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Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D Profile picture
@RVAwonk
Jan 18, 2018 • 10 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
The FBI is investigating whether Alexander Torshin, a top Russian banker (known as the "Russian godfather"), illegally funneled money to the NRA to help Trump win.

(The NRA spent $30 million to support Trump — 3X what they gave to Romney's 2012 campaign)

mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-wo…
<quick thread>
A bit of background info on Alexander Torshin, the Russian bank exec and suspected mobster/organized crime boss who is now being investigated for potentially funneling $ through the NRA to help Trump's campaign. (That's him at the 2016 NRA convention👇).

/1/ Image
According to intel assessments, Torshin is part of a years-long "aggressive Kremlin effort to forge alliances" w/top GOP figures, including those close to the WH. The NRA is a major conduit of influence here... and possibly also a cash conduit.

/2/
Trump was set to meet with Alexander Torshin in February before the National Prayer Breakfast. The meeting was canceled the night before when an NSC staffer blew the whistle and flagged Torshin as a potential Russian mobster...

/3/
In Nov., @NBCNews reported that Jared Kushner failed to disclose what lawmakers called a "Russian backdoor overture & dinner invite" from Alexander Torshin.

Torshin wanted Trump to attend an event at the NRA's May 2016 convention in Louisville, KY.

/4/
nbcnews.com/news/us-news/k…
The undisclosed email chain suggested that Torshin "was seeking to meet with a high-level Trump campaign official during the NRA convention, and that he may have had a message for Trump from Putin."

/5/
Also in Nov., Don Jr admitted that he met with Torshin at a private dinner at the NRA's 2016 convention — just as Torshin requested in the (undisclosed) emails to Kushner (in which he said he wanted to meet with a high-level Trump campaign official).

/6/
Torshin and Trump have reportedly known each other since at least 2012. According to Bloomberg, the two "had a jovial exchange at the NRA convention in Tennessee in 2015."

...interesting how this keeps circling back to the NRA, isn't it?

/7/
Another key figure in the Torshin-NRA-Trump nexus: Torshin's "special assistant" Maria Butina, who attended one of Trump's first campaign events in April 2015 — during which Trump signaled his willingness to lift sanctions on Russia.

/8/
Here's Trump in 2015, suggesting to Maria Butina (Russian crime boss Alexander Torshin's special assistant) that he would lift sanctions on Russia.

"I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin... I don't think you'd need the sanctions."

/9/

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More from @RVAwonk

Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D Profile picture
May 28
The CEO of Google — one of the five largest tech companies in existence today — says he has no solution for the company’s AI providing wildly inaccurate information to users.

Astonishing that they didn’t address this before releasing the AI publicly.
futurism.com/the-byte/ceo-g…
We need a totally different incentive structure here. We shouldn’t celebrate companies for releasing things faster, or making the most dramatic changes to the status quo. Instead, we should reward those who prioritize rigorous safety testing & built-in guardrails.
Ultimately, the usefulness of AI tools is inherently contingent on being able to use them without producing new and bigger problems along the way. Companies that are rushing just to put things in users’ hands are not producing useful tech; they’re just trying to stay relevant.
Read 7 tweets
Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D Profile picture
Apr 27
This — IU changing a rule overnight & pretending they didn’t – is such a prescient example of why my biggest fear regarding AI is that it will be used to rewrite history and produce the “evidence trail” needed to make the fake version of history look more real than the real one.
I’ve spent a lot of time looking into this potentiality and it’s actually a lot easier to accomplish than it seems, which should absolutely terrify you. Of course, it would start small, with marginal changes to obscure events & records — so by the time you notice, it’s too late.
I mean, it *is* happening. It’s not just a hypothetical anymore. The only question is whether the AI-facilitated historical revisionism we’ve seen thus far is simply the product of errors or glitches, or if it’s intentional — ie, the AI doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Read 6 tweets
Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D Profile picture
Apr 25
Look, I obviously know the circumstances are different, but there is a ton of overlap between what is going on now and the various iterations of the so-called campus free speech wars that we’ve seen for years. We know how this will unfold. Here’s a sneak preview.
The stories you hear in the media will be the most extreme examples that can be found, and nearly all of them will be fundamentally misrepresented based on the biases of the person telling the story. This will fuel a cycle of escalation that few people on either side want.
Just like we’ve seen the emergence of so-called war/conflict influencers, we are once again seeing the rise of the campus speech war influencer, and once you let those people take over, they’ll steer things towards the extremes because that’s where the attention they seek is.
Read 13 tweets
Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D Profile picture
Apr 16
FYI: There has been a huge surge in the number of deepfake videos — some of which are quite well done — on this platform in the past few days. These are probably among the best quality deepfakes I’ve seen at this scale; most viewers are unable to tell that the videos are fake.
Some of the deepfakes are related to the Iran-Israel conflict; others focus on domestic issues in the U.S., including multiple that sought to sow hostility between Black Americans and immigrants. These videos were explicitly pro-Trump, but it’s not clear who produced them.
Other deepfake videos I’ve seen on X in the past few days have focused on violence & civil war, with some claiming to show acts of heinous violence on camera. Still others have shown “footage” of people yelling slurs in someone’s face, or crowds of unruly people breaking things.
Read 9 tweets
Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D Profile picture
Mar 28
Since I’ve had some people ask about it, I’ll give you my very brief thoughts on the absolutely ridiculous conspiracy theories about the Key Bridge collapse.

Firstly, many of the people spreading the most outlandish claims don’t actually believe in them. It’s engagement bait.
Secondly, we are at a point where any event that attracts a certain amount of attention is going to become a magnet for conspiracy theories & other forms of participatory disinformation. Most of the narratives are laundered — ie, they’re not new or unique to this event.
Third, it’s important to understand that most people who actively participate in constructing alternate realities have integrated this into their core identity. The various competing narratives out there end up becoming a way to signal affiliation with certain groups & stances.
Read 7 tweets
Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D Profile picture
Mar 15
I told you this was going to happen and now here we are.

In science, when we don’t understand something, we don’t assume that means it doesn’t exist. In medicine, if they don’t understand something, it doesn’t exist to them. It’s wild.
nypost.com/2024/03/14/lif…
I didn’t think they’d start denying the existence of long COVID quite so soon, but it was clear it was coming.
Saying long COVID doesn’t exist not only fails to help those suffering from it, but it actually makes their health outcomes worse due to distress, isolation, and betrayal trauma from being dismissed by those who were supposed to help them.
Read 9 tweets

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