Is Russia Conducting A Social Media War On America? (time.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Time magazine ran a cover story about "a dangerous new route for antidemocratic forces" -- social media. "Using these technologies, it is possible to undermine democratic government, and it's becoming easier every day," says Rand Waltzman of the Rand Corp., who ran a major Pentagon research program to understand the propaganda threats posed by social media technology." The article cites current and former FBI and CIA officials who now believe Russia's phishing emails against politicians were "just the most visible battle in an ongoing information war against global democracy." They cite, for example, a March report by U.S. counterintelligence which found "Russians had sent expertly tailored messages carrying malware to more than 10,000 Twitter users in the Defense Department." Each message contained links tailored to the interests of the recipient, but "When clicked, the links took users to a Russian-controlled server that downloaded a program allowing Moscow's hackers to take control of the victim's phone or computer -- and Twitter account...

"In 2016, Russia had used thousands of covert human agents and robot computer programs to spread disinformation referencing the stolen campaign emails of Hillary Clinton, amplifying their effect. Now counterintelligence officials wondered: What chaos could Moscow unleash with thousands of Twitter handles that spoke in real time with the authority of the armed forces of the United States?" The article also notes how algorithms now can identify hot-button issues and people susceptible to suggestion, so "Propagandists can then manually craft messages to influence them, deploying covert provocateurs, either humans or automated computer programs known as bots, in hopes of altering their behavior. That is what Moscow is doing, more than a dozen senior intelligence officials and others investigating Russia's influence operations tell Time."
The article describes a Russian soldier in the Ukraine pretending to be a 42-year-old American housewife. Meanwhile, this week Time's cover shows America's White House halfway-covered with Kremlin-esque spires -- drawing a complaint from the humorists at Mad magazine, who say Time copied the cover of Mad's December issue.

Comments

Disinformation of Hillary Clinton?

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding is that most of the emails were in fact true. The DNC never claimed the emails were false, just complaining that their dirty laundry got out for everyone to see.

Re:Hype is hype

[acrimonious howard]

I think we've known for a while that various governments pay people to enter forums and post messages trying control the narrative.

I haven't heard of any other nation coming close to the scale of Russia:

"Russia's information war might be thought of as the biggest trolling operation in history,"

There is a paragraph about phishing that largely is quoted in the summary. The article doesn't make clear whether these are phishing attacks from the Russian government, or just from Russia.

Uh, yes, TFA does say it came straight from Russian soldiers:

In one case last year, senior intelligence officials tell TIME, a Russian soldier based in Ukraine successfully infiltrated a U.S. social media group by pretending to be a 42-year-old American housewife and weighing in on political debates with specially tailored messages.

Overall, the article is an example of the breathless hyperbole that fills every news article these days.

Heh TFA says "the Russians would consider it a success if you questioned the truth of your news sources". Hrm.

Re:Consensus government

[gweihir]

Switzerland has a GDP of around $650B. There are only 6 _states_ in the US that have more and only 3 states have more than double that. Now, I did not fund a list of US GDP by country, but unless, for example, California manages to have about 25% of its total GDP in only one county, your numbers are complete bullshit.