Russia amplified hurricane disinformation to drive Americans apart
abc7chicago.com
abc7chicago.com
This looks like damage control trying to shift blame and make legit criticism looks like Russian interference
It's so cheap and so effective, I'm sure everyone does it.
Of course totalitarian regimes exist to keep the totalitarian regime in power, at the expense if necessary of everything else. But the Russian state is comprised of the core ethnic Russian territory, which we think of as Russia, but then also have a VERY large population and land exposure of the -Stans as vassal states to be exploited.
None of those stans want to be with Russia. Of course for Russia, losing control of those provinces will mean exposure on all sides from continental invasion, a massive loss of resources and wealth, and worst of all would motivate the regime to be toppled as weak.
It would be foolish to think the Russians aren't doing it. There was demonstrable evidence of them interfering in the Clinton-Trump election.
There is hints of substantial dark money sloshing around Washington from China and Russia. Why would there not, when Saudi (notice how almost every President goes to Saudi Arabia to kiss ass at the end of their terms?) and Israeli already is, although those are more clear geopolitical interests.
Because the quiet agreement on both sides of the aisle is "don't stop any money trains", there isn't the proper attention on this influence, but the Ukraine funding holdup, which was really funny money accounting of valuing old stockpiles being pulled from warehouses that was going to just be scrapped in the near future anyway, was a bizarre political event.
To me that really felt like Russian dark money, because the Ukrainians were basically kept without ammo for months and months and the Russians made substantial gains. Why would they not?
Regardless, the current administration is still showing weakness and taking it. The Russians are constantly escalating the war, and are now shipping in foreign North Korean troops, and NATO should respond in kind with its own direct troop assistance.
The Russians have for decades bragged about fomenting discontent in foreign powers, ironically as their country has economically and demographically faded.
We supposedly have invested in state of the art information warfare, but the weakness is that we SUPPOSEDLY can't turn those weapons on our population, while our main opponents can use their capabilities at will domestically or internationally.
and sticking that into google gives a link to it: https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/russian-propaga...
The word interference doesn't make it into the abc article and the "russia amplified hurricane disinformation" seems pretty provenn from links in the ISD articles to posts from RT, Sputnik and Dmitry Medvedev doing just that.
Not to say there weren't legit criticisms, just that the Russians were trying to stir things.
Both articles are quoting prominent US politicians and goes on to detail Fema's response.
> and Dmitry Medvedev doing just that.
How does a vague statement from Russian politician "amplify disinformation"?
Is the bar for "amplifying disinformation" as low as quoting US politicians/presidential candidate?
Dis/Misinformation on the web has to be the #1 education subject for the world. Not scams from Nigerian princes, but the bullshit that is now being amplified by tools like AI.
Take, for example, when we were told that crime is down in San Francisco. Really? Do they think we don’t actually live here and see what’s happening.
No it's not. Systemic and characteristic are words that you can only apply to one side here.
Surely there must be similar evidence for western activities.
The CIA spikes the Kool-Aid, Americans engrossed in false neo liberal culture drink it readily.
Given this, “e pluribus unum” feels rebellious.
Jackson's "Our Federal Union! It Must Be Preserved!" vs Calhoun's "Our Federal Union — next to our liberties the most dear!" was 1830.
Ah, must be the Russian fairies in my head giving me these doubts...
Remember the "Russian disinformation" about Hunter's laptop? And then people are surprised by the falling trust in government and mainstream media.
Russia/China/Iran/North Korea/etc. certainly try to play on potential weaknesses of the US, but, let's be honest, they are amateurs compared to the US actions across the globe. But the root issue is with existence and expansion of various weakness points, not with hostile actors pressing on them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
"The Mueller report found that the Russian government "interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion" and "violated U.S. criminal law".[11][12][75] The report relayed two methods by which Russia attempted to influence the election."
"Social media campaign The first method of Russian interference was done through the Internet Research Agency (IRA), waging "a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton".[26] The IRA also sought to "provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States"."
"The second method of Russian interference saw the Russian military intelligence agency GRU hacking into email accounts owned by volunteers and employees of the Clinton presidential campaign, including that of campaign chairman John Podesta, and also hacking into "the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)". As a result, the GRU obtained hundreds of thousands of hacked documents, and the GRU proceeded by arranging releases of damaging hacked material via the WikiLeaks organization and also GRU's false personas "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0"."
"The investigation found there were at least 140 contacts between Trump or 18 of his associates with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, though the contacts were insufficient to show an illegal conspiracy.["
"Ryan Goodman has examined the Mueller report's findings on collusion. He described the findings as "a series of activities that show strong evidence of collusion. Or, more precisely, it provides significant evidence that Trump Campaign associates coordinated with, cooperated with, encouraged, or gave support to the Russia/WikiLeaks election interference activities." "
Problem is, the opposition quickly learns your tactics & turns it on you. And, because the US is a democratic state that can't just make people disappear, you'll have a harder time coping.
Roughly half of all Americans believe the last election was stolen and are gearing up for unrest if this one doesn't go their way.
But, everyone conveniently forgets that US agents deliberately spread anti-China propaganda, encouraging countries not to accept China's vaccines. Who knows how many died as a result? So, instead of blaming this on the Russians (& Chinese), maybe America should do some soul-searching?
It's just like how NATO's Libya & Syria intervention caused a migrant explosion. It's okay to dislike illegal migrants, but you need to address why they suddenly became a pressing problem after living in their countries all this while.
Russian propaganda has found a home in America's Right that believes it is persecuted. It won't leave, but will keep festering until something gives.
Implement a fund dedicated to toppling hostile regimes and creating chaos for them via disinfo in their own countries.
Then, measure disinfo operations in the US, and allocate the funds to retaliation in-kind as exactly as possible.
Beyond that, US sites which willingly allow the spread of misinformation should be heavily fined. Reddit, for example, is a complete cesspool of foreign influence campaigns. It's not like it's hard to pick up on. They target populations that are already likely to believe misinformation and conspiracies. The conspiracy subreddit, for example, is rife with obviously foreign accounts that come out of nowhere, post divisive misinformation tens or even hundreds of times per day, and the posts get thousands of upvotes out of nowhere. The idea is that if you seed a small contingent of the population with misinformation, they will do the rest of the work and spread it for you in the rest of the population.
No, Reddit cannot do away with 100% of this, but it is absolutely clear that they aren't even trying to control it. That has to stop. A simple change like requiring phone verification before you can create an account (and not allowing Google voice numbers) would do a lot to quell this. They don't care. They just want the traffic.
Twitter would whitelist psy-op accounts so they wouldn't get banned [1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files#Nos._8%E2%80%939...
From a real world perspective you're being awfully cavalier with the lives of people who are just as much victims of their own government as you perceive yourself to be.
> measure disinfo operations in the US
Yet you take no stock of the same operations the US already runs in other parts of the world. What a petty short term victory you're aiming for.
Not at all. When the incentive becomes not to do it, then it will stop.
> Yet you take no stock of the same operations the US already runs in other parts of the world.
Nowhere did I advocate for doing so, or continuing to do so. In general, the US has followed a reckless know-it-all policy of regime change that has backfired many more times than it has ever worked, and is overall a net negative even for the US.
This is different--it is a strategic public deterrent. It isn't directly goal oriented, only deterrence oriented, and any country will have a simple way to stop it at any time--stop putting disinfo into the US infosphere. And in fact, this works better if the US stops doing these things for any other purpose.
Book mark it...
https://www.fema.gov/disaster/recover/rumor/hurricane-rumor-...
Not sure how to get people to read that before sharing misinformation, unfortunately.
> Rumor: FEMA will only provide $750 to disaster survivors to support their recovery.
One would think as you start to hear conflicting rumors that something was up.
Although I guess one would also think after so many hurricanes, Floridians would actually know what FEMA does...
If FEMA is violating their own policies, that's one thing, and very much should get investigated, but rumors are being spread that are just made up.
In the early stages of dealing with a disaster, rumor is an important source of information. When communication is cut off and travel is restricted, what exactly do you expect? Especially when government misconduct is suspected. Again, if you give government the power to suppress criticism, it often will.
Regardless of whether the rumors are substantiated or not, this is America and people have the right to say what is on their mind even if it hurts the feelings of FEMA. To listen to FEMA, the rumors about them are more devastating than the actual disaster. From the start they took a position of "this criticism is interfering with our work" which is a gross exaggeration at best, and a pernicious lie in the minds of anyone with common sense.
FEMA has long been a subject of controversy, as they seize supplies donated for disasters and redistrubute them or even sell them: https://www.facingsouth.org/2008/06/gulf-coast-nonprofits-le...
You should look into this as well, a controversy involving FEMA's role in hypothetically putting Americans in concentration camps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84 The government has absolutely no problem with trampling on your rights under the pretense of a disaster. They'll screw you over.
As far as I remember in any disaster before a couple of years ago, including Hurricane Katrina, FEMA has not stopped to demanding that people refrain from criticism. This is a modern phenomenon. The government is always scare-mongering about "misinformation" because they want the power of censorship. Legacy media is on board because they wish to crush any independent competitors that threaten that dying industry.
There’s only so much you can do unless you want to make the internet not the internet any more (a… great wall, if you will).
True.
> We are not fighting a war against Russia.
We are fighting (and assisting others fighting) a multifront, miltitheater war against an axis consisting, most notably, of Russia, Iran, and North Korea and various of their proxies.
Buried the important part deep in the article. It's not like Russia is conjuring some megaphone out of thin air and broadcasting their disinformation with it. US Social Media companies are handing them the megaphone and doing the amplification for them. But as for consequences? All these companies get are polite questions from the media and light scrutiny. Not even a slap on the wrist.
> Unsuspecting Americans then repost and spread the content. In July, American intelligence officials warned that "unwitting Americans" were helping do Russia's work for it.
We also need to stop giving these so-called unsuspecting and unwitting Americans the benefit of the doubt. At some point they need to educate themselves and stop falling for this crap. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me again and again, and again, and again... at some point I become culpable because of my own stupidity.
I'll take your post in good faith, it's easy to get sucked into this stuff, that's why it's working for the Kremlin.
But, I think the best approach is to try to write online with empathy and not vilification.
Yes, social media networks should be doing a better job of moderating. Yes, the media should report more honestly. But there comes a point where individuals have to be given responsibility for being suckered into, frankly, stupid shit. If you read "Democrats are controlling the weather and generating hurricanes to suppress voter turnout" and your response is "yeah, sounds plausible" then you're just simply not thinking. You're seeing something that appeals to your biases and you're accepting it uncritically. And you deserve blame for doing so.
It's wild what Free Speech has suddenly become under new management. Free Speech used to also be free to consume, observe, look at, understand. But now speech is free & unbelimished from anyone understanding whose actually saying it or what networks they are part of. Free & unaccountable speech.
I don't disagree, my issue is with things like
> We also need to stop giving these so-called unsuspecting and unwitting Americans the benefit of the doubt. At some point they need to educate themselves and stop falling for this crap.
This is divisive and unhelpful, even if the underlying phenomenon ("some people are gullible") is true.
The people falling for this stuff are not helpless deer in a forest full of predators--they are actively participating in the deception targeted at them.
You're literally describing casually throwing away a cornerstone American principle over one of the smallest problems we've faced this year.
> at some point I become culpable because of my own stupidity.
Yet you don't reserve this for the owners of the companies in your first paragraph? The ones who are unusually wealthy from creating this "service?"