Something that you have to understand about Russian interference is that it’s highly unlikely that they would actually try to manipulate votes or vote tallies. Why? Because they know they can achieve the same or even better outcomes by manipulating voters instead. 🧵 I wrote about this 5 years ago.

As I said then, changing the vote count in one election would yield limited returns. But convincing voters to doubt the legitimacy of election outcomes for the foreseeable future? That’s a return on investment.

bylinetimes.com/2019/07/26/rus…

If you’re genuinely surprised that Trump won, may I gently suggest that you reevaluate where you are getting your information from, and be honest with yourself about whether you are willing to listen to people who tell you things you don’t necessarily want to hear. The information environment on the left is broken, too, just in different ways than on the right. Too many people choose who to follow and who to listen to based on who makes them feel good, not who tells them the truth. In fact, those who told the truth were often ostracized.

A viral claim emerged from pro-Trump Twitter on Friday, alleging that locals in NC had assaulted a FEMA director. By Saturday, it was a top Google trend. But it never actually happened.

Here’s how a fictional story ended in real threats of violence:
weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/how-a-viral-… There were a lot of striking aspects of this story, but more than anything, this was among the clearest examples I’ve seen of how online storytelling can be used to motivate and guide offline violence through the reframing of political violence as a necessary act of survival.

He did. Trump & his allies spent years weaponizing the narrative around antifa in order to preemptively justify using violence and force to crack down on anyone who opposed Trump — thus paving the way for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act on 1/6.
👉🏼

https://x.com/rvawonk/status/1686502478970318849?s=46

https://twitter.com/zaleskiluke/status/1838122173195575330

This went on for YEARS; I was one of very few people talking about it for a long, long time. It was in the works since at least 2017 (likely earlier) and it involved politicians, media, think tanks, govt officials, & more.

They’ll try again if they can.

https://x.com/rvawonk/status/1145349621134299136?s=46

https://twitter.com/rvawonk/status/1145349621134299136

I wrote about cognitive warfare and how the contrived panic over Haitian immigrants hijacked our algorithms, our brains, and our national discourse.
weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/how-the-cont…
During the 2-hr-long presidential debate this week, abortion was the top political topic searched in 49 states. The only exception was Ohio, where immigration was the top-searched issue — a trend driven by searches for topics related to the false claims about Haitian immigrants.

This was always the inevitable endpoint of the wildly false claims about Haitian immigrants eating dogs & cats. As this person literally admits, it doesn’t matter to them if it’s factually true or not — it only matters that (to them) it *feels* like it *could* be true.





It’s REALLY easy to get people to spread absurd lies about immigrants (or anyone else) if those people already believe terrible things about immigrants *and* are politically/ideologically motivated to persuade others to believe terrible things about immigrants.

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.

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.

https://twitter.com/iubloomington/status/1784218565140226344

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

https://twitter.com/rvawonk/status/1479936038877511686

NEW: Russian state media is amplifying civil war rhetoric and promoting the Texas border convoy, and there’s evidence that accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency are being ‘reactivated’ to promote a Texas secessionist movement.

My latest:
weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/russia-ampli…
Propaganda outlets RT & Sputnik, which together function as one of the major instruments of Russia’s disinformation machine, have been amplifying both sides of the border conflict — a tactic straight out of the disinfo playbook — and promoting the right-wing border convoy.

Trump is openly calling for states to take up arms against the federal government, which is as close to calling for civil war as you can get without actually using the words. This is an alarming escalation and this situation could spiral out of control very, very quickly. Some essential reading regarding Trump, Abbott, Texas, and the threat of civil war:

https://twitter.com/rvawonk/status/1750705208621981947

There’s been a lot of academic debate about mis/disinformation recently — a refreshing change from the usual discourse in this area — but something I’ve noticed is that everyone argues their POV based on a very specific definition of misinfo that doesn’t usually align w/ reality. Exposure to misinfo on its own, in the absence of other factors, is not that impactful or persuasive usually. BUT people often aren’t exposed to misinformation in isolation. It comes along with things like changes in social network, social norms, or external events like war.

Since Roger Stone is trending (again) for his violent rhetoric, a brief reminder that Stone has repeatedly made explicit calls for violence, including this one just a day before the 2020 election, when he said “f*ck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.”

https://twitter.com/rvawonk/status/1574617249695952896

Roger Stone also warned of “a spasm of violence — an insurrection” all the way back in August 2017. This was always the plan if anyone tried to remove Trump from office, even if it was through the electoral process.

https://twitter.com/rvawonk/status/1056449697185959941

When we talk about influence campaigns, we usually think about foreign influence, but what just happened at Harvard (and MIT & Penn) *was* an influence campaign -- defined as a large-scale campaign, often carried out in bad faith, that seeks to shift public opinion. Just like foreign influence campaigns, domestic political influence campaigns like the ones targeting higher ed are often rooted in some degree of truth. But most of all (& by definition), they are rooted in deception and manipulation -- and that's the part we need to focus on.

Somehow I’m just learning tonight that King George V was involuntarily euthanized in Jan. 1936 by his physician, who injected the king with 750mg of morphine and a gram of cocaine — enough, apparently, to kill him twice over. The king had never consented to this. Apparently the king’s final words were not “How is the empire?” — as was reported in news stories — but rather, “God damn you!”

Damn.
dappledthings.org/deep-down-thin…

The state Capitol complexes in 5 states — Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana & Michigan — have been evacuated following bomb threats.

This is how accelerationists operate and today’s escalation could be the start of what we’ve been warning about.
nbcnews.com/politics/polit… Watch for events like this to be paired with disinformation campaigns and both physical and cyber attacks targeting critical infrastructure, particularly power and telecom infrastructure. When those events start to co-occur regularly, you’ll know it has started.

With everything going on in higher ed, most recently at Harvard, it’s crucial that the media handles these situations responsibly and doesn’t fall into the “both sides” trap — especially when one side of the story is a billionaire-funded disinfo campaign & the other side… isn’t. If you’re covering this story without mentioning 1) who is involved in spearheading the campaign; 2) that it’s not a grassroots effort, but rather a carefully orchestrated political operation; 3) that it’s part of a years-long right-wing campaign, then you’re doing a disservice.

As we close out 2023, I want to say thank you to those of you who have supported me & my work, and provided words of encouragement & opportunity when they were needed the most. It’s not easy to do this work. It’s not easy to be targeted every single day. But you make it worth it. Seeing your messages of encouragement in my DM’s and replies means the world to me. I especially appreciate those of you with whom I often disagree, but nonetheless have civil conversations with that are grounded in respect and decency. The world needs more of you.