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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.
"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.
If anyone is conducting a (metaphorical) war on America, it's the news media. How many hyped up bullshit stories is it going to take before news media consumers realize it's 95% storytelling and 5% actual events?
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.
Crimea invasion and now this? It looks like long-time KGBer Vladimir Putin is serious about rebuilding the Union of Soviet Social-ist Republics.
The vast majority of the article can be summed as, "astroturfing." I think we've known for a while that various governments pay people to enter forums and post messages trying control the narrative.
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.
Overall, the article is an example of the breathless hyperbole that fills every news article these days.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Occam's Razor says it's not "The Russians." "The Russians" do not have the resources to control U.S. (social) media. It does appear that some entity is using the media to create deeper political division in the U.S. It must be very expensive to do this but, it would be much less expensive for U.S. government agencies to do this instead of a foreign entity. Occam's Razor says this is an inside-job. If any entity is influencing the media it is much more likely to be the CIA rather than the Kremlin.
In all seriousness:
An advice for you, Ivan — do not post anonymously. Don't you have access to some stolen /.-accounts as described in TFA? Use that — you will be believed for a 5 seconds longer...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Rriight...
Yes, sure. Defending one's Motherland from invaders is "crazy".
The last National Socialist left Ukraine in 1944... He was in a hurry...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Blaming Russia is one thing, but if your official fucking email is GMAIL OR HOTMAIL and you use it for official party/government correspondence AND you're dumb enough to be phished, then Russia can only take part of the blame.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is mental insanity because there isn't any evidence at all of electoral fraud, vote rigging or coercion of voters. You know, the kind of hard evidence you'd need to substantiate an allegation of 'hacking' or 'influencing' the election.
All we get is this kind of brain damage about completely unsubstantiated Russian 'bots' and some bizarrely incredibly mind control project Putin has.
After 9/11, I was listening to a interview with Rudy Giuliani. He made a joke, that while as some other countries might have the best engineers, America has the best Madison Avenue. He was referring to the propaganda pipeline, and how the US worked hard to make itself hear around the world and exerts its influence globally. /hr, but with the changes in the economy, prices skyrocketed because the economy was opened up to the West (shook capitalism, it was called).
Probably the biggest source of propaganda came during the 2007 TARP. If the American people did not bail out the banks who had been holding CMOs, the economy would be devastated. All the wrong people would have the money, so the richest 1% had to work hard to maintain the status quo.
I remember hearing [re-]broadcasts by Ronald Reagan via "Voice of America" broadcast into Afghanistan in the 1970's. He went off the deep end and talked about how there are plenty of jobs for Afghan defectors. This was such bullshit, as there were lots of unemployed Americans, so I just didn't understand how shit like this would be believed (by the East). Apparently, it was reasonably successful, for the amount of descent it would cause. Similarly, most of the strikes in Gdansk Poland were strongly influenced by the US, with the help of the catholic church. All sorts of nonsense was promised to the workers in the shipyards, most ironically, that they would get Western wages if they broke away from the Eastern block. After the bankruptcy of the Gdansk shipyards and the fall of the Soviet Union, "Johnson and Johnson" negotiated purchasing the shipyards. The workers were getting around $.25/hour before the changes and managed to get $.50
I hope they know where to send the paycheck... I also apparently shill for big corporations, the Jews, the Illuminati, both the Republican and Democratic parties... and yet even though they know me well enough to bring me into their conspiracies, they apparently don't know where to send the damned payoff.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Occam's Razor says you don't understand Occam's Razor very well: RAZING_CONSPIRACY
What you're actually making is a plausibility argument based on a (dubious) claim that Russia's resources are too limited to have any effect in this realm.
If you wanted to make the point that multiple different player's are out there astroturfing as web surfers-- including, for example, Hillary's Brock puppets who were such a joy to deal with during the Democratic primary-- you would certainly be correct.
There are no Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
No, of course not. All those freshly dug graves of Russian soldiers suddenly appearing and reporters being attacked investigating the sudden increase in dead Russian soldiers mean absolutely nothing.
Don't forget the Russian special forces soldiers captured in Ukraine, the Russian officer captured while transporting ammunition and supplies, the Russian soldiers who have dropped the pretense they're not fighting in Ukraine while others have quit the army because they don't want to fight in Ukraine like their comrades. Then there are the terrorists themselves who fully admit Russian soldiers have been fighting for them.
So yeah, no evidence whatsoever of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
Stop treating government as a sporting contest where you cheer for your team to crush the other team.
Some countries like Switzerland have not a single head of executive, but a council of 7 people.
It the same was practiced in your country, that would lead to totally different campaigns.
It would be very difficult for the candidate of one or the other of your bipartite system, to spend time arguing that the other is "an incompetent idiot", because with such system, they are guaranteed to then later have to work together reaching a consensus.
Hard to crush a team, when all the team *must in practice* work together.
The only big suspense would be who out of the minor parties are going to get the last of the coucil seats.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I've been noticing since the election how odd it is that whenever I meet a Trump supporter, or a Hillary hater, If I bring up Russia, their nationalistic sense of American sovereignty will completely evaporate. To a person, they deflect concern about Russian hacking or Putin's oligarchy with such skill as if they've attended an 8-week media training course. They'll claim the Russians did us a favor by exposing Democratic corruption, and even shed a tear for the plight of the Russian people suffering under Obama's sanctions.
When I meet someone who says they "don't support Trump" but somehow only attacks liberals, I can just imagine the Facebook group that got their hooks in them. I keep seeing groups for political causes that used to have their own identities, but now only post pro-Trump or anti-liberal messages. "Being Libertarian" had a perfect example – libertarianism is diametrically opposed from authoritarianism, and yet it showed up in my feed because a friend of mine clicked "Like" on a picture of a parody of that one poem. It said "They came for the socialists, and I said nothing. Then everything was better and they stopped coming for people." Thousands of likes, each one from someone who labels themselves "libertarian" but totally signed off on the rounding-up of their political enemies, and declared their trust that strongman authority only takes away rights temporarily.
And that's what is worrying, because even if Trump gets impeached, the national psyche is already gravely wounded, and the Kremlin has a fresh truckload of salt for us every day to stop it from healing.
Many shadowy parties are reported to be involved in this sort of thing, another is American Billionaire Robert Merce who has also been implicated in unlawful campaigning in the UK Referendum and General Elections, illegally under UK election regulations.
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
Nice try Russian spy!
Well, I'm actually a Russian. Which makes me wondering, if you are so hell-bent on committing a mass suicide, why won't you use American nukes for that purpose?
Now, the really scary part is that starting a war is traditionally the means to resolve a domestic crisis, and it totally looks like the U.S. is in the middle of one.
This is perfectly sane because there's a massive amount of evidence of Russia running propaganda farms pushing specific messages over the internet. Our intelligence community has come right out and said they're doing this. None of this is unsubstantiated. Spend 20 minutes on google and you can prove that to yourself. There are tons of meticulously sourced articles about it.
Also, you're straw manning. We're not discussing vote rigging or coercion, we're discussing propaganda campaigns.
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Yep.
Countless times it has been shown how half the twitter followers espousing such things as open boarders, free food, health care, housing free everything (unless you are an american citizen of course) are pretty much fake.
Accounts for Congressional members on twitter are and their followers numbers probably fake too.
I mean have you watched the news lately? You know, there are other things more important going on right now than trying to remove a individual from office because the oligarchs don't like him.
I would like to see more news coverage on what is being done in the middle east to reduce the conflict there, or how trade is working out for this country.
I am so sick and tired of the new programs airing nothing but Dump Trump crapola 24/7.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
It's worth noting that whatever Time might have intended, the error here isn't just on the part of the Slashdot summary. Just about every media outlet that mentions the Time cover calls it the Kremlin.
This reflects a truth about the depth of the media's knowledge and understanding of Russia.
And the problem is that it is not only America - the pattern repeats in several countries - it started with Russian minority in Ukraina and Crimea and when proven successfull - spread to Balic States, Poland, UK, France, Germany and several other places.
One can observe posts on foras that have character dramatically different to those 3-4 years ago.
There are many liberal media foras on which 75% of posts are anti-liberal/anti-immigrant/anti-West. Something unseen 5 years ago when 90% of posts were liberal.
I can hear echos of these anti-liberal posts in what my younger coworkers say and I am scared - something big is going on and it reminds me 1930 Nazi or 1950 Communist propaganda.
When security becomes a paradigm.. thus rises the god of fortresses (the perfection of security), which in turn becomes a prison for all of us.
The Democrats are practically shut out of the state governments. Legislative branches and Governorships.
The have been in the minority in the Federal Government for nearly ten years now.
And now Hillary just got technically KO'd by a bloviating braggart (which, I have to admit, I thoroughly enjoyed watching.).
So now they are struggling to figure out what happened and make sense of their current predicament. In the best tradition of politicians, they have found an scapegoat...the Russians.
Despite allcoolnameswheretak insistence and links, there is no hard evidence of the Russians interfering with the election. Rumors, innuendo, circumstantial curiosities, but nothing more.To the extent they might have been perpetrating a Psyops, there is no evidence they've done anything that WE haven't done throughout the world currently and in the past.
The furious panty twisting the Democrats are engaged in is merely a Psyops on the American people.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The Russians have been abusing social media and comments sections of websites for a long time now.
Russia Targets The Blaze
Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America
Russian Trolls and the US Election
Not news; if it is to you, you haven't been paying much attention. :P
Love sees no species.
The Brexit vote and the U.S. presidential election form part of Russiaâ(TM)s campaign of propaganda and disinformation to undermine and interfere in democratic processes in the Western countries.
http://www.newsweek.com/brexit...
So not only do you have the ass in dumbass, you've got the d in dumbfuck! Russia's military spending is a fraction of NATO's, and they just cut it by 30%. NATO has dramatically expanded after the fall of the Warsaw Pact - breaking a promise Bush made to Gorbachev. It's not Russia spending a trillion dollars to upgrade its nuclear arsenal while encircling the U.S. with anti-missile systems. And it's not Russia that's deployed the largest amounts of troops to eastern europe since WWII, practicing "war games".
As is usually the case, you take the American Exceptionalist storyline, invert it, and you have reality. It's not the EU defending itself from Russian aggression. It's Russia defending itself from NATO and U.S. aggression.
You are either dumb or ignorant, probably both. There used to be a treaty that very specifically - down to a precise amount of tanks, helicopters, artillery and so on - limited the size of conventional forces in Europe. The NATO expansion quickly broke that treaty and several of the new NATO countries refused to sign it, making the treaty moot because the excess could just be parked in these countries, right at the Russian border. Russia fruitlessly complained about it, then gave up and suspended the treaty in 2007.
Once again, dumb, ignorant, or both. Russia has been invaded by Western forces several times. It is not surprising that they feel being encircled, especially given the size of their border. Cyberwar only kills people in mediocre science fiction, in real life bullets and bombs do.
And Italy is one of the largest economies in the world (also very corrupt, although not quite that much). What exactly is your point?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap