Apr 30, 2019
Russia sets up confrontations hoping for violence
Women’s Health & Reproductive Rights (WHARR), [showed up for] an event they’d seen posted online, co-sponsored by the local Women’s March Alliance and an organization called the Resisters, which touted itself as being dedicated to “feminist activism against fascism.” It seemed like a good opportunity for WHARR at the time: Here was an event to promote women’s reproductive rights, held on one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares and co-sponsored by a legitimate feminist enterprise in the WMA.
Oddly, nobody from the WMA or the Resisters showed up. Instead, Bettys and other activists arrived only to be surrounded by a handful of counter-protesters wearing red “Make America great again” caps and holding a pro-Donald Trump flag. “They were shouting at us and trying to antagonize us.”
It was weird that Trump supporters with no clear agenda had shown up to agitate a relatively small event, and weirder still that the Resisters, who had organized the protest, didn’t show up at all.
“Turns out, the whole thing was a setup,” Bettys said. “The Resisters were Russians.”
[WMA founder Katherine] Siemionko said she’d been contacted about the event by a woman named “Mary Smith” on Facebook, who said she was with the Resisters. Siemionko also provided a screenshot of Smith’s profile, showing a relatively nondescript Facebook page with little information or imagery:
…nearly a year later, in 2018, news broke that Russian operatives had been using Facebook and Twitter to target hundreds of thousands of people using ads and staged events on social media to sow discord among the politically active in America.
Facebook admitted in July that it had discovered a sophisticated and coordinated disinformation campaign on the platform, with “inauthentic administrators” working to divide Americans in the lead-up to the midterm elections, according to a Washington Post report at the time. Those operators had been meddling in stateside politics prior to the election of President Donald Trump, a fact that has been reiterated by special counsel Robert Mueller in February, when he indicted 13 Russian nationals in the social media meddling campaign, and again earlier this month, when he released his full report on Russian interference on the 2016 election.
In both documents, Mueller homed in on interference efforts by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Kremlin-backed organization of Russians who operated online. For years, the IRA used the shotgun approach in its meddling: It created dozens of event pages and fake profiles on social media, designed to attract activists on both sides of the political aisle to square off in American streets.
The goal, according to Mueller, was to build as many seemingly legitimate activist brands as possible and use them to reach “significant numbers of Americans for purposes of interfering with the U.S. political system.”
Activists attending very real political events began to realize that some of the rallies they were invited to ― even those on the local level ― had been organized in bad faith by Russian actors.
The IRA, on the other hand, got what it wanted: Americans, in the streets, butting heads.
All it took was a few Facebook messages and invitations, without so much as a face-to-face conversation.
The Facebook pages tied to the Resisters have since been deleted, but the events they helped coordinate are still live on some event sites. On allevents.in, for example, there are 18 events that list the Resisters as the creator
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein characterized Mueller’s findings as the “tip of the iceberg,” declaring that Russia won’t stop meddling now.
“The bottom line is, there was overwhelming evidence that Russian operatives hacked American computers and defrauded American citizens, and that is only the tip of the iceberg of a comprehensive Russian strategy to influence elections, promote social discord and undermine America, just like they do in many other countries,” Rosenstein said,
FBI Director Christopher Wray said last week that Russian interference isn’t only a reality for the 2020 election, it’s “pretty much a 365-days-a-year threat” since 2016.
huffpost.com/entry/how-russia-uses-facebook-to-lure-americans-to-political-rallies_n_5cc2f5fce4b08846403d181e
July 28, 2020; Associated Press
Russia behind spread of virus disinformation
WASHINGTON (AP) — Russian intelligence services are using a trio of English-language websites to spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, seeking to exploit the crisis…
Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow’s military intelligence service known as the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort… U.S. government officials … spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity … to sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link between the sites and Russian intelligence. … published about 150 articles about the pandemic response, including coverage aimed either at propping up Russia or denigrating the U.S.
The U.S. government’s chief of counterintelligence warned in a rare public statement Friday about Russia’s continued use of internet trolls to advance their goals. … the pandemic and race relations and protests – have offered fertile territory for misinformation or outfight falsehoods.
Officials described the Russian disinformation as part of an ongoing and persistent effort to advance false narratives and cause confusion.
…some of the coverage appeared to denigrate Joe Biden, and called to mind Russian efforts in 2016 to exacerbate race relations in America and drive corruption allegations against U.S. political figures.
U.S. officials …went further on Tuesday by singling out a particular information agency that is registered in Russia, InfoRos, and that operates a series of websites – InfoRos.ru, Infobrics.org and OneWorld.press – that have leveraged the pandemic to promote anti-Western objectives and to spread disinformation. …in a sophisticated but insidious effort that they liken to money laundering, where stories in well-written English – and often with pro-Russian sentiment – are cycled through other news sources to conceal their origin and enhance the legitimacy of the [fake] information.
The sites also amplify stories that originate elsewhere, the government officials said.
(A) story carried the headline of “Ukrainian Trap for Biden,” and claimed that “Ukrainegate” – a reference to stories surrounding Biden’s son Hunter’s former ties to a Ukraine gas company – “keeps unfolding with renewed vigor.” [all “insidious” fake news]
InfoRos and One World’s ties to the Russian state have attracted scrutiny in the past from European disinformation analysts.
In 2019, a European Union task force that studies disinformation campaigns identified One World as “a new addition to the pantheon of Moscow-based disinformation outlets.” The task force noted that One World’s content often parrots the Russian state agenda on issues including the war in Syria.
Brussels-based EU DisinfoLab, examined links between InfoRos and One World to Russian military intelligence. The researchers identified … financial connections between InfoRos and the government.
apnews.com/3acb089e6a333e051dbc4a465cb68ee1
July 24, 2020
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s election security czar issued a rare statement describing foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 election Friday. Democrats labeled it misleading, saying it failed to convey the scope of Russia’s interference and how its messaging matches that of President Donald Trump.
Shelby Pierson, told Congress months ago that there was evidence Russia again sought to boost Trump.
Rep. Adam Schiff, “our adversaries, in particular the Russians, are going to amplify the false messages that the president is putting out about, ‘Well, you can’t trust absentee ballots,’ even though that’s how the president votes.”
He added, “The Russians will look for any divide they can to sow chaos in the United States. And but — what better way than to amplify false information about how millions of Americans cast their votes?”
www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/democrats-says-trump-election-czar-isn-t-telling-whole-story-n1234832
Russians stimulate racism which boosts Trump and Republican votes
Russians sow chaos, undermine public confidence in the political system, and diminish our social stability.
Jul 20, 2018, 3:20pm EDT
Microsoft security executive reveals Russians tried to hack 3 congressional candidates
Another sign the Kremlin doesn’t seem to be giving up.
America’s top intelligence official, Dan Coats, said last week that “the warning signs are there” when it comes to Russia and other foreign governments waging cyberattacks on the United States. He made the point again on Thursday at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, capping off a wild week that began with President Trump buddying up to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and taking the Russian leader’s word over that of intelligence chiefs.
And as the midterm elections loom in November, it seems there’s already evidence of Russia interfering.
A Microsoft executive said at the Aspen Security Forum panel — the same that Coats and other US officials attended — that the company had detected phishing attacks targeting three US congressional candidates, a bit like the strategy the Russian GRU agents used in the 2016 election against Democrats and Hillary Clinton.
Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president of customer security and trust, told the audience in Colorado that earlier in the year, the company discovered that a fake Microsoft domain had been created as a landing page, kind of a staging ground, to get candidates to click so they would be vulnerable to a phishing attack. “We saw metadata that suggested those phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who were all standing for the election in the midterms,” Burt said.
Tom Burt, VP of security at Microsoft, says the company detected Russian phishing attacks on three candidates in the 2018 midterms “who would be interesting from an espionage perspective.” Wouldn’t reveal who they are.
When asked if Russia was still attempting to target the United States this week, President Trump said, “No.” The White House press secretary cleaned up his response, saying he meant to say “no” to more questions from reporters.
Trump often insists on going rogue, no matter the situation
Trump’s staff gave him around 100 pages of briefing materials before his Putin meeting, telling him exactly what he should and shouldn’t say. He ignored almost all of it, and the entire meeting went “very much counter to plan,” a source told the Washington Post on July 16.
Yeah, no kidding.
But Trump made it worse. Roughly 24 hours after he sided with Putin over US intelligence officials on the question of whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election, his staff convinced Trump to reverse course. Reading from a prepared statement, Trump said that he accepted the intelligence community’s conclusion that Moscow meddled.
Then came his next sentence: “Could be other people also, a lot of people out there.”
“Could be other people also…There was no collusion at all.” [Trump’s fear is that admitting interference leads to admitting he knew from the beginning and has lied.]
Top administration officials are moving forward with measures to counter such foreign attacks, with or without Trump. At the same forum, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein introduced the Department of Justice’s cyber-digital task force, a comprehensive report on what the threats are, the key targets, and how the US should fight them. When it comes to America’s political system, that’ll include everything from attacks on election infrastructure to the targeting of particular candidates to the propaganda and divisive news that Russian operatives spewed on social media. Russia tried each of those influence operations in 2016.
“Russian intelligence officers did not stumble on the idea of hacking American computers and posting misleading messages because they had a free afternoon,” Rosenstein said on Thursday. “It’s what they do every day.”
see https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/20/17595910/russia-hacking-congressional-candidates-microsoft-aspen
Hardball with Chris Matthews – 8:00 PM 5/30/2018
Chris Matthews says Trump gained the White House by appealing to people who held the nastiest racial attitudes.
http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/matthews-trump-appealing-to-birther-base-with-comments-on-roseanne-1244970051627
the Republican and Democratic parties are worlds apart. Nearly 9 in 10 people IN the Republican Party are white, while about 6 in 10 Democrats are, according to a large compilation of interviews conducted by Gallup in 2013.
the majority of kindergartners in the country are now non-white.
Still, 71 percent of voters in 2016 were white, according to exit polls, which means in the short run, at least, Trump has made the gamble that there may be enough [racist] voters to propel him to a second term.
And Trump has doubled down on that difference, catering to white grievance [racism] to win in 2016 and to keep his base behind him as president.
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/15/638801062/a-big-night-for-democratic-diversity-and-3-other-primary-takeaways
2018/05/11
Russian election meddling by promoting ads designed to inflame race-related tensions
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/05/11/what-we-found-facebook-ads-russians-accused-election-meddling/602319002/
America’s racism has long been Russia’s secret weapon
a social media campaign of disinformation
Historically, both during and after the Cold War, the Russian state has tried to use America’s tragic history of racial violence and segregation for its own political purposes.
in the past the Soviet Union touted itself as a state free of racial discrimination and attracted tiny numbers of blacks like Paul Robeson to tour the country and at times live there, Russia’s post-Cold War state of “managed democracy” offers no such illusions. Instead, the Russian project under President Vladimir Putin seeks to destabilize American democracy by turning the nation’s inner demons against itself.
Russian Communist officials, apparatchiks, and newspapers saw in America’s unfolding racial crisis an opportunity to shield the Soviet Union from criticism of its own human rights violations, creeping authoritarianism, and barely concealed imperial ambitions.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/02/opinions/philando-castile-russia-history-of-infiltration-joseph-opinion/index.html
Russia’s online election meddling involved an old Soviet tactic
Fanning the Flames of America’s Racial Tensions
Russia used the U.S. history of racial oppression and its persistent challenges with systemic racism to manipulate Americans’ electoral choices.
The major difference today is that social media marketing allows Russia to do with efficiency and scale what it could never do with Cold War–era print and radio propaganda.
https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/russias-online-election-meddling-involved-an-old-soviet-tactic-exploiting-u-s-race-relations.html
Fanning the Flames of America’s Racial Tensions Is As Russian As Vodka and Blini
In the 1930s, whenever the United States would criticize the Soviets’ human rights record or civil liberties issues, they’d simply respond, “And you are lynching Negroes.”
increasing white voter turnout by riling racial resentment.
Russian companies and bad actors “began to encourage U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S. presidential candidate.” They used Facebook and Instagram accounts with names like “Blacktivist” and “Woke Blacks” to promote the Black Lives Matter movement and post messages like this: “[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.” And they paid for political advertisements that stated, “You know, a great number of black people support us saying that #HillaryClintonIsNotMyPresident” and “Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.”
Polls show that nearly 2 in 3 white Americans viewed the Black Lives Matter movement unfavorably and white racial resentment was key to Trump’s election victory.
So when Russian race trolling on social media met primed white audiences, it activated their biases.
https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/russias-online-election-meddling-involved-an-old-soviet-tactic-exploiting-u-s-race-relations.html
May 12, 2018
More Than Half of Russian Facebook Ads Focused on Race
the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency {IRA} to influence Americans during and after the last presidential election made references to race
this new analysis makes it clear that racial tension was the Russian operation’s go-to wedge.
many IRA ads did very poorly with Facebook users, the race-related content performed better on average.
“We want America is know what bothers you as a member of the Black community,” the ad claimed.
The 3,500 ads released by the House Intelligence Committee are also only a fraction of the IRA’s overall Facebook activity, as it shared around 80,000 posts on Facebook using its accounts and pages, as well.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/more-than-half-of-russian-facebook-ads-focused-on-race.html
Russians sow chaos, undermine public confidence in the political system, and diminish our social stability.
Russians staged pro-Trump, anti-Clinton rallies across US
Russian trolls staged pro-Trump and anti-Clinton rallies across the country in an effort to disrupt the 2016 election
The Russians also either stole Americans’ identities or created fake ones to urge US citizens to organize rallies — and paid them for doing so,
https://nypost.com/2018/02/16/russians-staged-pro-trump-anti-clinton-rallies-across-us/