Of course they are. Its literally their intelligence agencies job to destabilize countries whom they benefit from being destabilized. I guess we better hope it's a landslide one way or the other then.
That's a bit like saying "of course foreign actors are likely to nuke us! It's literally their militaries job to nuke countries whom they benefit from being nuked".
>But what country has benefited from the U.S. being destabilized by Trump’s presidency?
Literally any country that stands to lose if the US has more time to look externally. Look at every issue we are involved in. Everyone on side of an issue that we're on the other side of stands to benefit if we spend more time on internal issues. Of course you have Russia, China, Iran, etc. but there's tons of countries who have neighbors they don't like who we are helping who would rather we not. They're all gonna buy a few hundred Facebook ads or whatever.
Much of the world doesn't actually enjoy living under total American hegemony. Much of the world has a very negative opinion of the USA. You can easily be forgiven for not knowing these things because they are never reported in American media.
> Much of the world doesn't actually enjoy living under total American hegemony
Worded like that, yes.
But purely anecdotally, having had the chance to visit 35 countries, and having talked to a lot of people about world issues, I've seen nothing but good will and friendliness towards the American people for the most part. In fact, I very regularly get words of encouragement from regular folks in other countries who feel pity for us and wish we'd be "back to normal" (not debating the merits of that statement here).
It's hard to overstate how deeply influential and strong is American culture in other countries, and the sense of friendship that that has forged over decades, even if it's not always reciprocated.
> Its literally their intelligence agencies job to destabilize countries whom they benefit from being destabilized.
An intelligence agency is something that any developed country will come up with, and even some still rather undeveloped ones. However, in many small countries the national intelligence agency is pretty much limited to keeping tabs on who is going into or out of the country, maybe doing some light industrial espionage, or (in the worst case) cracking down on the democratic aspirations of their own citizens. They aren’t projecting covert power abroad, because there simply isn't the budget, political support, or manpower to destablize foreign countries.
As a Brazilian living abroad, I can easily see some parts of the right-wing social media bot armies, partly sponsored by the current Brazilian administration, supporting Trump.
Which is rather interesting as there is a close alignment between the goals of Brazilian and American administrations. By supporting the current Brazilian government, the current US administration is supporting its own president's reelection.
As a side note, it was the previous administration that condoned and supported the coup that ousted the left-leaning government. Fun this always happens before Brazil (or Chile, or Argentina, or anyone else) can become a regional power.
They want to deflect blame from the US parties on the level of disorganization during the election. They did that last time by blaming Russia for the failures of the 2016 campaign and that playbook resulted in 3 years of driving liberals insane over "Russiagate", which turned out to have barely any evidence beyond a few Facebook groups. That worked really well, so they'll do it again.
Foreign actors are primarily interested in sowing chaos, and only secondarily interested (at most) in getting a particular candidate elected. The best case scenario for those who want to interfere with the election is for the US government to be widely perceived as delegitimized and ineffectual, which opens up space for them to pursue their own interests, which are often not the interests of the United States or regional neighbors.
That doesn't mean domestic actors won't be doing things that delegimitimize the election on their own terms, but it does mean it will be very hard to tell genuine criticism from foreign-sponsored agitprop. The best thing to do is to listen to those who are ostensibly on your own side with a high dose of skepticism.
I think you kinda have to expect this kind of thing on any online comment forum. Between September and December of an election year, any discussion which could turn to blind partisanship will, and you've gotta either let it scroll by or deliberately dodge any discussions plausibly related to partisan politics.
This presidential term has been one of the most peaceful in my lifetime. No new wars, a president that seemed to try and negotiate or use economic war rather than hot war. Bush-era Republicans would have invaded Iran to take out one man and Trump just had him missiled.
If he is a 1-term president Trump will enter the history books as presiding over an increasingly peaceful American foreign policy as the 21st century progressed. I don't think that is on him as much as geopolitics; but if the world at large sees him as the chaotic candidate that mistake is on them. Bush's administration was a disaster of world-shattering proportions and the world should be quite happy not to see its like again for 100 years.
The yemenis would like a word, as would the syrians. Also John Bolton as national security advisor is not exactly a peaceful stance - to me the biggest long-term effect of the Trump presidency is we will never be trusted by a group like the Kurds in a conflict again. The US absolutely screwed them over.
Certainly agree about the neocon warmongering. I am incredibly glad that is over for the moment. There is a huge national security establishment that encourages use of force, and I'm glad that finally there's some right wing pushback for once.
I wish Obama had been a lot more pushy to finding ways to end the US involvement in the mideast.
It's not just Russia. But, beyond that, their actual identities are irrelevant, because all of the major strategic competitors of the USA have the same core interests, and will do similar things to cover their tracks. And just because something will appear to originate from some country does not indicate by itself that that country is responsible.
> all of the major strategic competitors of the USA have the same core interests
They don't, actually.
Russia wants to sow chaos in the USA and Europe, because these powers constrain its territorial ambitions. They want strife in China too, but have less ability to sow it there. They want Iran excluded from the international oil trade to improve prices, since they rely heavily on oil to maintain their otherwise decrepit gangster economy. They also border on Iran; normalisation between Iran and the west would open the door to further geographical encirclement.
Saudi Arabia wants Trump to win because he won't interfere their war in Yemen and ignores their support for Wahabbist extremism. They also benefit from Iran's being weakened in the oil markets generally and the middle-east specifically.
Iran just wants not to starve and/or collapse into a viscious civil war turbo-charged by Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Europe doesn't want Iran to collapse, because it would trigger a gigantic refugee crisis. It would also disrupt the global oil and gas markets, making Russia's leverage via gas pipelines more potent. Especially for NATO states in the east.
China wants stability in trade and latitude to pursue its slow-rolling program of dominating Asia. The current administration has been bad for trade, but has neglected to support diplomatic order. China has pushed hard into the South China Sea (throwing an unexpected, massive burden onto stalwart allies, Australia) and into buying votes in the UN's General Assembly. A Biden administration would slow that down. I suspect that China slightly prefers Trump and that the idea that it prefers Biden is a talking point invented for Trump's benefit.
So no. The USA's rivals and allies want different outcomes.
I hesitated before writing that sentence for exactly that reason: it's overbroad. But, within the narrow scope of Russia's and China's interference in US elections, they both fundamentally want a weakened US so as to more easily dominate their near abroad.
At the high level, I agree that they probably mildly prefer Trump over Biden, for reasons of Biden being much more able to work with our regional allies to constrain them. But their ability to effect that result is small compared to their ability to sow chaos. And chaos also serves their ends: a world where Biden is having to deal with domestic unrest and sharp partisan divisions is a world where he's constrained in his ability to make the plausible commitments needed for international alliances, which are in large part based on trust and faith.
Indeed - but my (short) reply was intended to lampshade the aversion of many public figures and certain news-media outlets to name Russia specifically when the evidence suggests they're the lead perpetrators: either out of fear of being retaliated against or because they want to suggest or imply that the Democratic party is "just as bad as the Republicans" and that they're in cahoots with _some other_ equally nefarious country's disinformation campaign. Which is concerning because discouraging the electorate from voting by spreading messages of false-equivalency is exactly what Russia's IRA does.
Iran is being suffocated by the current administration. They strategy for the past 4 years has been just to tolerate it until the administration changes.
They have almost no interest in chaos in US. Just a government that respects the Iran deal (JCPOA) so they can trade with the world again.
> Foreign actors are primarily interested in sowing chaos,
Mission fucking accomplished. This is the first time in my life that I've felt a civil war was a real possibility.
The "call to arms" on Facebook have been pretty damn successful where I live. I personally know people who've picked up their rifles at a moments notice and drove out to Whereeverthefuck and hung around waiting for The Protestors to arrive. It's only a matter of time before one these escalates, they have itchy trigger fingers and cops are telling these people, "if they have a knife in their hands, there's no much I can do."
Things remained tolerable when the economy was good. But now with so many people out of work...
You're downvoted because its still in the "unthinkable" area of the overton window, but I agree that there are a lot of very very extreme armed people sitting around fantasizing about conflict with "the libs".
> Foreign actors are primarily interested in sowing chaos.
False! Behind the perceivable problems and shortlist of problem countries ("oh Russia was involved? :| >:|") is the reality that all or many countries and private actors are also doing this and have for a long time. It is the system itself with the vulnerabilities. Many allies would be doing the same thing to maintain their relationships or further improve it.
The abstraction is that people are primarily interested in their interests.
Its not about the things you care about, it isn't about your ideology, it isn't about how social media will be distorted to routinely and precisely show you your worst fears coming true by your own countrymen.
It is about outsized influence, and a historical enemy sowing discord to create favorable geopolitical outcomes for themselves is just one manifestation of that. Sure, other countries and individuals are using this as an instruction manual too, and some people are trying to get a high score of real world effects from easily manipulable people. But this is just one of many things happening.
Just as it takes a generations worth of time to delegitimize elections and trust, it will take at least another to return to legitimacy.
This is the Cold Wars long term effects coming into play - when the US would lie to their citizens and install dictators across the world. The more realpolitik politicians get to make policy the more violent the world gets.
I agree that trust takes a long time to build, but trust can be lost very quickly. Imagine a classic "trust fall" exercise. How many times do I have to drop you to stop trusting me?
> Foreign actors are primarily interested in sowing chaos, and only secondarily interested (at most) in getting a particular candidate elected.
That was true until Trump though. https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/hiding-in-plain-sigh... That foreign actor sowed a seed, cultivated it and it blossomed according to possible years-long plan and that one for once succeeded in incredible ways. Most likely others failed, most likely luck played a role. But here we are. Sponsoring some candidates rather than others is picking up a particular candidate.
While the following isn't really an ongoing analysis, it might help get you started.
A 2016 study by Dov H. Levin found that, among 938 global elections examined, the United States and Russia (including its predecessor, the Soviet Union) combined had involved themselves in about one out of nine (117), with the majority of those (68%) being through covert, rather than overt, actions. The same study found that "on average, an electoral intervention in favor of one side contesting the election will increase its vote share by about 3 percent," an effect large enough to have potentially changed the results in seven out of 14 U.S. presidential elections occurring after 1960. According to the study, the U.S. intervened in 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000, while the Soviet Union or Russia intervened in 36. A 2018 study by Levin found that the electoral interventions determined in "many cases" the identity of the winner. The study also found suggestive evidence that the interventions increased the risk of democratic breakdown in the targeted states."
~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_intervention
Most of the disinformation is coming directly from the guy the Russians helped during the last election: Trump.
Trump is doing their job.
According to Trump you should ingest bleach and vote twice. And sanctions on Russia should be lifted so they can keep annexing territory. And North Korea should be left in peace after launching missiles over allied territory (Japan).
Slightly related: does anyone know if the oft-lionized claims about Vladislav Surkov about chaos 'theatrics' are actually grounded in reality or are just a meme?
Funny because both candidates can't speak coherently although for different reasons.
But you are wrong anyway, confidence in the system comes from being involved in the system. People need to know how it works na partake. Not in every detail but basic understanding. If that's not possible at lest everyone should know someone they trust who has the knowledge.
The alternation is conspiracy theories about everything and a growing portion of people who fall for them.
What was the single most impactful piece of disinformation spread during the last election cycle? I think the answer to that question would obviously be the Steele Dossier.
I'm much less concerned about foreign actors directly spreading disinformation than domestic actors amplifying disinformation that happens to align to their beliefs.
The "Russian troll on social media" seems like a total boogeyman to me. I'm not saying it doesn't happen at all, but that it's so negligible that the level of hand-wringing around it becomes its own kind of disinformation.
The Steele Dossier was mainly based on Russian sources, but amplified by a national media blinded by their hunger for anything to attack Trump. But I have a hard time laying the blame for this on "the Russians". I blame the people with a large national audiences that lent credence to the conspiracy.
> What was the single most impactful piece of disinformation spread during the last election cycle? I think the answer to that question would obviously be the Steele Dossier.
You mean the dossier that Buzzfeed News published on January 10th, 2017[0], which was over two months after the election? This would’ve been the first time voters had a chance to see it, which I remind you was after they already voted in the election.
We've literally heard all of this before, in 2016. "It's not rigged, you're just losing", "Hillary has a 97% chance of winning", "blue wave". Rings a bell? Moreover, we will see the same thing happen after the election: the left will refuse to accept its results, and will spend the next 4 years spinning up a bullshit hoax after a bullshit hoax, and destroying the Republic.
The fact that Russia is mentioned multiple times in this thread, and China is none, shows who's actually running successful covert misinformation and public opinion buying campaigns.
64 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 93.0 ms ] threadThat’s why it feels like all of this is Russia as they seem disconnected enough that they don’t care.
Literally any country that stands to lose if the US has more time to look externally. Look at every issue we are involved in. Everyone on side of an issue that we're on the other side of stands to benefit if we spend more time on internal issues. Of course you have Russia, China, Iran, etc. but there's tons of countries who have neighbors they don't like who we are helping who would rather we not. They're all gonna buy a few hundred Facebook ads or whatever.
Worded like that, yes.
But purely anecdotally, having had the chance to visit 35 countries, and having talked to a lot of people about world issues, I've seen nothing but good will and friendliness towards the American people for the most part. In fact, I very regularly get words of encouragement from regular folks in other countries who feel pity for us and wish we'd be "back to normal" (not debating the merits of that statement here).
It's hard to overstate how deeply influential and strong is American culture in other countries, and the sense of friendship that that has forged over decades, even if it's not always reciprocated.
An intelligence agency is something that any developed country will come up with, and even some still rather undeveloped ones. However, in many small countries the national intelligence agency is pretty much limited to keeping tabs on who is going into or out of the country, maybe doing some light industrial espionage, or (in the worst case) cracking down on the democratic aspirations of their own citizens. They aren’t projecting covert power abroad, because there simply isn't the budget, political support, or manpower to destablize foreign countries.
Which is rather interesting as there is a close alignment between the goals of Brazilian and American administrations. By supporting the current Brazilian government, the current US administration is supporting its own president's reelection.
As a side note, it was the previous administration that condoned and supported the coup that ousted the left-leaning government. Fun this always happens before Brazil (or Chile, or Argentina, or anyone else) can become a regional power.
Foreign actors are primarily interested in sowing chaos, and only secondarily interested (at most) in getting a particular candidate elected. The best case scenario for those who want to interfere with the election is for the US government to be widely perceived as delegitimized and ineffectual, which opens up space for them to pursue their own interests, which are often not the interests of the United States or regional neighbors.
That doesn't mean domestic actors won't be doing things that delegimitimize the election on their own terms, but it does mean it will be very hard to tell genuine criticism from foreign-sponsored agitprop. The best thing to do is to listen to those who are ostensibly on your own side with a high dose of skepticism.
It's quite fortunate for them that there is a candidate with an extensive record of creating chaos when elected.
Use downvote button instead.
If he is a 1-term president Trump will enter the history books as presiding over an increasingly peaceful American foreign policy as the 21st century progressed. I don't think that is on him as much as geopolitics; but if the world at large sees him as the chaotic candidate that mistake is on them. Bush's administration was a disaster of world-shattering proportions and the world should be quite happy not to see its like again for 100 years.
Certainly agree about the neocon warmongering. I am incredibly glad that is over for the moment. There is a huge national security establishment that encourages use of force, and I'm glad that finally there's some right wing pushback for once.
I wish Obama had been a lot more pushy to finding ways to end the US involvement in the mideast.
*Russia
It's just Russia.
They don't, actually.
Russia wants to sow chaos in the USA and Europe, because these powers constrain its territorial ambitions. They want strife in China too, but have less ability to sow it there. They want Iran excluded from the international oil trade to improve prices, since they rely heavily on oil to maintain their otherwise decrepit gangster economy. They also border on Iran; normalisation between Iran and the west would open the door to further geographical encirclement.
Saudi Arabia wants Trump to win because he won't interfere their war in Yemen and ignores their support for Wahabbist extremism. They also benefit from Iran's being weakened in the oil markets generally and the middle-east specifically.
Iran just wants not to starve and/or collapse into a viscious civil war turbo-charged by Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Europe doesn't want Iran to collapse, because it would trigger a gigantic refugee crisis. It would also disrupt the global oil and gas markets, making Russia's leverage via gas pipelines more potent. Especially for NATO states in the east.
China wants stability in trade and latitude to pursue its slow-rolling program of dominating Asia. The current administration has been bad for trade, but has neglected to support diplomatic order. China has pushed hard into the South China Sea (throwing an unexpected, massive burden onto stalwart allies, Australia) and into buying votes in the UN's General Assembly. A Biden administration would slow that down. I suspect that China slightly prefers Trump and that the idea that it prefers Biden is a talking point invented for Trump's benefit.
So no. The USA's rivals and allies want different outcomes.
At the high level, I agree that they probably mildly prefer Trump over Biden, for reasons of Biden being much more able to work with our regional allies to constrain them. But their ability to effect that result is small compared to their ability to sow chaos. And chaos also serves their ends: a world where Biden is having to deal with domestic unrest and sharp partisan divisions is a world where he's constrained in his ability to make the plausible commitments needed for international alliances, which are in large part based on trust and faith.
Indeed - but my (short) reply was intended to lampshade the aversion of many public figures and certain news-media outlets to name Russia specifically when the evidence suggests they're the lead perpetrators: either out of fear of being retaliated against or because they want to suggest or imply that the Democratic party is "just as bad as the Republicans" and that they're in cahoots with _some other_ equally nefarious country's disinformation campaign. Which is concerning because discouraging the electorate from voting by spreading messages of false-equivalency is exactly what Russia's IRA does.
Iran is being suffocated by the current administration. They strategy for the past 4 years has been just to tolerate it until the administration changes.
They have almost no interest in chaos in US. Just a government that respects the Iran deal (JCPOA) so they can trade with the world again.
Mission fucking accomplished. This is the first time in my life that I've felt a civil war was a real possibility.
The "call to arms" on Facebook have been pretty damn successful where I live. I personally know people who've picked up their rifles at a moments notice and drove out to Whereeverthefuck and hung around waiting for The Protestors to arrive. It's only a matter of time before one these escalates, they have itchy trigger fingers and cops are telling these people, "if they have a knife in their hands, there's no much I can do."
Things remained tolerable when the economy was good. But now with so many people out of work...
False! Behind the perceivable problems and shortlist of problem countries ("oh Russia was involved? :| >:|") is the reality that all or many countries and private actors are also doing this and have for a long time. It is the system itself with the vulnerabilities. Many allies would be doing the same thing to maintain their relationships or further improve it.
The abstraction is that people are primarily interested in their interests.
Its not about the things you care about, it isn't about your ideology, it isn't about how social media will be distorted to routinely and precisely show you your worst fears coming true by your own countrymen.
It is about outsized influence, and a historical enemy sowing discord to create favorable geopolitical outcomes for themselves is just one manifestation of that. Sure, other countries and individuals are using this as an instruction manual too, and some people are trying to get a high score of real world effects from easily manipulable people. But this is just one of many things happening.
This is the Cold Wars long term effects coming into play - when the US would lie to their citizens and install dictators across the world. The more realpolitik politicians get to make policy the more violent the world gets.
That was true until Trump though. https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/hiding-in-plain-sigh... That foreign actor sowed a seed, cultivated it and it blossomed according to possible years-long plan and that one for once succeeded in incredible ways. Most likely others failed, most likely luck played a role. But here we are. Sponsoring some candidates rather than others is picking up a particular candidate.
https://www.graphika.com/blog
https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io
A 2016 study by Dov H. Levin found that, among 938 global elections examined, the United States and Russia (including its predecessor, the Soviet Union) combined had involved themselves in about one out of nine (117), with the majority of those (68%) being through covert, rather than overt, actions. The same study found that "on average, an electoral intervention in favor of one side contesting the election will increase its vote share by about 3 percent," an effect large enough to have potentially changed the results in seven out of 14 U.S. presidential elections occurring after 1960. According to the study, the U.S. intervened in 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000, while the Soviet Union or Russia intervened in 36. A 2018 study by Levin found that the electoral interventions determined in "many cases" the identity of the winner. The study also found suggestive evidence that the interventions increased the risk of democratic breakdown in the targeted states." ~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_intervention
Trump is doing their job.
According to Trump you should ingest bleach and vote twice. And sanctions on Russia should be lifted so they can keep annexing territory. And North Korea should be left in peace after launching missiles over allied territory (Japan).
I guess it's semi-sus that I've only really heard about Surkov's "evil genius" from Adam Curtis
What does the US do to inspire confidence in the election results?
But you are wrong anyway, confidence in the system comes from being involved in the system. People need to know how it works na partake. Not in every detail but basic understanding. If that's not possible at lest everyone should know someone they trust who has the knowledge. The alternation is conspiracy theories about everything and a growing portion of people who fall for them.
I'm much less concerned about foreign actors directly spreading disinformation than domestic actors amplifying disinformation that happens to align to their beliefs.
The "Russian troll on social media" seems like a total boogeyman to me. I'm not saying it doesn't happen at all, but that it's so negligible that the level of hand-wringing around it becomes its own kind of disinformation.
The Steele Dossier was mainly based on Russian sources, but amplified by a national media blinded by their hunger for anything to attack Trump. But I have a hard time laying the blame for this on "the Russians". I blame the people with a large national audiences that lent credence to the conspiracy.
You mean the dossier that Buzzfeed News published on January 10th, 2017[0], which was over two months after the election? This would’ve been the first time voters had a chance to see it, which I remind you was after they already voted in the election.
How then, did it influence the 2016 election?
[0]https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kenbensinger/these-repo...
I meant to say the single most significant piece of misinformation since the last election.