when not to (so as not to aid in the virality). Then, when they do respond, the idea would be to put the attacker on the backfoot by making it not about a simple fact check (which won’t work), but rather expose the attacker’s networks and their history. Make them the story, not you.

What you’re referencing here is the use of AI to manipulate imagery and the like, popularly known as “Deep Fakes.” This will be used for entertainment, but it will also be weaponized. I don’t think we can or should ban it, due to the First Amendment and the potential for good it does have, but I do think we can better prepare for it, including developing better tech and policy to rapidly identify and attribute its creation to the implementation of what I jokingly call “The Blade Runner Rule.” In other words, you may have a right to create something that is fake, but then I have the right to know when I’m interacting with something artificial. Think of this as the Deep Fake version of the little blue check-mark on Twitter that is used to verify accounts like the “@realdonaldtrump.”

Like it or not, we will see more of these “LikeWar”-style tactics, used by companies, activists, and others. It’s just part of being online now. Going back to the question of verification though, it is a risky move for companies to do so in ways that are deliberately deceptive. You can win at LikeWar without being a liar. The key is to understand that it is the virality—not the truth in and of itself—that matters most online.

You shouldn’t just trust it. You have to be an active consumer of information, as you are constantly surrounded by attempts to shape you and your views and your clicks and shares that in turn drive the views of your friends and family.

This raises the demand for providing the tools of digital literacy, an area where the United States is far behind democracies like the Baltics, but also in building the personal and societal ethic behind hygiene. I teach my kids (and they are taught in government funded schools): “Cover your mouth when you cough.” This is not because it protects them, but because they have a responsibility to protect everyone else they connect with. It is the same online. And yet, when it comes to Internet toxicity in all its forms–hate, conspiracy theory, disinformation, etc.–we are comfortable with an environment in which people are unapologetically doing the equivalent of coughing in our face. We have to change that if we want both a healthy Internet and a healthy democracy.