A new paper published in Science explains something many people feel but struggle to name.

Online manipulation is no longer about individual lies or fake accounts. It is becoming an infrastructure.

For years, influence operations relied on human-run bot networks. They were expensive, slow, and limited by time, coordination, and manpower.

That constraint is disappearing.

The combination of large language models and autonomous agents allows influence campaigns to operate continuously, adaptively, and at scale.

arxiv.org/pdf/2506.06299

Disinformation is often discussed in theory. This is a real case.

One event, one place, real people, real consequences. The point here is not who is right politically, but how people can be pushed into acting against their own material interests. Near Podgorica, residents blocked the construction of a wastewater treatment plant in Botun.

Police intervened. Arrests followed. Politicians reacted. At first glance, this looks like a familiar local conflict over infrastructure.

What do people in the West usually get wrong about propaganda?

They imagine simple brainwashing. Someone lies. Someone believes it. End of story.

That idea is comforting because it suggests clear villains, clear victims, and that smart people are safe. So what does propaganda actually do?

It does not need to make you stupid. It just needs to make you tired. When you live inside it, propaganda is not an event.

It is part of the environment, like background noise.

THREAD 🧵 | What is Orbán actually doing and why?

Q: Why is Viktor Orbán suddenly comparing EU leaders to Napoleon and Hitler?
A: Because he’s not debating policy. He’s raising fear so defense sounds dangerous and delay sounds wise. Q: Is this just Orbán being provocative for attention?
A: No. He’s repeating it, on stage, on record.

That’s intentional escalation, not a slip of the tongue.

THREAD — Can You Measure How Susceptible You Are to Propaganda? Yes.

People imagine propaganda targets:

• fools
• the uneducated
• the gullible

But research shows something deeply uncomfortable: The most susceptible are often the ones convinced they are immune. Measuring susceptibility isn’t about intelligence.

It’s about habits of mind and emotional reflexes.

We can look at a few key diagnostics anyone can use on themselves.

British journalist Carole Cadwalladr has published new reporting that links a Kremlin-connected influence network to Nigel Farage’s political circle.
She documents how Oleh Voloshyn, a sanctioned Russian operative, and his wife Nadia Sass, a pro-Kremlin influencer, targeted politicians in the UK and across Europe.

Ever wondered why some posts on X explode with millions of views but barely any likes or reposts?

What you’re seeing isn’t organic.

It’s engineered.

Do you want to talk about how elmo’s X creates the illusion of dominance? Then here it is:

Compare posts about the same topic.

Pro–No Kings tweets get big engagement but modest reach.

Pro-MAGA tweets get massive reach but almost no engagement.

What if blackmail wasn’t just a backroom tactic, but an entire system of governance?

Enter kompromat: Russia’s homegrown method of keeping elites obedient.

Think LinkedIn, but everyone’s tagged in a crime scene. 🧵 What is kompromat?

It’s dirt. Weaponized scandal.

Gossip with a security clearance.

In Russia, it’s not a bug in the system—it is the system.

You rise, fall, or disappear based on who’s got the receipts.

<< For the first time in Ukraine’s history, two Georgian citizens serving on the frontlines have been awarded a high-ranking Ukrainian military honor.

globalvoices.org/2025/09/17/geo… Among them is Mamuka Mamulashvili, commander of the Georgian Legion — the largest foreign military unit fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Russia is spending massive sums and using every lever:

How? — NGOs, oligarchs, crypto wallets, social media brigades, foreign training camps, and intelligence handlers

Why? — to shape Moldova’s election and spill influence into the EU. At the center: “Evrazia” and shadow structures linked to Ilan Șor.

They recruited youth, influencers and small parties to run influence campaigns under the guise of education and civic programs.

Okay, I had some difficulties posting the entire material using my publish app so I decided to put it all together into a mega-thread, showing both sides of the operation, including Romania (at the receiving end) and not only Moldova.

This shows the entire eco-system at once. 1/ People ask: “Why doesn’t the EU counter Kremlin propaganda with the same weapons?”

Because EU institutions don’t run covert paid sock-puppet farms on their own citizens.

They lean on transparency laws, monitoring, fact-checking, and civic defenses.

How about the Wilson intervention?

Few remember it—yet it became the origin story of Soviet propaganda aimed at the West.

What was it, how was it twisted, and why does it still shape debates about aid to Ukraine?

[S1–S9] 1918–20, Russia’s in civil war.

US President Wilson sends two small U.S. forces: North Russia (Arkhangelsk) and Siberia (Vladivostok).

Aims: guard Allied stockpiles, keep the railway open, help the Czech Legion—not “restore the Whites.”

[S1–S3]

We keep talking about a meeting between putler and President Zelenskyy - but that's impossible (or nearly so) for the russian side.

I will quickly make my argument because I have to go to work today, so here it is: The russian empire in all its iterations was a Frankenstein made of pieces and always tried hard to find its reason to exist.

Denying agency to its "pieces" is part of that process and for Ukraine goes back to at least the late 1700's.

So yeah, here we are.

The moment NAFO has been warning about from the start has arrived and with it the unmasking of RU covert ops and efforts.

But where are we, all-together? And what can we do?

My two cents and I'll be brief: Russia’s war machine runs on three engines: force, finance, and cognition.

Alaska’s Trump–Putin summit (Aug 15) ended with no deal; today, Zelensky meets Trump in DC with EU/NATO leaders alongside.

optics ≠ peace

and cognition matters a lot

reuters.com/world/europe/t…

The Alaska “Trump–Putin meeting” rumor didn’t just appear.

It grew, split, and thickened into a fog.

That fog isn’t an accident. It's an ops.

In 1972, Ladislav Bittman — a Czech intelligence officer turned defector — wrote the manual for this kind of operation. Source: The Deception Game (1972) — archive.org/details/decept…

Do you have children? Grandchildren? Nieces? Nephews? Anyone under 10?

I do.

And here’s my argued warning of why you are—right now—helping kill them.

Not with your hands, but by falling for the deadliest weapon in the world today. NATO on cognitive warfare:

act.nato.int/article/cognit…

Overview: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive…

No, Russia didn’t hack voting machines in 2016.

It hacked something bigger—your perception.

This thread answers real questions, using only the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2019 report.

Recognize this building? No?

You should. It got us Trump.

Let’s clear this up: Here’s what people still ask:

• How early did Russia start?
• What exactly did they do?
• Who were they pretending to be?
• Was it about electing Trump—or something else?
• How did they get so much reach?

What you’re seeing today—disinformation, institutional decay, narrative collapse—isn’t new.

It’s the continuation of a strategy launched over a century ago.

Russia’s war on democracy didn’t start with Putin.

It started with the Tsars. Since the early 1900s, Russian regimes have used the same method:

Undermine trust in liberal democracy
Exploit internal divisions
Flood the public square with lies, half-truths, and confusion

Different leaders. Same doctrine.

Democracy doesn’t defend itself.

You have to do it.

Because the biggest threat today isn’t tanks or coups.

It’s percepticide and perspecticide—destroying what people see and what they believe is possible.

If you lose that, you’ve already lost the system. Percepticide is the collapse of shared perception.

When reality fractures—thanks to disinformation, propaganda, and polarization—democracy can’t function.

People no longer agree on facts, on trust, or even on whether voting matters.

What if democratic decline isn’t just internal collapse—but a front in a hybrid war?

Autocracies like Russia and China have spent decades weakening democracies from within—without firing a shot.

To defend democracy, we first have to understand how it fails. Today, democracies aren’t falling through coups. They’re eroding quietly.

Through legal changes, captured courts, corrupted discourse, and social fragmentation.

This isn’t dysfunction. It’s a tactic—weaponized by foreign and domestic actors alike.

Everyone talks about Palestine like it’s just Israel vs. the Palestinians, with the West holding all the cards.

But here’s what few in the West understand:

Arab regimes—and former Soviet allies—have often blocked or undermined a Palestinian state.

But why and how? In 1947, the UN proposed a two-state solution: one Jewish, one Arab.

Arab states rejected it.

Not just the Jewish state—they didn’t want an independent Palestinian state either.

They wanted the land divided among themselves.

📎 UN Res. 181 | Rubin (MERIA 1998)