So this article was worth a paid subscription. I haven't trusted anything coming out of Moscow for years, and don't understand the talking heads who argue against the war in Ukraine. I believe these people are insular and terribly short-sighted. Looking into the future from a geopolitical point of view, letting Putin forge ahead unchecked to gobble up the former Soviet Union could never end well. He'd be so stoked with his own power he'd just keep going. Would there have potentially been a better moment to draw the line in the sand?
I think we had a real opportunity to impose actual consequences in 2014. But we didn't want to stick up for Ukraine then, and our cohesion on even the meager sanctions we implemented waned in the years before 2022. We needed to be more blunt about Russia's aims then.
Great piece by Justin, a close-up look at some Russian interference operations and their absurdity. But an important note in the conclusion about naïveté in our response to such stories.
I enjoyed the article, particularly the research and the discussion about how Moscow operates to spread their propaganda and misinformation. I‘ve always admired Justin Ling’s reporting and the way he gets at the truth. He doesn’t seem to be biased one way or the other and I find his journalistic integrity and commentary very refreshing.
Many thanks for this. There's been a fair bit of journalism recently about how overboard various agencies went with attempts to suppress disinformation of various stripes. Complain as you will about Matt Taibbi, I haven't seen anybody debunking his raw facts.
It was about time to be reminded that the security agencies got that way from their frustration at the sheer torrent of - I'll call it "propaganda" as a catch-all - and the difficulty of combating it. The volume of it is wild. I wouldn't worry about "ChatGPT" and friends increasing the flow, because the flow now is more than anybody has time to read; it's not limited by how much crap the troll farms can write.
Trying to make a case for the degree to which Russian influence and interference actually exists — and, separately, how much of an impact it actually has on our politics — is an infuriatingly difficult job. You're stuck explaining just how far-reaching and clandestine it can be, while also pointing out that it probably isn't *that* effective. It's much easier to claim it's massive in scale and enormous in impact, and then to have the other side point and make fun of those people.
Much like Chinese meddling, it is complicated and bad, and needs opposing. But we also can't let it take away from our own agency in being angry, paranoid, and terrible.
So this article was worth a paid subscription. I haven't trusted anything coming out of Moscow for years, and don't understand the talking heads who argue against the war in Ukraine. I believe these people are insular and terribly short-sighted. Looking into the future from a geopolitical point of view, letting Putin forge ahead unchecked to gobble up the former Soviet Union could never end well. He'd be so stoked with his own power he'd just keep going. Would there have potentially been a better moment to draw the line in the sand?
I think we had a real opportunity to impose actual consequences in 2014. But we didn't want to stick up for Ukraine then, and our cohesion on even the meager sanctions we implemented waned in the years before 2022. We needed to be more blunt about Russia's aims then.
Great piece by Justin, a close-up look at some Russian interference operations and their absurdity. But an important note in the conclusion about naïveté in our response to such stories.
Very interesting read and thanks for the links to past articles to help fill out any missing bits for the reader
I enjoyed the article, particularly the research and the discussion about how Moscow operates to spread their propaganda and misinformation. I‘ve always admired Justin Ling’s reporting and the way he gets at the truth. He doesn’t seem to be biased one way or the other and I find his journalistic integrity and commentary very refreshing.
Many thanks for this. There's been a fair bit of journalism recently about how overboard various agencies went with attempts to suppress disinformation of various stripes. Complain as you will about Matt Taibbi, I haven't seen anybody debunking his raw facts.
It was about time to be reminded that the security agencies got that way from their frustration at the sheer torrent of - I'll call it "propaganda" as a catch-all - and the difficulty of combating it. The volume of it is wild. I wouldn't worry about "ChatGPT" and friends increasing the flow, because the flow now is more than anybody has time to read; it's not limited by how much crap the troll farms can write.
Trying to make a case for the degree to which Russian influence and interference actually exists — and, separately, how much of an impact it actually has on our politics — is an infuriatingly difficult job. You're stuck explaining just how far-reaching and clandestine it can be, while also pointing out that it probably isn't *that* effective. It's much easier to claim it's massive in scale and enormous in impact, and then to have the other side point and make fun of those people.
Much like Chinese meddling, it is complicated and bad, and needs opposing. But we also can't let it take away from our own agency in being angry, paranoid, and terrible.
A must read for Andrew Coyne I'd say
Timely with budget coming out today, Twitter was alive with the Nazi stories about Freeland yesterday