What this report says is the GRU is associated with the name Cybercaliphate, which isn't quite the same thing as the Russians being behind it. That they aided and amplified it, I have no doubt, but there's substantial evidence that most CC activity was ISIS linked. 1/x
CC activity was clearly linked to social networks on Twitter linked to Junaid Hussein, a verifiable ISIS hacker. But those social networks were different from most ISIS social networks in that they followed other hackers, rather than following mainly ISIS adherents. 2/x
Hackers tend to communicate and collaborate across ideological lines, even when the hackers were ideological. Thus CC-linked networks had connections to the Syrian Electronic Army, Iranian hackers, Russian hackers and more. 3/x
The Russians could very well have been behind some portion or component of Cybercaliphate activity, and certainly amplified it, but there's little evidence to suggest that the Cybercaliphate can be dismissed out of hand as just a product of Russian astroturf. 4/4
As with most things in the online influence space, it's easier to amplify, abet, imitate or assist things that already exist than to create them out of the whole cloth. The latter does happen, obviously, but the former is much more common. 5/4
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