Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Bette Dangerous Profile picture
@Heidi_Cuda
Jun 6, 2019 • 34 tweets • 10 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
If we want to save our country and be a beacon for global democracies, we’ve got to neutralize Putin.

We have to stop Russia’s infiltration or we’ve stopped nothing at all. If we don’t beat ‘em back now, they may not topple us this time but they’ll get us the next time.

Thread
1/ We’ve been so focused on the Circus of Trump, like moths drawn to a horror flame, but there’s a bigger picture. For context, let’s go back a decade to Estonia, when it tried to relocate a statue.
@ForeignPolicyforeignpolicy.com/2017/04/27/10-…
2/ ”Since 2014, Russia has also focused cyber attacks on Poland, Germany, France, Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Romania, Switzerland, Austria and Spain. In addition to information warfare, Russia is using economic and foreign direct investment.”-@dvgsecurity
thehill.com/opinion/cybers…
3/ Con. “..plus funding and support for conservative and alt-right European political parties, to minimize the influence of Western-style democracy and convert the European powers to an authoritarian implementation of democratic principles.”-@dvgsecurity
thehill.com/opinion/cybers…
4/ “We know they can use information warfare easily without having to put in too many resources because Russia is starting from a position of great economic weakness. Its economy is a tenth of the size of the economy of the United States”-@MishaGlenny
@NPRnpr.org/2018/07/15/629…
5/ “Putin has been likened to a mafia don running his homeland like a protection racket..allies are rewarded for loyalty. Enemies & rivals are ruthlessly extirpated..corruption, much of it officially facilitated and approved, sucks up 48% of GDP”
@guardianamp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
6/ “Russia takes advantage of the divisions within the West—and within the U.S.—by driving wedges between its opponents, using psychological warfare, propaganda, and cyberwar..Hacking the Democratic Party’s emails in 2016 hit that sweet spot.”

@TheAtlanticamp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/56…
7/ I’m old enough to still be offended by Trump’s bootlicking in Helsinki.
8/ With corruption half the state budget (see #5), it’s easy to allocate funds to disrupt global democracies. The cost of cyberwar is cheap.
9/ Ground wars are expensive. Cyberwars, not so much: think, the price of one Trump penthouse.
10/ A brief history of “dezinformatsiya”:

“Cyber warfare is no longer just about the technical details of computer ports and protocols. Rather, disinformation and social media are rapidly becoming the best hacking tools.”-@HowHackersThink
@FastCompanyfastcompany.com/90209667/what-…
11/ Con. “With social media, anyone–even Russian intelligence officers and professional trolls–can widely publish misleading content. As legendary hacker @kevinmitnick put it, ‘it’s easier to manipulate people rather than technology.’”-@HowHackersThink
fastcompany.com/90209667/what-…
12/ “Russian interference undermined democracy in the West by destabilizing institutions and polarizing societies. Western democratic governments must strengthen their domestic institutions to protect against adversaries eager to exploit weaknesses.”
@FPRIfpri.org/article/2019/0…
13/ Contained in the Mueller Report is hard evidence of an illegitimate president* who benefited from dezinformatsiya, encouraged Russia’s criminal attacks and is doing nothing to prevent future attacks. Makes sense.
14/ For those just catching up on dezinformatsiya and its impacts on global democracies, start here:
15/ Watch @ActMeasuresDoc to get the full backstory on Russia’s long game. If you don’t have access, here’s my review of the film. Even Trump’s catchphrases were recycled dezinformatsiya.
16/ As MSM gives us headlines about a multi-generational crime family in hock to Russia, trying to sell them as “American royalty”, please ignore ‘em.

Here’s what we need to stay centered on: Trump is a Russian frontman, and he is not in charge.
17/ What America is struggling to come to terms with can be succinctly summarized by those who’ve been the targets of cyber aggression.
18/ Our illegitimate president* is doing a fantastic job for a marionette, a vulgarian against the world doing the bidding of his handler (see #14). Ergo, a global pariah’s emboldened.
19/ But even in his own country, the jig is up.
20/ The center cannot hold.
21/ So here’s where it gets komprocated.

“The troubling reality is that we lack a full picture of what is really happening in the social media (disinformation) sphere because the main platforms are not fully transparent."-@FabricePothier
22/ When the scope of the Russian cyber aggression was revealed in February 2018, it became very clear our democratic systems are fragile.
@TheJusticeDeptjustice.gov/file/1035477/d…
23/ Like a proper marionette, Trump has spent much as his presidency* obstructing justice.
24/ Mueller broke his silence to deliver a very important message.
25/ With Mueller’s stark warning on Russian cyber aggression still fresh in our minds, a Helsinki refresher is in order:
@BBCNewsbbc.com/news/world-eur…
26/ When the jig is up on massive corruption, puppets run.
@guardiantheguardian.com/world/2014/feb…
27/ Treason puppet, the worst kind.
@guardiantheguardian.com/world/2019/jan…
28/ For a refresher course on what the Yanukovych story has to do with our stateside woes, pretty much everything.
29/ To understand recent Ukraine history, is to understand what we are dealing with in real time.
@politicopolitico.eu/article/ukrain…
30/ We need to create new words for a new war: “trolls” “hacks” and “meddling” must be thrown in the dustbin of history. These are benign words. They sound mischievous, rather than toxic, criminal. Nothing benign about losing your democracy to cyberwar.
31/ It will end badly for Trump, as it does for puppets. Maybe he’ll be impeached, indicted, and convicted. Or maybe he’ll grab the silver and run off to Russia. However it goes, we must stop Putin. We must thwart cyberwar. Or it’ll happen again. And again
news.yahoo.com/nato-seeks-way…
ADDENDUM: A chilling reminder that all is not well, and all is not what it seems. h/t @Verba_et_Vertus

cc @IlvesToomas
CODA: Vendetta Obscura, the New Cold War.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Bette Dangerous

Bette Dangerous Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Heidi_Cuda

Bette Dangerous Profile picture
Mar 10
What You See at the End of the World

A book report on The Essential Anna Politkovskaya, the reporter who documented the rise of a KGB snoop, the Second Chechen War, and the 'age of the oligarchs' before being murdered on Putin's birthday

1/ bettedangerous.com/p/what-you-see…
On Internatioal Women’s Day in 2023, I received a torrent of death threats. It was preceded by a tweet directed toward my podcast partner, Jim Stewartson, by Joe Flynn — the brother of Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn — which ended with the hashtag “arrestHeidi.”

2/
Joe Flynn is linked to a cyber militia of stalkers, and appeared to be coordinating with the most venal of our harassers.

When the threats began to pour in — directly to my inbox through a vulnerability in Substack’s security settings — for a brief moment, I couldn’t use my fingers. I called my other podcast partner, High Fidelity, it was 3 am his time and thankfully he answered. He told me to turn off the ability to ‘comment and like’ my posts and when I did that, the threats began to slow. But not before I received comments like “Bang bang bitch” “You’re going to die” “Lock your doors” and a message with my address.

Anyone who had commented on my previous posts, received notes in their inbox from accounts with depraved and hateful names, accompanied with images of scat porn.

It was a nightmare, and when it didn’t end, I reached out to my friend Fred Guttenberg, who had been tormented over his daughter’s murder in Parkland by an extremely sick cyber stalker until the FBI arrested the perpetrator. He told me I had to go to the FBI, and I did. I won’t go into the details here, but I slept with my lights on for months, until one night, I got a call from HiFi telling me to pack a bag and go stay with my mom. He learned that a pair of my stalkers, one I vaguely knew from childhood, had moved offline and were livestreaming in my neighborhood. I was in the middle of writing an important investigation, and I made a decision to ignore the threat.

By then, the South Pasadena police officers knew me — I had called them repeatedly over myriad physical and cyber threats — and they told me, “Unless someone shows up at your door with a gun, there’s nothing we can do.”

So on that night when the stalkers were physically present, I thought, unless they mean business, I’m not leaving. I’m going to finish my investigation, and I did.

Back in 2016, when I pressed send on my first post that exposed Trump as a charlatan, I knew how serious a step it was. I knew there was no going back, and I didn’t want to go back. I was a woman with a certain skillset unshackled by a corporation, and I had a duty to warn.

Yesterday, on International Women’s Day, I took some time for myself to finish reading The Essential Anna Politkovskaya — an investigative reporter whose work was so important that Putin had her executed in Moscow on his birthday, October 7, 2006. She lived under constant threat, and the most important thing we can do is make her words live on and learn from them. Her reporting was so critical, she was assassinated to silence her. And what were her crimes? Truth and empathy.—Heidi Siegmund Cuda for Bette Dangerous

3/
Read 20 tweets
Bette Dangerous Profile picture
Mar 7
Hot Type: How The US-Israel War in Iran Is Also Targeting European Democracy

In @BylineTimes I investigate a key target in the US-Israel war in Iran: European democratic leaders who are damned if they do support the war and damned if they don't

1/
bylinesupplement.com/p/hot-type-how…
You do this work long enough, you see patterns.

I didn’t set out to become a Russia watcher, but when I witnessed Russian military intelligence under the direction of Vladimir Putin attacking my country with active measures in 2016, I had no choice but to turn my investigative skills toward information warfare.

2/
I had spent my career working in print journalism and broadcast news and watching the media’s abject failure to report on the rise of Donald Trump within the context of his ties to the Russian mob was like watching the same horror film over and over again, with truth as the perpetual victim.

3/
Read 14 tweets
Bette Dangerous Profile picture
Mar 3
Indirect Targets of Crazy Making

As the US becomes a drunken brawler, we can see a real goal emerge - to weaken Western leaders with shock events and so-called wars

1/
 bettedangerous.com/p/indirect-tar…
“The indirect targets of US bombs are leaders of democratic nations — they are forced to make sense of the senseless, and the aim is to degrade their power. Putin understands this strategy.”—me on Twitter, March 2, 2026

2/
On Putin’s birthday in 2023, Joe Biden was put in a situation he could not win. Back an allied country that was run by a corrupt leader, who after losing the Israeli election two years earlier, called Putin and promised him: “I will be back soon.”

3/
Read 9 tweets
Bette Dangerous Profile picture
Mar 1
'Clickbait Fascism: When War Becomes a Show' -- My Interview on Radio Free America

An interview I did with Radio Free America, Prague, on the day the Trump regime invaded Venezuela just dropped yesterday, the day the Trump regime invaded Iran

1/ bettedangerous.com/p/clickbait-fa…
“If you want regime change, bomb the Kremlin.”—me on Twitter, February 28, 2026

2/
Yesterday, I woke up to the news that my interview from January 3 on Radio Free America had been published.

3/
rfaclub.substack.com/p/clickbait-fa…
Read 12 tweets
Bette Dangerous Profile picture
Feb 17
From Rybolovlev with Love: How Trump's DHS Funnels Cash to Russian Oligarchs

As DHS overpays for concentration camp shells, it's worth revisiting the failures of US intelligence agencies who were supposed to protect us from organized crime, and why we need to push on

1/
 open.substack.com/pub/heidicuda/…
As the world falls under the spell of sleazy glitz delirium — the Russian-backed boogeyman Jeffrey Epstein smirking at you from every news kiosk — the theft of a nation continues.

2/
bettedangerous.com/p/sleazy-glitz…
Lurking under the headlines of horror-sleaze is the fact that the US Department of Homeland Security just overpaid by a hundred million dollars for a concentration camp shell to a Russian-based group, in the City of Social Circle, Georgia, about 45 miles from Atlanta.

3/
Read 25 tweets
Bette Dangerous Profile picture
Feb 12
Sleazy Glitz Delirium

It's tempting to go down the rabbit hole of scandal and stay mired there, but we know enough about the organized crime ring of deviant freaks to know our main focus should be getting them out of power

1/ bettedangerous.com/p/sleazy-glitz…
There is a reason our next two Bette Dangerous guests have experience documenting trials of war criminals at The Hague. We need to learn how criminal leaders were brought to justice in the past to determine a prosecution strategy for the present.

2/
On Sunday, we will be joined by Croation author Slavenka Druković, whose book They Would Not Hurt a Fly depicts firsthand reporting on the trials of Yugoslavian war criminals.

3/
bettedangerous.com/p/register-bet…
Read 25 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(