I think that Russia’s aims in foreign policy are fairly transparent, and they’ve stayed consistent with one of the main themes of Soviet policy since 1945. I would sum it up like this:
During WWII the Nazis almost got to Moscow.The traditional Russian “fighting with distance and weather” almost didn’t work. This is unacceptable.
Therefore, we will never let a powerful enemy put an army on our land borders.
Therefore, all countries that border us must be friendly or neutral at best
Any country bordering us that isn’t must be made neutral, friendly, or at least ripped out of NATO.
The situation with Ukraine is doubly threatening to Putin. A large land border with the heart of Russia, and Crimea was home to the Black Sea fleet. Any moves to shift it into the EU/ Nato orbit (by fair means or foul) were seen as a direct threat that had to be countered.
With this motivation, the twitter war aims are obvious. Splitting Turkey from Nato, Setting the EU against itself, and giving the USA a distraction from expanding its influence up to Russia’s front steps all make sense, and using cyberwar and propaganda is a classic case of “my strength against the opponent’s weakness”.
The header is misleading… “Here are the 200k Russian troll tweets…” I am looking for the list and see nothing of the kind… That said, how many tweets are posted on Twitter daily? Weekly? Monthly? I bet billions. What 200k tweets 145 symbols each can do in such an ocean of tweeting?.. Right, NOTHING! Is there a substance in the original article? Right, NONE… what am I doing here among zombiefied hapless brainless public? Bits me.
Every thread like this. “Bits me” why they persist on a site like this. There are at least two perfectly good and sincere Useful Idiots on BB who speak perfect English; the troll farm in St Petersburg could count on them to send the same messages just as reliably without having to spend a single ruble on these incompetent clowns. A little due diligence would go a long way, but nyet. Low standards everywhere these days.
Of course, the reason so much of the East Europe ran to EU and/or NATO at the first available opportunity is that they have a long history of being the vassals of Russia, and want to make sure that won’t happen again.
Never assume clever and insidious malice when normal human behavior provides a simpler and more likely explanation.
I know a guy - just a random guy, works in a local bank - who spent years screwing with Iranian websites and media. He’d put in a couple hours every night. He did it for the lulz, and because he didn’t like Ahmadinejad.
The NSA (officially at least) only has a problem with operations conducted or funded by state actors trying to undermine the U.S. to advance their geopolitical or military aims – operations like the tweets connected with Russian trolley farms described in the original article.
I’m more curious about what Ahmadinejad did to this bank employee to inspire a personal vendetta. Ate the last slice of pizza one time when they were college roommates, perhaps?
I never got a real certain diag on that. My working theory is that he was looking for a bully to mess with, and wanted a certain amount of risk. US media relentlessly and unsubtly propagandizes against Persia, but Ahmadinejad seems like a pretty noxious character even if you discount the propaganda.
The same guy created a website that dynamically tracked the locations of police cars in my home state based on user reports via cellphone. It was mostly used by drunk drivers who wanted to dodge sobriety checkpoint roadblocks. So he’s a nice guy and very talented technically, but maybe makes poor choices sometimes. I keep expecting him to wake up with a horses’ head in his bed courtesy of the county po-po.
But I haven’t talked to him for quite a while. Last time we did talk, he was being treated for PSTD related to the murder/suicide of some mutual friends, and things were pretty rough for both of us.
To be fair, the Russian Federation knew that social media was the best way to shape the discourse. More and more of what we do is online. They just saw what was already happening organically and then pushed it a bit further. Look at how between 2008 and 2012 that Ron Paul and libertarians got hyped up online. It wasn’t just the Russian Trolls™. It was the fact that the more and more people were able to leverage social media to get their point of view across however wrong it may be. And the fact that the supposed wizened technosages of Silicon Valley refused to vet who bought their services on Facebook and other ad platforms (really that’s all social media is, it’s just advertising) should give everyone pause. Yet we’re still just focused on the Russians exploiting what everyone else has been doing for all these years. We don’t ask the hard questions regarding whether or not these platforms should even exist. And I think it’s time to have that conversation rather than just finding a new scapegoat for a short term fix to a systemic problem.
