In early February, national security advisors in the US government uncovered that Vladimir Putin’s regime had begun ramping up its efforts to spread misinformation. As expected, just like in 2016, the Russians were covertly using their vast network of bot and troll farms to spread divisive narratives, conspiracy theories, and incendiary rhetoric to poison our discourse in favor of Donald Trump.
However, to the surprise of many national security experts, Russia’s attempts this time were significantly more brazen than before.
For instance, in September, the Justice Department prosecuted two employees of Russia Today for laundering ten million dollars through doppelganger companies to Tenet Media, an alt-right social media channel featuring corrupt propagandists like Tim Pool, Lauren Southern Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin, who traitorously hid behind the veil of a trivialized degraded version of American nationalism while spreading post-truth authoritarian and Russian nationalist propaganda narratives into mainstream right-wing discourse to fill their pockets.
In October, Russia bolstered its disinformation campaign with AI content and fake whistle-blowers decrying fraud, promoting conspiracy theories about the CIA and FBI and influencing the election to harm Trump when it was really the Russians working to undermine democracy.
Leading up to election day, Russia further escalated by spreading false videos of Haitians illegally casting ballots for Harris, conspiracy theories of the election being rigged, and false claims of ballot harvesting.
With that, I question, will the almighty “peace through strength,” so-called “strongman” candidate Donald Trump stand up for the United States and “Western civilization” deterring future malign intervention by the alien interests of Putin’s Russia by taking decisive action in support of our European allies against tyranny while orienting our information security apparatus against Russia — or will he idly stand by behind a cadre of lies while surrendering in shameful submission to Putin’s demands because it could benefit him even though it harms America?
