At Least Russia Knows Influence Wins ‘Battles’

While the US Government continues to flop around like a fish on a pier trying to figure out what is influence warfare on the grand scale and to coordinate all operational levels and departments, Russia is already dominating the influence war with false information.

The NY Times of August 28, 2016 ran “A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories”, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html?ref=world&_r=0, which is also the photo source.)

The Russians are no newcomer to the influence war having capitalized on misleading and accurate information to befuddle NATO, the EU and others. The Russians recognize that different mediums are complimentary and are well versed in employing complementary media such as Internet trolls to propaganda not to mention their own news bureaus.

There is no shortage of good examples. The Ukraine and the flight of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was one. A story about immigrant violence in Germany is another good example cited by the article.

The article concludes, appropriately enough with a quote from Dimitry Kiselyev, a popular Russian TV anchor, see: (Dimitry Kiselev is Redefining the Art of Russian Propaganda” at https://newrepublic.com/article/118438/dmitry-kiselev-putins-favorite-tv-host-russias-top-propogandist, the second photo source. “Today, it is much more costly to kill one enemy soldier than during World War II, World War I or in the Middle Ages,” he said in an interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQErhwknhp4  -n Russian) on the state-run Rossiya 24 network. While the business of “persuasion” is more expensive now, too, he said, “if you can persuade a person, you don’t need to kill him.”

Perhaps the new administration, having waged multi-media; social media and traditional media campaigns will be more aware of the cost effectiveness of the influence weapon and will orchestrate the change needed for the US to not only counter other national efforts such as the Russian, but to take the influence high ground.