I think people generally don’t understand the power of disinformation and propaganda. I see it as an existential threat to democracies.
Example: The Black Lives Matter protests in 2016. Russia doesn’t give a shit about the movement one way or the other. But they like chaos. So they organized people on both sides of the BLM debate resulting in protests (planned in St Petersburg, Russia) that were nearly violent.
As everyone becomes more polarized and nuance dies, why wouldn’t Russia or Iran or China want to organize protests that DO turn violent? Say for example, the foreign organizers convince protesters that all their cohorts will be armed. What then?
The Tulsi shit is just a meager example of this. As soon as Clinton made her comments (agree or disagree with them, I find them mostly accurate but not helpful) bots from BOTH sides went into overdrive.
There’s a real, physical, non-partisan national security threat here that most leaders are completely missing.
I don’t know the solution but maybe everyone should just take a couple breaths before we react to something with passion.
