It sucks that we have to worry that our normally silly and harmless UFO hysteria and other fringe stuff might actually be an influence operation. (Just because tone doesn’t go well over the internet sometimes: Not disagreeing or being sarcastic, commiserating).

Well that's the natural result of not doing anything meaningful against Russia and its "plausible deniability" campaigns in well over a decade. Of course Russia and China feel emboldened when they never felt consequences.