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Political Propaganda and Disinformation as Geopolitical Weapons

Google News - US accuses Russia of using state media to influence election

September 6, 2024

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YouTube takes down right-wing channels linked to DOJ Russia indictments

YouTube “terminates” Tenet Media and other channels

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/05/youtube-takes-down-tenet-lauren-chen-tenet-russia-doj/

Russian trolling 2.0: How the Kremlin shifted tactics from its 2016 election strategy

Rather than relying on fake accounts and bogus online personas, the current effort alleged in this week’s indictment involves coopting real American influencers to try to push Russian narratives to US audiences, particularly aimed at undermining support for Ukraine.

“Buying authentic influencers is a far better use of funds than creating fake personas, because they bring their own trusting audiences and are actually, you know, real,” Renee DiResta, an expert on online influence operations, said in a social media post.

The (US DOJ) indictment alleges that the RT employees secretly poured nearly $10 million into a Tennessee company that hired prominent right-wing commentators who produced content on hot-button political issues, including Russia’s war on Ukraine...

The Russian Propaganda Attack on America

Sometimes money is more effective than weapons

By Tom Nichols

September 5, 2024

What’s really going on here is that the Russians have identified two major weaknesses in their American adversaries. The first is that a big slice of the American public, especially since the ascent of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, has an almost limitless appetite for stories that jack up their adrenaline: They will embrace wild conspiracies and “news” meant to generate social conflict so long as the stories are exciting, validate their preexisting worldviews, and give them some escape from life’s daily doldrums.

The other is that more than a few Americans have the combination of immense greed and ego-driven grievances that make them easy targets either for recruitment or to be used as clueless dupes. The Russians, along with every other intelligence service in the world, count on finding such people and exploiting their avarice and insecurity. This is not new. (The United States does it too. Money is almost always the easiest inducement to treason.) But the widespread influence of social media has opened a new front in the intelligence battle. Professional secret agents no longer need to find highly placed Americans who have access to secrets or who might influence policy discussions. Instead of the painstaking work that usually takes months or even years to suborn foreign citizens, the Kremlin can just dragoon a couple of its own people to pose as business sharps with money to burn, spread cash around like manure in a field full of half-wits, and see what blossoms.

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(2018)

"The Russian disinformation operations that affected the 2016 United States presidential election are by no means over."

-- Renée DiResta, Author, "Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality"

• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/opinion/russia-report-disinformation.html

• https://strategicdemands.com/russian-disinformation-targets-us/

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