Russian Influence Campaigns Against the West

Russian Influence Campaigns Against the West
Author: Kevin N. Mccauley
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 563
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre:
ISBN: 9781535597098

Russia, under both the Soviets and Vladimir Putin, is in a struggle with Western civilization, and has conducted influence campaigns to weaken and undermine the West from within. This study of influence campaigns waged against the West by the Soviet Union and now by Russia under President Vladimir Putin is intended to present a detailed overview and analysis of the various influence campaigns. Methods and means employed by the Soviet Union included active measures, disinformation, propaganda, controlled international front groups, agents of influence, forgeries, and reflexive control. Campaign themes are examined, and two key campaigns against NATO deployment of the neutron bomb and intermediate-range nuclear force are analyzed as case studies of a successful and failed campaign. The influence campaigns waged by President Putin against the West combine time tested methods with new information age techniques not available during the Soviet era including internet trolls, social media, information warfare, and cyber operations. Both similarities and differences exist in the execution and objectives of influence campaigns conducted by the Soviet Union and Putin's Russia. While the ideologies differ, both Soviet Communist ideology as well as the new Russian nationalist ideology under President Putin contend that Russia is engaged in a long-term struggle with the West that continues during peace and conflict, and will likely end violently. President Putin's Russia is now employing asymmetrical warfare against former Soviet republics to intimidate as well as expand Russian influence and borders in order to create a Russian World. This so-called new generation or hybrid warfare, essentially a Russian version of a "color revolution," incorporates aspects of influence campaigns combined with the covert deployment of special forces to mobilize local ethnic Russian populations combined with cyber operations to disrupt an opponent, and prepare the battle and information space for possible military operations. Influence campaigns in the Soviet era and under President Putin represent an indirect, low risk approach to undermine and weaken an opponent from within in order to promote political objectives, and alter the correlation of power in Moscow's favor in order to win the clash of civilizations with the West. The West needs to develop a coordinated response to the information assault by the Kremlin. First and foremost, the West needs to recognize that they are engaged in a struggle with President Putin's Russia. An effort similar to that developed to identify, analyze and publicize Soviet active measures and disinformation campaigns needs to be established. Countering the Kremlin's influence campaigns is important, however, the West critically needs to conduct proactive, offensive influence campaigns against Russian efforts. A three tier Western influence campaign is required. Information campaigns need to counter Russian influence efforts in the West and actively promote Western policies to public audiences. Next, a strategic communications campaign is required for audiences in the former Soviet republics, in particular Russian speaking populations. These countries are critical as they are already under assault by the Kremlin's influence campaigns, and are potentially the next target of Moscow's asymmetrical new generation warfare. The final audience, the Russian public, represents the hardest target, but also the most critical in countering the new Russian World ideology. Detailed target audience analysis is required for this effort to identify key groups and developed highly specialized and effective messaging. While difficult, analysis to anticipate future Russian influence campaigns and actions is required to more effectively counter the Kremlin's strategy. NATO and friendly states must centralize and pool scarce resources to counter the Kremlin's actions and communicate a Western message to key target audiences.

Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent Us Elections

Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent Us Elections
Author: United States. Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2017-01-06
Genre: Cyberterrorism
ISBN: 9781542630030

This report includes an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated by those three agencies. It covers the motivation and scope of Moscow's intentions regarding US elections and Moscow's use of cyber tools and media campaigns to influence US public opinion. The assessment focuses on activities aimed at the 2016 US presidential election and draws on our understanding of previous Russian influence operations. When we use the term "we" it refers to an assessment by all three agencies. * This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment. This document's conclusions are identical to the highly classified assessment, but this document does not include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence on key elements of the influence campaign. Given the redactions, we made minor edits purely for readability and flow. We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion. * New information continues to emerge, providing increased insight into Russian activities. * PHOTOS REMOVED

How to Lose the Information War

How to Lose the Information War
Author: Nina Jankowicz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2020-06-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1838607692

Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia, who flood social media with disinformation, and circulate false and misleading information to fuel fake narratives and make the case for illegal warfare. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? Central and Eastern European states, including Ukraine and Poland, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading. How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.

Active Measures

Active Measures
Author: Thomas Rid
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-04-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782834605

We live in an age of subterfuge. Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking, leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakening the very foundation of liberal democracy: trust in facts. Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm. Even before the 2016 election, he warned that Russian military intelligence was 'carefully planning and timing a high-stakes political campaign' to disrupt the democratic process. But as crafty as such so-called active measures have become, they are not new. In this astonishing journey through a century of secret psychological war, Rid reveals for the first time some of history's most significant operations - many of them nearly beyond belief. A White Russian ploy backfires and brings down a New York police commissioner; a KGB-engineered, anti-Semitic hate campaign creeps back across the Berlin Wall; the CIA backs a fake publishing empire, run by a former Wehrmacht U-boat commander that produces Germany's best jazz magazine.

Russian Social Media Influence

Russian Social Media Influence
Author: Todd C. Helmus
Publisher: Rand Corporation
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2018-04-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0833099582

Russia employs a sophisticated social media campaign against former Soviet states that includes news tweets, nonattributed comments on web pages, troll and bot social media accounts, and fake hashtag and Twitter campaigns. Nowhere is this threat more tangible than in Ukraine. Researchers analyzed social media data and conducted interviews with regional and security experts to understand the critical ingredients to countering this campaign.

Understanding Russian Strategic Behavior

Understanding Russian Strategic Behavior
Author: Graeme P. Herd
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2022-01-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0429537549

This book examines the extent to which Russia’s strategic behavior is the product of its imperial strategic culture and Putin’s own operational code. The work argues that, by conflating personalistic regime survival with national security, Putin ensures that contemporary Russian national interest, as expressed through strategic behavior, is the synthesis of a peculiar troika: a long-standing imperial strategic culture, rooted in a partially imagined past; the operational code of a counter-intelligence president and decision-making elite; and the realities of Russia as a hybrid state. The book first examines the role of structure and agency in shaping contemporary Russian strategic behavior. It then provides a conceptual understanding of strategic culture, and applies this to Tsarist and Soviet historical developments. The book’s analysis of the operational code, however, demonstrates that Putinism is more than the sum of the past. At the end, the book assesses Putin’s statecraft and stress-tests our assumptions about the exercise of contemporary power in Russia and the structure of Putin’s agency. This book will be of interest to students of Russian politics and foreign policy, strategic studies and international relations.

Countering Russian Social Media Influence

Countering Russian Social Media Influence
Author: Elizabeth Bodine-Baron
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9781977401823

The Russian government's campaigns of disinformation--political, social, religious, or otherwise--have found a comfortable home on social media. This report presents strategies to counter Russian social media influence.

The Kremlin Playbook

The Kremlin Playbook
Author: Heather A. Conley
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 86
Release: 2016-10-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442279591

Russia has cultivated an opaque web of economic and political patronage across the Central and Eastern European region that the Kremlin uses to influence and direct decisionmaking. This report from the CSIS Europe Program, in partnership with the Bulgarian Center for the Study of Democracy, is the result of a 16-month study on the nature of Russian influence in five case countries: Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Serbia.

Rigged

Rigged
Author: David Shimer
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0525659013

The definitive history of the covert struggle between Russia and America to influence elections, why the threat to American democracy is greater than ever, and what we can do about it. This is "the first book to put the story of Russian interference into a broader context.... Extraordinary and gripping" (The New York Times Book Review). Russia's interference in the 2016 elections marked only the latest chapter of a hidden and revelatory history. In Rigged, David Shimer tells the sweeping story of covert electoral interference past and present. He exposes decades of secret operations—by the KGB, the CIA, and Vladimir Putin's Russia—to shape electoral outcomes, melding deep historical research with groundbreaking interviews with more than 130 key players, from leading officials in both the Trump and Obama administrations to CIA and NSA directors to a former KGB general. Throughout history and in 2016, both Russian and American operations achieved their greatest success by influencing the way voters think, rather than tampering with actual vote tallies. Understanding 2016 as one battle in a much longer war is essential to comprehending the critical threat currently posed to America's electoral sovereignty and how to defend against it. Illuminating how the lessons of the past can be used to protect our democracy in the future, Rigged is an essential book for readers of every political persuasion.

Putin's Propaganda Machine

Putin's Propaganda Machine
Author: Marcel H. Van Herpen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2015-10-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442253622

Putin's Propaganda Machine examines Russia’s “information war,” one of the most striking features of its intervention in Ukraine. Marcel H. Van Herpen argues that the Kremlin’s propaganda offensive is a carefully prepared strategy, implemented and tested over the last decade. Initially intended as a tool to enhance Russia’s soft power, it quickly developed into one of the main instruments of Russia’s new imperialism, reminiscent of the height of the Cold War. The author describes a multifaceted strategy that makes use of diverse instruments, including mimicking Western public diplomacy initiatives, hiring Western public-relations firms, setting up front organizations, buying Western media outlets, financing political parties, organizing a worldwide propaganda offensive through the Kremlin’s cable network RT, and publishing paid supplements in leading Western newspapers. In this information war, key roles are assigned to the Russian diaspora and the Russian Orthodox Church, the latter focused on spreading so-called traditional values and attacking universal human rights and Western democracy in international fora. Van Herpen demonstrates that the Kremlin’s propaganda machine not only plays a central role in its “hybrid war” in Ukraine, but also has broader international objectives, targeting in particular Europe’s two leading countries—France and Germany—with the goal of forming a geopolitical triangle, consisting of a Moscow-Berlin-Paris axis, intended to roll back the influence of NATO and the United States in Europe. Drawing on years of research, Van Herpen shows how the Kremlin has built an array of soft power instruments and transformed them into effective weapons in a new information war with the West.