Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News by Clint Watts

Author:Clint Watts [Watts, Clint]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics, Society, Media
ISBN: 9780062796011
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

7

Postmortem

The postmortem on Russia’s influence and meddling in the presidential election of 2016 began well over a year ago and may never end. Less than a month after the election, social media influence became a fixation with journalists as they looked for an explanation as to how Donald Trump had beaten all the odds. He was completely unconventional, uninformed, unlikable in so many ways, and yet he had become the leader of the free world. Fake news entered the American lexicon, and my team’s pre-election detailing of Russian active measures on the internet was now the subject of hot debate. Had fake news swayed the U.S. presidential election? A Washington Post article cited our study, and soon left-leaning trolls, led by the self-righteous Glenn Greenwald, of the Intercept, and the always bitter Matt Taibbi, of Rolling Stone, grouped me with McCarthyites seeking to suppress free speech. Right-wing fanatics, aided by Russia’s trolls, presented me as a Clinton apologist, a sore loser always out to get President-elect Trump. I’m certain I’m neither and also can’t be both at the same time.

Beyond the public back-and-forth, social media companies began digging into the data, and what they found spelled dangerous trends for democracy. Americans were increasingly getting their news and information from social media rather than mainstream media. Users weren’t consuming factual content. Fake news—false or misleading stories from outlets of uncertain credibility—was being read far more than that from traditional newsrooms. BuzzFeed News analysis of the final three months of the campaign showed that Facebook users accessed false news stories at rates higher than mainstream news. EndTheFed.com and Political Insider produced four of the five most read false news stories in the three months leading up to the election. One story famously and falsely claimed that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump and another story claimed that Hillary Clinton’s emails hosted on WikiLeaks certified her as an ISIS supporter. Three of the five most read articles, though false, promoted and referenced Russia’s hacking of Americans and delivery of stolen contents to WikiLeaks.1 Throughout December, fears of Russian election manipulation grew, and each day brought more inquiries into how Russia had trolled for Trump.

“There’s no evidence of collusion” had become a constant scream from Trump supporters by the summer of 2017. Trump opponents, self-labeled on Twitter as the #Resistance, saw conspiracy and Russian collusion at every turn, hyperventilating with each new revelation connecting Team Trump with Russia. Months of Russia investigation by Congress, the firing of FBI director Comey, and the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, to examine Russia’s interference in the election have extended Vladimir Putin’s victory over the United States. The American electorate remains divided, government operations are severely disrupted, and faith in elected leaders continues to fall. Americans still don’t grasp the information war Russia perpetrated against the West, why it works, and why it continues.

The Russians didn’t have to hack election machines; they hacked American minds. The Kremlin didn’t change votes; it won them,

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