#ElectionInterference is one of the topics for #debates. Experts focus on leaks, hacks and bots as seen in 2016, but the main threat is overlooked. Russia doesn't just meddle into elections and referendum around the world,” wrote Putin’s aide Surkov. It meddles with their brains.
"Russia meddles with their brains, and they don’t know what to do with this altered state of mind.” The Kremlin is waging information warfare: corroding the idea of democracy and planting new pro-Kremlin thinking. The battlefield is the brain.
The goal is sowing discord and confusion in order to demoralize the West. Words are a military arsenal. Language is a weapon of mass destruction of ideas. This is the war of narratives. Trump's and Kremlin's narrative: Democracy is dead and elections are rigged.
We will not see open cyberattacks in 2020. The Kremlin learns from its mistakes. What we see now is infiltration, masquerading, inception and amplification: an army of accounts impersonating ordinary Americans; joining groups, injecting anonymous memes, slogans and ideas;
liking and cross-sharing these posts; amplifying them so they trend and flooding the information flow with their narratives. "A coalition of progressive groups — led by Accountable Tech — is sounding the alarm about the possibility that Trump’s disinformation ... amplified...
"a thousandfold by this Facebook group function, and is calling on the tech giant to turn it off “until the U.S. election results are certified.” The potential of these groups to spread “disinformation, suppress voters, organize intimidation efforts, or incite violence...
...will only grow,” says the coalition, which includes groups like Mozilla, Common Cause, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Let America Vote" write @ThePlumLineGS and Paul Waldman: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
This interference is invisible. Whether the interference is quantifiable does not matter – it is the devastating quality of this new type of warfare that needs to be defined and brought to public attention. I wrote about it here: bylinetimes.com/2020/07/28/rus…
Do not let the conversation slide into who hacked whom and when: it is irrelevant. Stay with the main idea: Democracy is the way of the future society. Autocratic dictatorships cannot be justified. Constitutions cannot be altered. #Debates2020 #debate #ElectionDisinformation
A good video created by @LuluLemew to illustrate this idea:
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