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Active Measures, Disinfo, Propaganda


Grandioso

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35 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Joke's on the yayhoos writing those books -- the kids don't read them and the teachers don't use them. The whole thing is a colossal scam and an opportunity for the SBOE members to grandstand.

Source: me, with kids in Texas public schools continuously since 2001. 

Um, they get paid either way.

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On 5/4/2020 at 10:33 PM, TDunk said:

Where does the government or even a person place an order for multiple guillotines?  Just asking questions.

The government?  First, you have to find a pal of Kushner who says he can build them.  Then, he gets a contract for $500k per unit.  Then, he farms them out to a factory in Manila to make them for $50 each.  Then, he gets paid.  Then, he never delivers them.  This is the way.

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On another thread, someone mentioned Facebook having Plannedemic as being a thing. So before I set about the day's work, I spent some time on Twitter (since I don't have Facebook and its platform is harder to gain access to w/o joining, esp since people often make accounts restricted.) It didn't take long to locate (I stopped counting) hundreds of tweets with that hashtag. When one visits the account, nine time out of ten the account was created in the last several months. Usually not too difficult to spot bot accounts. Since I don't have an account, I can't really report them easily, but tbh it would take me hours because that is ONE hashtag. One. Those right wing conspiracy theorists multiply like tribbles but they are aided by the bots to amplify and reinforce the idea, the cohesion, the solidarity in numbers.

I don't envy the FBI trying to keep tabs on the extremist cells plotting for violence.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm currently listening to an audio book about the most senior KGB officer to ever be a double agent (The Spy and The Traitor).  He was recruited by MI6 and by the time he defected he was a colonel in the KGB and the London Residentura.

One of the documents he passed along was the Soviet Active Measures Playbook.  It outlined their plans to use media and leftwing organizations to plant stories and how they could try and damage Margaret Thatcher and Reagan.

The Russians have been at this for a long ass time and it's wild how it's come full circle.  They don't care about Left or Right or Republican or Democrat or Labor or Tory - they'll get in bed with anyone to damage the West and advance Russian global influence.

(Really great book, btw.)

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2 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

I'm currently listening to an audio book about the most senior KGB officer to ever be a double agent (The Spy and The Traitor).  He was recruited by MI6 and by the time he defected he was a colonel in the KGB and the London Residentura.

One of the documents he passed along was the Soviet Active Measures Playbook.  It outlined their plans to use media and leftwing organizations to plant stories and how they could try and damage Margaret Thatcher and Reagan.

The Russians have been at this for a long ass time and it's wild how it's come full circle.  They don't care about Left or Right or Republican or Democrat or Labor or Tory - they'll get in bed with anyone to damage the West and advance Russian global influence.

(Really great book, btw.)

Putin wants civil war in the United States. The Soviet Union is dead and took Soviet Communism with it. Russia is a regional power with a long history. It is run by market-oriented oligarchs, thugs and gangsters - Eurostyle. It is an adversary. 

But the larger world issue has been our pivot away from China. China, like Russia, manipulates using persuasion architecture  - like the algorithms online. They work. Need 270,000 votes, there are algos for that. 

We know that, as do our adversaries. 

Our AI overlords are smart.

 

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7 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Pretty good “refresher” on the tactics new and old.

What blows my mind a bit, from a historical perspective, is that in 2020, basically, we are fighting a war against a massive conspiracy theorist army.  We aren't fighting "conservatives" or "right wing policies".  We are fighting purely made up conspiracies that 60 million+ Americans gleefully believe.  This has never happened before in America.

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51 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

What blows my mind a bit, from a historical perspective, is that in 2020, basically, we are fighting a war against a massive conspiracy theorist army.  We aren't fighting "conservatives" or "right wing policies".  We are fighting purely made up conspiracies that 60 million+ Americans gleefully believe.  This has never happened before in America.

Many of our hot wars during the Cold War were based on the grand communist conspiracy and domino theory.  Much of it was bullshit but the consequences were not.

ETA: the difference back then is most of the population was united in believing the bullshit.

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4 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Many of our hot wars during the Cold War were based on the grand communist conspiracy and domino theory.  Much of it was bullshit but the consequences were not.

ETA: the difference back then is most of the population was united in believing the bullshit.

Eh, I think the communist/domino theory was quite valid.  The Soviets would have loved to have another Cuba in the western hemisphere and were actively pursuing that agenda in multiple countries in Central and South America (and Africa for that matter, with greater success).

It happened in Vietnam, but it turns out that another ChiCom puppet sharing a border with China was not much of a threat.  

Turns out that the efforts in the Americas probably wouldn't have resulted in much of a threat, either.  But that's some nice hindsight.

Now, was that legitimate interest manipulated by various interests for fun and profit and to the detriment of those Central and South American countries?

You bet your fur.

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  • There's been a surge in bot activity in the past month in online discussions about reopening America from COVID-19 shutdowns, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said this week.
  • The researchers analyzed over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 and found that roughly half the accounts were likely bots.
  • They identified the bots by looking for accounts that tweeted more frequently than humanly possible or whose location appeared to rapidly switch among different countries.
  • It's unclear who's behind the surge in bot activity or whether they're originating from the US or abroad.
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23 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:
  • There's been a surge in bot activity in the past month in online discussions about reopening America from COVID-19 shutdowns, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said this week.
  • The researchers analyzed over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 and found that roughly half the accounts were likely bots.
  • They identified the bots by looking for accounts that tweeted more frequently than humanly possible or whose location appeared to rapidly switch among different countries.
  • It's unclear who's behind the surge in bot activity or whether they're originating from the US or abroad.

This is madness. Twitter has to get a hold of this shit. Wouldn’t a simple “I’m not a robot” before posting suffice?  

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6 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

This is madness. Twitter has to get a hold of this shit. Wouldn’t a simple “I’m not a robot” before posting suffice?  

I've suggested this many times and really don't understand why they don't do that. It would stop a WHOLE lot of shit.

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From March :

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/politics/russian-interference-race.html

The Russian government has stepped up efforts to inflame racial tensions in the United States as part of its bid to influence November’s presidential election, including trying to incite violence by white supremacist groups and to stoke anger among African-Americans, according to seven American officials briefed on recent intelligence.

 

 

In no way am I saying that the current issues are solely happening because of Russia, but it looks like they are trying to make it worse. 

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From March :
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/politics/russian-interference-race.html
The Russian government has stepped up efforts to inflame racial tensions in the United States as part of its bid to influence November’s presidential election, including trying to incite violence by white supremacist groups and to stoke anger among African-Americans, according to seven American officials briefed on recent intelligence.
 
 
In no way am I saying that the current issues are solely happening because of Russia, but it looks like they are trying to make it worse. 

That was always my assumption. They love the chaos. They will back trump again because he thrives off this.
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6 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

This is one of my favorite disinformation scholars, if you ever get an opportunity, look at her credentials and how she got into this mess, almost by accident.
 

 

Unfortunately, we see this tactic used all over this board as well on various issues. Sometimes it seems like it comes from a place of ignorance on a particular subject, but more often it appears like an intentional attempt at muddying the waters.

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On 5/23/2020 at 2:06 PM, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

I've suggested this many times and really don't understand why they don't do that. It would stop a WHOLE lot of shit.

The majority of bots are content aggregators.  It's the millenial way to subscribe to RSS feeds.

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  • 3 weeks later...

A story that has yet to be written is how after years of documenting and acknowledging we have serious problems with bad actors in our information space, the real life and death consequences are now coming home to roost with the pandemic. 

Yes, Trump is to blame for the catastrophic amount of mass death but the same forces that helped elevate Trump to power also contributed to American society’s negligence when it came time to fight a literal plague. 

This simple truth shouldn’t go unnoticed.  We have been weakened so much by this shit that citizens no longer trust their own doctor for medical advice when it comes to wearing a mask during a pandemic. Our doctors and medical experts now have to fight two wars for us, one against covid-19 and another against a dangerously misinformed population.

Indeed, active measures and targeted disinformation campaigns were and still are the national security threat they have always been. 

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On 7/24/2020 at 9:43 PM, Prepuce of Doom said:
Also, Sara is a great follow.

She is. I don't have Twitter, but I have her page marked.

 

I also check in on Olga Lautman quite a bit. She gives a perspective on what is going on with Trump's friend over in Moscow. She's had a time of it lately as several fake accounts impersonating her have cropped up, perhaps in part because she has been reporting quite a bit on the elections and the violent police actions in Belarus. I really hope Mr. Miller. Mr. Barr, and Mr. Wolf are not taking notes but I suspect they are.

She has also been commenting upon the changes made (remember those, it seems like ages ago it was announced) at Voice of America (VOA). As you might suspect, they are not for the better:

Also, she commented on Senator Cruz. She is so kind to only call him an idiot.

 

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We no longer live in a democracy. Our elections are about to look like the election in Belarus where Trump will be declared the winner but every citizen (save the cult idiots) will know the truth of who won both the electoral and the popular votes. I hope I am wrong, but I fear I am not.

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11 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

We no longer live in a democracy. Our elections are about to look like the election in Belarus where Trump will be declared the winner but every citizen (save the cult idiots) will know the truth of who won both the electoral and the popular votes. I hope I am wrong, but I fear I am not.

If that happens, our reaction will be strong to quite strong.

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