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Rowshan Nemazee's avatar

Every time the topic of the fake president, Guiliani, and the Ukraine scandal raises it's ugly head, I cringe regarding what they did to two innocent scapegoats in particular: Ambassador Yovanovitch and Lt. Col. Vindman.

As our ambassador to Ukraine, Yovanovitch became the victim of defamation and dirty politics by Guiliani and the sitting, imposter POTUS. Lt. Col. Vindman, then Director of European Affairs in the White was equally diminished. Both lost their positions and were treated as personae non grata!

IMHO, they both deserve a formal apology from the US government, medals of honor, and huge monetary compensations.

Thank you for going beyond the 100 days, dear Prof. HCR. Just please ensure that you don't over-extend yourself -- first and foremost, we want you to remain vibrant and healthy!

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Bronwyn Fryer's avatar

Russia is waging all-out cyber war against the US and has been doing so for quite a while. Clemson University researchers Patrick Warren and Darren Linvill have been able to pinpoint exactly how the Russian bots manipulate public opinion.

The Russian social media posts are generated en masse by an industrial-style system created by Putin’s Internet Research Agency. By using a simple user template that could be repeated and tweaked according to specialized types of information, these so-called “troll factories” manufacture lies in much the same way a bottle factory churns out plastic soda bottles. And it works. The bot posts look just human enough to be believed, and the more extreme and angry they are, the more enraged other users become.

One of their most insidious skills is to pile support behind a few human outliers. This way the extreme sentiment comes from a real American, while the bots are agreeable but just polarizing enough to tip the scales. As Linvill has observed: “People are persuaded by things they’re already inclined to believe, not by someone yelling at you. The trolls were trying to be your friends, not your enemies.”

Worst of all, the bots’ stealthy emotional impact tends to linger long after they are discovered and kicked off of social media. This, Warren argues, is where the true danger lies, because their influence is “like an infection. It spreads into the social media ecosystem. And even when you take away that vector, you’ve done lasting damage to the body.” This body is not just the Twitter-verse, but American society and democracy, itself. As the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence notes, the Russian trolls are intended to “stoke anger, provoke outrage and protest, push Americans further away from one another, and foment distrust in government institutions.” Our best option for protecting ourselves against this infectious disease of collective illusion is to understand what it looks like, and how it spreads.

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