A well-known intelligence analyst asks a ridiculously simple question: has Russia diverted us with one threat, when the real threat will come from another direction?
“Understanding — or at least learning to identify — the Kremlin’s behavior requires developing a kind of pattern recognition that is cultivated by studying (or living through) past cases and examples. In this last decade or so, I’ve been on the frontlines in multiple countries that were being intensely targeted by the Kremlin, and I’ve had too many opportunities to learn from what we missed until it was too late. It’s a horrible way to learn. The cost is high. It impacts the lives and freedom and security of entire nations. (America is learning a bit about this now, in real time, though we still enjoy long bouts of make-believe about how none of it has really effected us, or really the problem has been us all along, or something.)
It isn’t so much that there is a specific Kremlin “playbook” for certain events, or a checklist of steps they go down when trying to disrupt or subvert target countries. It’s more that there are categories of things that they try, and different kinds of options that they prepare. In a serious campaign, there’s never just one line of effort, reliant on only one side or one main set of actors who are aware of all the parts, or even fully aware of their own. There will be parallel initiatives in different spaces, often quite modest seeming, sometimes integrated with each other or connected by common personalities or financing or infrastructure, but just as often insulated from each other but working toward the same objectives, usually from many sides of a major issue.”
“…Russian information operations were a factor in a radically reshaped American information environment that became the context of how voters made decisions, how they decided to vote or not, and ultimately, how the outcomes Russia was working toward were achieved. This truth is inescapable.”
