Yale historian Timothy Snyder was among the first to recognize the effectiveness of influence operations launched by the Russian intelligence services. Vladimir Putin’s campaign to destabilize Ukraine 2014 was the model. Russia’s intervention in America’s 2016 election did not have the paramilitary component of “little green men” (plainclothes special operations commandos) seen in Ukraine but otherwise followed the same disinformation playbook.
The key was weaponizing Facebook and Twitter to disrupt, discourage and confuse opposition democratic forces.
“As a state weak in conventional means of power, Russia early identified the potential to weaponize these new tools against stronger foes. “The Russian economy did not have to produce anything of material value, and did not. Russian politicians had to use technologies created by others to alter mental states, and did.”
The CIA manipulated an earlier generations of mass media technologies–TV and radio–to advance its regime change schemes in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1961), and Chile (1970), among many others. The democratization of mass media via the Internet, now enables Russia to mount the same kind operations. One common denominator of CIA and FSB covert psychological warfare is the manipulation of the target audience’s perception of reality to destabilize the targeted state.
Some will note that David Frum, author of this admiring piece, was a cheerleader for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as if that discredits Snyder’s argument. That doesn’t quite make sense to me. Others will say that CIA meddling in other countries deprives us of the right to criticize Russia’s. That doesn’t quite make sense to me either. If the CIA’s interventions were deplorable–and in my view they were–then Russia’s actions are deplorable too.
Source: The Great Russian Disinformation Campaign – Defense One
