>>16356553 more from Janco’s dillusion filled paper
So this paper is about peddling various known and confirmed disinformation about Trump winning and HRC losing, once again blaming Russia, Russia, Russia and some China
“Hostile-state information operations, which Herbert Lin defines as “the deliberate use of information (whether true or false) by one party on an adversary to confuse, mislead and ultimately to influence the choices and decisions that the adversary makes,” continue to confound democracies.1
The use and manipulation of information as a tool of influence began long before the 2016 US presidential election. But information operations have become more potent in an increasingly networked world, aided by the ubiquity of online targeting tools and the anonymity and credibility the Internet provides.
Since 2016, the American public and private sectors have struggled to address this challenge, stymied by domestic politicization of the topic and legitimate concerns about balancing social media regulation with First Amendment rights.2
As a result, disinformation has thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic and left the country vulnerable to manipulation through hostile-state information operations.
Perpetual Information Competition
Since the end of the Cold War and the resurgence of great-power competition, Western democracies have conceptualized hostile-state information operations as one-off occurrences—explained away by societal peculiarities, tensions, and events such as elections—that provide inflection points hostile states can attempt to manipulate. Rather than organizing crosscutting, proactive, whole-of-government responses, most Western governments stand-up extra capabilities only when necessary, such aselection war rooms before events like the 2018 US midterms (Bannon’s and Trump’s war rooms)or the UK government’s response to the Russian poisonings of Sergei and Yulia Skripal on British soil.3
In the United States, countering information operations has been largely securitized, primarily involving elements of the Defense, Homeland Security, and State Departments, in addition to the Intelligence Community, but rarely, if ever, focused on domestic audiences or involving the softer side of government, such as theDepartment of Education. As the development of Russian and Chinese information operations over the past decade-plus into the COVID-19 era demonstrates, this lack of whole-of-government approach misses the bigger picture and inhibits an effective response.
Like the Kremlin-sponsored information operations in Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine that preceded it, Russian online interference surrounding the 2016 US presidential election had the goal of “provok[ing] and amplify[ing] political and social discord in the United States.”10 Through fake accounts and pages, illegally purchased online advertisements, monetary support of authentic American activists and protests, the hack-and-leak of the emails of Democratic political operatives, and billions of organic online engagements, Russian operatives were able to influence America’s democratic discourse ahead of the 2016 vote.11 They built community and trust through positive messaging and later used this influence to launch more ambitious and divisive campaigns, including in-person protests.12
Due to the insufficient and tardy response of the social media platforms and the US government in the wake of the 2016 election interference campaign, Russia’s information operations targeting the United States continue as the 2020 presidential election approaches.13 The Kremlin and its channels of influence have adapted their information operations’ tools and tactics to the responses that have been implemented, finding innovative ways around regulations in the United States and beyond. In 2019 and 2020, Ukraine’s security service uncovered evidence Russian operatives rented Facebook accounts from Ukrainian users and organized a bot network utilizing 40,000 Ukrainian and European SIM cards to field 10,000 accounts across the country.14
Using practiced tactics, Russian officials and state-run media were quick to seize on the pandemic to drive further division in Western democracies. The COVID-19 opportunity was particularly appealing in the United States,where another divisive presidential election campaign had just begun, and US government missteps could be amplified and exploited to influence political discourse.