Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 8:42 | Scott Lucas in EA Global, Journalism and Media, Music and Culture 
When a state --- be it Bahrain, Israel, Syria or China --- needs to stoop to the level of paying citizens to fight its public relations wars, it has already lost.
The US military;is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.
