Is that a real problem? Foreign intelligence services are certainly doing a lot of crap online but it's not clear whether they've actually accomplished anything. Maybe they're just wasting resources?
Humans fundamentally need some out-group to blame all their in-group's problems on. Now that overt racism against another racial group within your own society has mostly fallen out of fashion at least in "the West", foreign intelligence becomes the easiest target to pin blame on.
Seems to me they've accomplished quite a lot. I think you are assuming their idea of a goal matches your idea of an accomplishment (get a law supporting X passed/repealed). It isn't.
Their goal is to make our system dysfunctional by destroying people's trust in the information presented them.
> Foreign intelligence services are certainly doing a lot of crap online but it's not clear whether they've actually accomplished anything.
Isn't this just the ol' "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" problem? Hundreds of years of ago we couldn't see germs with a microscope doesn't mean they weren't effective in our lives.
> we couldn't see germs with a microscope doesn't mean they weren't effective in our lives.
And because we couldn’t see them we misattributed their effects and treated people with bloodletting.
Confidently declaring your understanding of an unseen enemy and applying seemingly-appropriate countermeasures is likely to be harmful.
> The media multiplier effect can, at times, create disinformation storms with potentially dangerous effects for those Russia perceives as adversaries at the international, national, and local level. In the past, Russia has leveraged this dynamic to shield itself from criticism for its involvement in malign activity. This approach also allows Russia to be opportunistic, such as with COVID-19, where it has used the global pandemic as a hook to push longstanding disinformation and propaganda narratives.
> A key element of Moscow's strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives- including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against president Biden- to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.
> Throughout the election cycle, Russia's online influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow's long-standing goals of undermining confidence in US election processes and increasing sociopolitical divisions among the American people.
Most of our own CIA's efforts have resulted in abject failure. They failed to properly predict or influence most of the major world events for decades now (disintegration of the USSR, Balkan wars, 9/11 attacks, increased authoritarianism in China, rise of ISIL, collapse of Afghan government, etc). And yet we keep increasing their funding. Well maybe if we give them another billion they'll eventually get it right?
Government resource allocation is seldom based on a rational cost / benefit analysis.
We're supposed to believe that these tiny FB campaigns are actually outcompeting the tsunami of "buy this junk" ads, and the actual political misinformation campaigns put out by the Uniparty?
> Throughout the election cycle, Russia's online influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow's long-standing goals of undermining confidence in US election processes and increasing sociopolitical divisions among the American people.
The confidence undermining was all a local issue; Russia had nothing to do with it.
