Operation InfeKtion: How Russia Perfected the Art of War | NYT Opinion

> Wow, a grand total of 75 user accounts, and $130 000 of ads. > How is this anything but a drop in the ocean? It's the tip of the iceberg. You're ignoring second order effects. The people those accounts influence will influence others. Russian agents might have written the first few disinformation articles claiming the US Government created AIDS to attack blacks and gays [1], but once they got the ball rolling on that meme, others did the rest of the work to spread it for them. [1] [VIDEO]

> I don't understand why the BDS movement against Israel gets so much attention when stuff like this, or worse, regularly occurs in China. The reason could be echoes of old Soviet influence campaigns directed against Israel [1] [2]. Once you get an idea lodged in the public mind, it takes on a life of its own (kinda like the trope of the AI weapon that fights on even after its makers are dead). [1] [LINK] [2] This is a good presentation of Soviet disinformation tactics and strategy: [LINK] (youtube link: [VIDEO] )

> I think the best thing that can be done is wait 1-2 generations; by then nobody will believe anything they see in the media or in social networks. That's not the best thing, that's the worst thing . The goal of disinformation campaigns is to make people so distrustful and confused that the adversary's social cohesion is compromised to the point where they become disorganized and less able to respond to threats. This New York Times video explains it very well: [VIDEO] .

> I had to look up "submarine pieces" are, but they don't seem at all related to the effects of advertising on what editorial teams write about. In my experience that just sounds like shoddy journalism, and editors shouldn't be letting that pass (even though it happens). What did you find? I assumed the term meant something like a sponsored-content advertorial, but after actually Googling it, it looks like the term isn't a common one. All I get are hits about Grand Theft Auto V and Peter Madsen. It seems like the term stems from this article ( [LINK] ). If that's correct, I'm inclined to agree that it's just shoddy journalism, and the better publications don't let it through: > Different publications vary greatly in their reliance on PR firms. At the bottom of the heap are the trade press, who make most of their money from advertising and would give the magazines away for free if advertisers would let them. [2] The average trade publication is a bunch of ads, glued together by just enough articles to make it look like a magazine. They're so desperate for "content" that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you take the trouble to write them to read like articles. > At the other extreme are publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Their reporters do go out and find their own stories, at least some of the time. They'll listen to PR firms, but briefly and skeptically. We managed to get press hits in almost every publication we wanted, b

Yes it was. We've had disinformation since at-least the cold war. Probably the best example is the idea that AIDS was created by the U.S. government. The New York Times made a great documentary on disinformation: [VIDEO] Well worth a watch IMO

> Do you think the NYPost fabricated the existence of the lawsuit? As far as I can tell, the lawsuit really does exist. Straight up fabrication is not the only way to disinform, and it's in fact it's a pretty shitty way to do it, since it means your disinformation collapses at the slightest scrutiny. To make fabrication effective, the fabrication needs to be laundered to give it credibility (see [VIDEO] ), which takes time and effort. A more effective way to disinform is to pluck out a true story that's not representative and amplify or twist it. That will seem more credible to those who give it just a little scrutiny, even if it's just as wrong as a fabrication in some ways. In this case, if the NY Post has a bone to pick with Twitter, it could troll through lawsuits against it until it found one that made scandalous claims, then report those as hard facts.

> Is there any evidence this guy was actually a KGB agent? I've seen this guy a lot and he talks awfully like someone who is saying what a certain group of people wanna hear. He showed up in this NY Times video identified as a former KGB agent, so that claim stood up to whatever fact checking they did: [VIDEO] . > I've seen this guy a lot and he talks awfully like someone who is saying what a certain group of people wanna hear. That doesn't mean he's wrong.

This NYT opinion piece can fill some gaps : [VIDEO] From there you can search up some terms and periods mentioned in that video.

Lots of hoaxes are often posted to small outlets in the hope it will be picked up by bigger outlets. On Youtube checkout [VIDEO] , a look into how hoaxes are started from the 80s onwards.