A few days ago, I wrote about Russian interference in the USA using social media (HERE). It concerned efforts to create divisions in American society using vaccinations as the issue. Last Friday we learned the US Justice Department has charged a Russian woman with (HERE) conspiracy to interfere with the 2018 mid term elections using similar trolling methods. The BBC cover it HERE.
"Prosecutors said she managed the finances of 'Project Lakhta,' a foreign influence operation they said was designed 'to sow discord in the U.S. political system' by pushing arguments and misinformation online about a host of divisive political issues, including immigration, the Confederate flag, gun control and National Football League protests during the national anthem".
And:
"The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions,” said G. Zachary Terwilliger, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia".
Last week it was reported (HERE) that Twitter had published 360Gb of data about messages tweeted by Russian and Iranian troll farms. The ten million messages were posted from 2013 to 2018 and include references to the US presidential election and the 2016 referendum. In total, 4,570 accounts were involved, 3800 of them Russian. It's not clear if they came from the same Internet Research Agency but I assume they did. About 90% of the messages emanated from Russia.
Faith in our politician and politics in general has almost never been lower, a lot of it is the politicians themselves but who knows what contribution the Kremlin made? Is there a link? It would be foolish to conclude there isn't.
If the "strategic goal" was to "sow discord" in the US political system why do we think we're immune.
