Bear with me -- this is going to get twisted.

I've been paying quite a bit of attention to the use of deception as a tactical method, from real-world griefing to deception as a means of protecting privacy. I'm particularly interested in the political uses of technology-enabled deception -- uses that I suspect are likely to become more prevalent in the near future.

Two of my rules for constructing useful and interesting scenarios are to (a) think about what happens when seemingly disparate changes smash together, and (b) imagine how new developments might be misused. In both cases, the goal is to uncover something unexpected, but (upon reflection) disturbingly plausible. I'd like to lay out for you the chain of connections that lead me to believe that we're on the verge of something big.

Twitter bots: One study suggests that nearly half of the Twitter accounts following corporate Twitter feeds are actually bots -- simple programs that mimic a human user, sending out messages, responding to keywords, and the like. Bots can be set up to retweet each other, and could potentially drive up the visibility of various hashtags and links on Twitter results.

Algorithmic trading: Increasingly, financial market trade decisions are executed by software, based on programmatic rules; such rules can include responding to news feeds. Some algorithmic trading systems have branched out beyond mainstream news sources, and have connected up to Twitter feeds.

High-Frequency trading: A special form of algorithmic trading, high-frequency trading involving rapidly purchased and re-sold shares, with positions held for as little as a few seconds. Because of the speed of execution, high-frequency trading is even more dependent upon breaking news feeds (and, likely, Twitter) than regular algorithmic trading.

The Flash Crash: In May of 2010, the US Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped over 998 points (about 9% -- the biggest one day point decline in DJIA history), only to recover within a few minutes. The apparent cause? "Order flow toxicity," when a large seller exhausts available buyers, triggering a cascade of selling by intermediaries -- particularly high-frequency algorithmic traders.

United deja-vu stock crash: In September of 2008, Google News posted as current a six-year-old article about United Airlines filing for bankruptcy; as a result, the value of UAL stock dropped by 75%, but recovered as the error was spotted.