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Shkruar nga Marc Champion 
When it comes to information and disinformation warfare, Russian President Vladimir Putin is naturally a pro. As a career KGB agent, this is what I know best and what I do most easily. This argument was underscored again by the latest case by the US Department of Justice, which alleges a systematic effort by Russia to interfere in the November presidential election.
This happened in 2016, but today we are in 2024. So we have to ask why Putin should be concerned - given the vast amounts of disinformation we are producing ourselves - and how much attention we should pay to Moscow's so-called 'active measures'.
The 277-page Justice Department report alleges that Russia ran a vast and covert election interference project called "Doppelganger" (Sozia), and shut down dozens of websites in the country. This operation was organized during meetings in the presidential administration in Moscow, better known as the Kremlin.
According to notes taken during these meetings, at least some of them were led by Putin's first deputy chief of staff, Sergey Kiriyenko. It is difficult to overestimate the central role of Kiriyenko in the Kremlin. Once a liberal, he is today the point man for Putin's domestic political strategy, including the recent presidential election.
But also for digital media and for the administration of the 4 regions of Ukraine, which Putin unilaterally annexed to Russia on September 30, 2022. He is very loyal, leads the Russian association for partial arts, so dear to Putin, and is a close ally of Yury Kovalchuk, the billionaire often described as "Putin's banker".
A report on the progress of the "Doppleganger" operation was sent to Putin himself. The Kremlin itself denies the existence of this influence operation. According to the Department of Justice, the "doppelganger" ran online hoax centers to write comments on various posts as well as produce fake articles, often on fake websites designed to mimic those of mainstream American media. and European.
The stated goals include not only influencing the upcoming US elections, but also weakening public support for the defense of Ukraine and discrediting the US, Great Britain and NATO in general.
A project called "Inciting International Conflict" aimed to further deepen existing conflicts within US allies, or "artificially create" clashes.
new ones. An enthusiastic suggestion recorded at a meeting in the Kremlin was: “Make up a story about an American soldier raping a German woman. That would be a great find!”
Also, there are detailed written instructions on online scam centers about what messages they should spread. But also the quotas for fulfilling them: 60,000 comments per month for Germany and France. And there is a tip for those who are more experienced in the ways of disinformation: "Use a minimum of fake news, and a maximum of realistic information."
But Putin's obsession with disinformation shows a weakness of his own. It reflects his deep belief that voters, and the population as a whole, do not have opinions of their own. That their positions are the products of manipulation, whether by its special services and other branches of the state - especially inside Russia, where the Kremlin exercises tight control over traditional and social media - or by foreign agencies, such as the CIA.
So when more than 1 million Ukrainians took to the streets in 2013-2014, spending months outside protesting in sub-zero temperatures and often under brutal police attack, that wave of demonstrations was not - according to Putin - an expression of will. popular but a coup orchestrated by the CIA.
The same misconception led him to believe that the local population would not fight back when he launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine 8 years later. It was a catastrophic mistake. The sad truth is that so far Putin has the opportunity to save some money. And why do you need extensive disinformation campaigns when you have allies like Donald Trump, Elon Musk or Nigel Farage in Great Britain, who incite social conflicts and add to the informational chaos in the name of free speech?
Platform X alone publishes about 6 billion posts per month, over 1/3 of them political, reducing the quotas set for Russian cyber centers. And while it's hard to determine what percentage of those posts are deliberate lies, some studies have found that fake news is more widely shared on social media.
Russian operations to interfere in the politics of other countries are real, but the fact is that they are our problems. Our websites, talk show hosts, and bloggers are now the ones publishing more fake news, conspiracy theories, and incitement to violence than Russia could ever hope to invent on its own.
This kind of misinformation is so full of malicious intent that it's comforting to think of it as an alien conspiracy. When riots broke out in the UK town of Southport in July, after three little girls were stabbed to death in a yoga class, a fabricated article claimed that the perpetrator was an Arab, who had come to Britain by boat as an immigrant. illegal just a year ago.
This fake story quickly spread online. It was heavily promoted on far-right sites in the UK, by political parties and influencers, but also by a website called Channel3Noë, which appeared to have links to Pakistan and Russia, and which has since been shut down.
Violent anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim protests continued for days, even after the court released the true identity of the perpetrator, a 17-year-old Christian of Rwandan origin who was born and raised in the United Kingdom. There is no hard evidence that Russia instigated that wave of protests, although Russian officials who run such campaigns will no doubt have been celebrating what they saw.
It is certain that Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that he has entered into a "zero-sum" conflict with the West. Therefore, he sees both the protection of freedom of speech and the democratic process of electing leaders in the West as a weakness that he can exploit.
But let's not make the same mistake as an old Cold War spy, believing that our chaos and crisis are in any significant way the work of the Kremlin. On the contrary, Moscow is simply inciting us and enjoying the show./ Adapted "Pamphlet" From "Bloomberg"
Lini një Përgjigje