Finland is winning the war on fake news. Other nations want the blueprint
edition.cnn.com
edition.cnn.com
My brain said this to me as a snarky comment. But further reflection yielded insight that is probably already obvious to you:
Disinformation attack isn't intended to promote any particular claim or narrative. If you happen to believe the nonsense, maybe that's a nice bonus for the attacker. But they are aiming for something far more insidious.
They want you to believe that nothing is true, that truth simply cannot be discovered, that anyone claiming to do so simply wants attention for personal gain.
So of course Russia, as a state actor, has mastered this technique.
All countries use disinformation, with the larger regimes being significantly more dystopic. It's not useful to point the finger at a single one, except to spread propaganda further.
Living with friends that summer, I would ask about these books (my grasp of Russian became sufficient to find my way around the organized city center, but I couldn't read much of the books, although some were engineering texts).
They would smile and say. "Well, we are re-writing history once again."
Noam Chomsky makes it abundantly clear that US culture is no different in regard to historical narrative. But I haven't had that pervasive sense that there is no such thing as a true story, not in the US, not until these past few years.
Thus far there's not a single shred of evidence that Aaron Banks etc. worked with Russia on the Leave campaign, indeed, this exact allegation is currently the subject of litigation between Banks and a Guardian journalist, Carole Cadwalladr. Perhaps the weasel words 'authorities linked' are how they got it past CNN's lawyers.
Somewhat ironic that a piece on fake news should itself recycle what currently amounts to an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.
They know they will be the next ukraine if they don't watch out.