I'm reading the Mueller indictments in the original PDF-legalease format. All the way through, because I'm not a Republican member of Congress and think this is actually important.
This information warfare campaign was SO. WELL. ORGANIZED. Part of me is like, "Yo, this is great digital marketing." The other part is like, "THIS IS HORRIBLE AND HOW CAN YOU TRUST ANYTHING ANYMORE??!"
you got identity theft... 
on-the-ground recon and intelligence gathering...
solid management structure. somebody went to business school!
I mean, the Russians literally called it "information warfare." They're like, "Yo, we gonna do some crimes. Who's in?"
Mission. Accomplished.
Look at how they hid the money! All these LLCs. It's like they read the playbook on How To Be A New York Real Estate Developer And Remain Hidden With No Accountability For Your Actions.
Nice to see that the conspiracy of the Russians has now been fully endorsed by the Republican Party.
The Russians didn't show up with arrogance and lack of preparations. They did their homework. Digital and IRL. They tracked online metrics. They learned our political language.
they exploited our open wounds. Facilitated by Zuckerberg's mammoth birthday reminder service and surveillance/influence machine.
It's like the Russians took two great U.S. innovations: advertising and marketing, and turned it against us with analytical rigor. "The americans lie to themselves all the time. they won't notice if we join them."
They used the fake IDs and money to buy US server space, set up VPNs from Russia, so all this looked like local traffic. SMART. They set up email accounts in the US & used those to recruit and amplify their messages through media. SMART. I feel like the DNC should have done this.
and look at this. They SOMEHOW got a bunch of social security numbers and used those to do more fake shit. They could have gotten those from almost anywhere thanks to weak ass security by everyone mining our personal data. Hello Equifax, Target, LinkedIn, US Government!
They criticized all candidates "except Sanders and Trump." Serious question: has Bernie Sanders ever acknowledged his online support being amplified by the Russians and said he didn't welcome it?
and of course they used the pain of black folks cause why not? We're always exploitable. O hai Jill Stein! I see you!
I'd heard about the fake rallies that became real rallies, but I didn't know they basically ran a TaskRabbit system, paying people to stage theatrical demonstrations. Reminds me of the book Daemon which you should read. Too much to get into it now.
And then the Russians did dumb shit like write emails to family members about how they were VERY BUSY COVERING UP THEIR CRIMES.
Ok now i've hit a long section around pages 26 and on, and it's an itemized list which basically comes down to: "Facebook was an instrumental weapon in this one-sided information war."
Incredible. The Russians used stolen identities to open real bank and paypal accounts to pay for fake ads ad fake rallies and to CHARGE REAL AMERICANS money to promote their political messages on the now-popular fake Russian Facebook pages. Brilliant business.
OH SNAP YALL. They saved the best part for last. The US Government "will seek forfeiture as part of any sentence!!!" They're gonna use drug dealer laws and TAKE YOUR RUSSIAN SUVs AND THAT HOUSE YOU BOUGHT YOUR MOMMA!
Ok. I made it through the indictment. Yes I was hoping to see Donald Trump Jr's stupid face in there proving he was knowingly wiring money to the Russians. Didn't get that. Instead found a more frightening reality: we got hacked bigtime. Based on known vulnerabilities.
We build a giant deception machine called marketing and advertising, and an adversary used it against us.
We build a giant influence machine called social media, and an adversary used it against us.
We left open, unreconciled divisions in our society, and an adversary used it against us.
We weakened our press such that all the phony conflict inspired by this information warfare campaign was reported in real-time with little to no vetting, and an adversary used it against us.
We allowed our democracy to become so corrupted by money and self-serving, power-hungry folks that we already didn't trust it, and an adversary used it against us.
If the election had turned out differently, would we even know half of what we do? We only got Robert Mueller because Trump is president but also bad at wielding his power.
And even though the Russians amplified divisions to be greater than they are, those divisions are real now. There is a basic level of trust we have to have in our environment to act appropriately, and that's severely broken.
On top of that, one-half of the political establishment (the republican half) is completely uninterested in acknowledging, investigating, or responding to this sophisticated act of information warfare. They've done NOTHING to prepare us for the next campaign.
The president still hasn't imposed the Russia sanctions that Congress passed overwhelmingly. And everybody's just acting like, "Meh. TRUMP WILL BE TRUMP! Undermining national security is just his THING ya know?"
And Facebook. Oh Facebook. So happy to monetize the destruction of our civil fabric. They made $7B in the 3rd quarter of 2016. Zuckerberg smugly said 99% of posts are "authentic." We cannot trust this company to do what's best for us. Not just FB btw. techcrunch.com/2016/11/13/zuc…
This indictment isn't just about Trump. It's about us needing a better vision for how we do this whole "society" thing. What forms of power get held accountable. What voices we listen to. This is ultimately about reality and our collective agreement on what THAT is. /END
ADDENDUM: here is the link directly to the PDF so you can be a good citizen yourself. It’s hosted on the Justice Department website... for now justice.gov/file/1035477/d…
Four months later, part 2 drops
