As Donald Trump’s December 18th prepared “security” speech challenged Russia at almost every level, from trying to disrupt American efforts worldwide with less than veiled threats about their efforts to disrupt and destabilize the United States and the 2016 presidential elections, Trump veered widely from that text. Instead, he emphasized his relationship with Vladimir Putin and the potential of a new partnership with Russia. He reminded everyone how the CIA foiled a terrorist plot aimed at Russia. But make no mistake, with the exception of Donald Trump, every other government agency is on red alert over Russia. They may have to tiptoe through the Trump-loves/believes-Putin minefield, but Russia is clear a military, diplomatic and economic threat to everything American. Russia (including Putin himself), on the other hand, instantly ripped into the underlying American security message as “confrontational,” “distorting reality” and reigniting the Cold War.
Even as Trump blew soft kisses to Putin, the Treasury Department expanded its Russian targets for additional economic sanctions. That Putin has so visibly and openly played his “I’ll do what I can to destabilize the United States” hand has made easy understanding what has happened, and what is likely to continue to happen, from Russia’s exceptionally successful deployment of disinformation, spurring racial disharmony and powerful undermining of Hillary Clinton to Putin’s rather open flaunting of US policy goals in the Middle East by bolstering a genocidal dictator in Syria. Putin’s emotions were clearly aroused. All decisions trees led back to him rather too clearly.
Technology seemed to deliver a perfect tool for implementing what had been Soviet (and now Russian) basic strategy for decades: undermining the social and political fabric of her enemies. The tool? Social media and the ability to robotize content delivery, automatically tailoring the message to react to individuals’ fears and preferences, a dream come true for Russian intelligence agencies.
So while Donald Trump and his immediate family tell the world that Russia did not interfere and that the Trump family has no untoward ties with Russian interests, Russia plows forward to inflict as much damage as they can on us. John Sipher, former senior member of the CIA intelligence service, gives us his take in December 20th, The Cipher Brief: As most Americans are aware by now, the Kremlin undertook a series of actions to interfere in our presidential election in 2016. The sum of these aggressive measures – some overt and some covert – were designed to sow confusion, aggravate political polarization, stir racial tensions, discredit the American democratic system, weaken the U.S. relationship with its allies and hurt Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate. These type of activities – called ‘active measures’ in the Russian foreign policy playbook – are nothing new… The Russians, and Soviets before them, have been spreading disinformation and attacking American interests with these asymmetric tools since the 1940s.
A Soviet disinformation campaign in the 1980s attempted to spread the theory that the AIDS virus was created by the Pentagon as part of an out-of-control secret biological warfare program, according to The New York Times… Prior to the use of social media platforms to spread disinformation, the Russians used a then-favorite mechanism to spread the false story – placing an article in an English-language newspaper in India. Then, using spies and collaborators, the KGB helped the article get picked up by increasingly credible media outlets, with the goal of eventually having it picked up by the western press. Once in circulation, the information would complicate efforts to tell truth from fiction, and sow distrust with western leaders. As explained by Dr. Thomas Boghardt in the Times story, ‘The Soviets intuitively understood how the human psyche works.’ He said they identify internal strife, point to inconsistencies and ambiguities in the news, fill them with (fake) meaning, mix in some accurate information, and ‘repeat, repeat, repeat.’…
As troubling and painful as [Russia’s global efforts to impair regimes that opposed it and the accompanying] covert campaigns were, none have had the strategic impact that we witnessed in 2016. Why?
Social media: Although the Russians were up to their old tricks in 2016, the internet and social media provided new means to weaponize information. The Russians no longer need to rely on a small army of spies to spread propaganda and lies from Indian tabloids. Facebook and other venues do the work for them. An algorithm directs fake news to those who might be interested, and our “sharing” does the rest. We learned in 2016 that an emotional meme can have as much impact as a well-researched article in the mainstream media.
We’ve seen the enemy and he is us: The success of the Russian attack was proportional to the ferocity of the partisan divide in the U.S. As former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden commented in a recent ‘Atlantic’ article, ‘covert influence campaigns don’t create divisions on the ground, they amplify them.’
In 2016, the dysfunctional U.S. political environment was dry tinder for the Russians. A single match led to a wildfire. Most successful active measures campaigns are not born of elaborate schemes cooked up from whole cloth. Instead, they are often a series of opportunistic and tactical operations that come together due to a unique set of circumstances. In the case of the 2016 attacks, it wasn’t particularly difficult to turn Americans against each other.
Indeed, in 2016, it appears there was a disconnect between the effort, thought and pre-planning expended to carry out the attack, and its resulting impact. The hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was no more than a phishing expedition by a known Russian proxy. As an intelligence operation, it required minimal effort, displayed no professional elegance and was poorly hidden. If the Russians knew ahead of time how important the material would be to the success of their plan, it would have been child’s play to have stolen it without getting caught…
Collusion? According to Russian doctrine, a successful active measures campaign relies on enlisting spies and ‘agents-of-influence’ to help focus the attack. The Russians certainly called on all available resources to insure success, and like any good intelligence service, continued to seek new spies. Were the Russians aided by collaborators inside or around the Trump campaign, or inside our social media companies? We don’t know. If not, it would be a rare covert campaign that did not leverage human sources.
We do know, however, that countering similar attacks in the future will be made more difficult by the failure to hold Russia to account, and by Trump administration attacks on the media and national security institutions. Weakening our defenses does not seem a wise course of action.
The potential of an unholy alliance between the Trump administration and Russia are a scandal the GOP can ill afford. Despite denials from Trump himself that he is not going to fire the special counsel investigating Trump administration ties to Russian manipulators, Washington ripples with rumors that Robert Mueller and his task force are not long for this world. Many Republicans are also suggesting that they will not sanction a Congressional re-appointment of Mueller to continue his work should he be fired. They are smelling the approaching mid-terms and want to “coast” to victory on their tax reform bill and their effective crippling of the Affordable Care Act.
“Meanwhile, Russia itself is feeling the pain of its policy decisions in Syria. The dilemma lies in weighing the costs of staying in Syria or leaving. If Moscow were to disengage and the Assad regime falls, many would see Russia as a near-peer competitor unable to close a major deal. If Russian forces stay in Syria, as is more likely, those troops may face building resentment among Syrians that Russia helped destroy the country but cannot provide large-scale aid to rebuild it.
“Moscow has a narrow window to achieve enduring success in Syria, but for this, it needs the international community.
“Putin’s withdrawal pledge, like a similar vow he made last year, is likely aimed at easing worries at home of further casualties in Syrian fighting and conveying a sense of ‘mission accomplished’ to the Russian people prior to the presidential election next March. But can Russia pull off an actual foreign policy ‘win’ in Syria?” Colin P. Clarke and William Courtney writing for the December 20th, The Cipher Brief. Timing is everything, but Russia has not been particularly effective under Putin of acting at the right time. Whatever else is said and done, it’s time for our Congress to join with our military and intelligence agencies and recognize Russia for the severe threat against America it continues to be.
I’m Peter Dekom, and if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck…
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment