The effort includes artificial intelligence, fake social media accounts and a spike in state-sponsored Russian propaganda.
By Dan De Luce
Russia is seeking to exploit America’s divisive debate over Israel’s offensive in Gaza through overt and covert propaganda, with the aim of aggravating political tensions in the U.S. and tarnishing Washington’s global image, according to two sources familiar with U.S. intelligence on the matter.
In its ongoing information war against the United States, Russia has shifted its focus in recent months to the Israel-Hamas conflict, seeking to inflame existing divisions in the West and to portray Washington as fueling the violence, the sources said.
…
A favorite theme of Russian information operations is to paint America as a failing democratic state, according to U.S. officials and researchers.
At an event last week in Washington, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Russia works to denigrate America’s standing in the world, to undermine democratic institutions and processes and to exploit social, political and economic divisions “in our culture and in our society.”
“I think it would be entirely inaccurate to say that the protests that are happening on college campuses, the divisiveness of the debate in Congress and among the public is a result of anything that Russians have done or could do,” [Bret] Schafer [who tracks Russian and other propaganda at the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Alliance for Securing Democracy] said. “I think it would all be there regardless of whether there were Russian bots and Russian state media messaging.”
Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, a think tank, said reports on propaganda efforts by foreign actors over protest movements needed to be treated with caution.
Allegations of foreign influence “can often be used to delegitimize large and authentic democratic movements in the United States,” Brooking said, adding that some critics of the Black Lives Matter protests tried that tactic citing foreign adversaries’ information operations.
A lot of people on here (and likely the author of the article, who buried it at paragraph 17 and further down after and before a lot of arguing for the contrary) could do with taking that to heart. Both on Gaza and on Biden.
Little bit of A, little bit of B. We shouldn’t think that just because we are fighting for peace and equality that we cannot be infiltrated and manipulated to someone else’s advantage. They’re not mutually exclusive possibilities.
If there would be a clear benefit for doing so, and it can be done in a cost effective manner, then it is reasonable to think it might be happening. When you consider the strong motive provided by being involved in an active war with hundreds of thousands of casualties and many billions being spent, it’s just not something we can afford to ignore.
The Animus is real, but the way they have pulled an uncomfortable form of anti-zionism into otherwise legitimate concerns about apartheid in the Levant is hard to look past. There are serious academic conversations to be had about how Israel is the original sin of the modern nation-state, but that cat is out of the bag at this point. Russia has unambiguously worked to amplify the voices of violent extremists and racists, at the expense of measured and educated voices on this issue, and they have used youthful naivety towards some very concerning rhetoric as a conduit for this information warfare.
The shame here is that this has become a distraction over real criticism and has impeded geopolitical consensus on the way Israel has approached this conflict. Most people who are paying attention believe Israel is way over the line, but are not willing to support a form of anti-zionist messaging which openly calls for throwing ten million Israeli Jews to the wolves.
Russia exploits America’s division on fucking everything. If they could figure out a way to exploit the divide between whether pineapple should be on pizza or not, they’d do that too.
Honestly, I think it’s just time to start peer-banning known Russian networks. For real, are they doing ANY good out in the world at this point that they would be missed on the Internet in any way?
All I gotta say is I don’t think Coca-Cola ever tried to overthrow a government. Can’t say that about Pepsi though.
Or Chiquita!
This is why you should check a little bit of someone’s history before replying to any inflammatory comments. Most of the time it’s obvious they have an agenda when you look at their post submissions and comments.
I’m a big fan of tagging people using Sync. It makes it easier to spot people that are pushing a strong agenda.
The more ineffectual the USA is, the easier it is for PuttyPoot to enrich himself. He’s spending a TON of money to buy an entire wing of a political party.
I’ll bet Putin knew about the Oct. 7 attack and sat on the info. One of the reason being to exploit division in the US.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than that, considering the Russia > Iran > Hamas connection.
If only israel had prior knowledge, they could have taken defensive action
It is high time we wage an earnest hybrid war against the blyats. Sabotage, covert action of all manner, full-blown economic warfare, cutting off their supply chains, smuggling fentanyl, all that shit.
I’m increasing suspicious is that the reason marijuana is being rescheduled is that someone finally convinced the brass that they are talent limited in the IT world because of the large percentage of IT pros that smoke
Not to increase your suspicion but over a decade ago James Comey joked about that and then Jeff Sessions grilled him in front of Congress:
FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday that he was trying to be “funny” when he remarked at a conference this week that some of the people he’s looking to hire to fight cybercrime “want to smoke weed on the way to the interview.”
As someone who has infosec skills that could be useful, the weed prohibition isn’t the main reason I don’t work for the government. It’s that they’d make me come into an office.
I agree it’s probably not the number one reason someone would turn down one of those jobs. But anyone that’s on the fence might be swayed
Lol, OK so what if this messaging was the state department’s way of undercutting anti-israel sentiment so that they could protect their interests in the middle east from domestic opposition?
Lol
