Battlegrounds Page 5
Nor are demographic trends in Russia’s favor. In the past three decades, due to declining fertility rates, Russia’s population dropped from 148 million in 1991 to 144 million in 2018. In addition to a fall in the birth rate, despite government incentives like payments to mothers and childcare services, declining migration also contributed to the population drop. Russia’s population is expected to fall to 132.7 million by 2050. Health is also poor due to risky behaviors such as excessive drinking and smoking. In 2019, life expectancy in Russia was seventy-two years, with a one-in-four chance of a Russian man dying before the age of fifty-five. This is equivalent to life expectancy in developing nations such as Nepal and Bhutan.25
But, consistent with what they did as KGB case officers, Putin and Patrushev seemed less interested in building Russia up than in tearing other nations apart. In an old Russian joke, a farmer has only one cow and hates his neighbor because he has two. A sorcerer offers to grant the envious farmer a single wish, anything he wants. “Kill one of my neighbor’s cows!” he demands.26 We might think of President Putin as the farmer with only one cow. To kill his neighbors’ cows, Putin employs sophisticated strategies designed to achieve objectives below the threshold that might elicit a concerted response from either the targeted state or others, such as the NATO alliance.
Rather than build Russia up to a position of predominance, Putin wants to drag others down, weaken rival states, and unravel alliance networks that give those states strategic advantages. In a 2013 article, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff (the Russian equivalent of the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), argued that “the very ‘rules of war’ have changed.” He added that “non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals have grown and, in many cases, exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness [sic].”27 These comments became known as the “Gerasimov Doctrine.” Whether under the moniker of Russia new-generation warfare, the Gerasimov Doctrine, or hybrid warfare, Putin’s playbook combines disinformation and deniability with the use of disruptive technologies to target states’ strengths and exploit their weaknesses. It also entails cultivating economic dependencies, especially on Russian-supplied energy, while brandishing and using improved, unconventional, conventional, and nuclear military capabilities. With this playbook, Putin aims to kill his neighbor’s cow and restore Russia’s relative power.
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TO UNDERSTAND the sophistication of the Kremlin’s strategy, it is worth examining more closely one of the issues I raised with Patrushev: Russian interference in other nation’s domestic politics. Efforts in 2016 to subvert democracy in Ukraine, Montenegro, and the United States demonstrated the range of actions available in Putin’s playbook.
Russian propaganda has been described as a “firehose of falsehood” that spews rapid, continuous, and repetitive disinformation.28 Typically, successful disinformation and propaganda campaigns prioritize consistency in messaging. Russia under Putin, however, abandoned consistency because the aim was not to make audiences believe something new but to question just about everything they heard; the purpose was to disrupt, divide, and weaken societies that Putin saw as competitors. The Kremlin uses many tools to fulfill that purpose, such as direct financial support of fringe political parties at the opposite ends of the political spectrum. Russian disinformation is designed to shake citizens’ belief in their common identity and in their democratic principles, institutions, and processes by manipulating social media, planting false stories, and creating false personas. Russia also uses media arms such as the television network RT (formerly Russia Today) and the news agency Sputnik to broadcast a steady stream of disinformation. RT has a $300 million annual budget for broadcasting propaganda that looks like legitimate news in multiple languages. The network has more subscribers on YouTube than Fox News, CBS News, or NBC News.29 RT and other Kremlin-sponsored media emphasize conspiracy theories designed to raise doubts over the reliability of real reporting as well as the virtue and effectiveness of democratic governance. Furthermore, as part of a number of influence mechanisms known as “active measures,” even Russian leaders often make patently false statements to reinforce these disinformation efforts. The repetitive nature of these narratives is intended to portray a certain point of view as a popular perception. Additionally, the targets of this information are no longer limited to audiences at home and in the West, but are expanding into regions such as Africa, in an effort to establish Russia as a global superpower by fostering wide influence.30
Corrupting elections is only one part of the broader effort to kill the cow of confidence in democratic processes and institutions. After multiple attempts at engineering election outcomes across a decade, the Kremlin and its intelligence arms, the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (GRU) and the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), improved and modified their objectives and approach. In 2004, Russian support for Viktor Yanukovych’s presidential candidacy in Ukraine not only consisted of over three hundred million dollars in funding but also probably included the poisoning of his main opponent, Viktor Yushchenko. In a runoff election between the two candidates, efforts to assist Yanukovych included ballot stuffing and the busing of voters from one polling station to another to cast multiple ballots. The GRU and SVR succeeded in throwing the election to Yanukovych, but their brazen actions jump-started what became known as the Orange Revolution. Ukrainians protested against the rigged elections. The Ukrainian Supreme Court ruled the runoff results invalid, and Yushchenko, still in pain and permanently disfigured from the poisoning, was elected in a new runoff election held under the watchful eyes of more than thirteen thousand foreign observers.31
Five years later, in 2009, the Kremlin succeeded in engineering another Pyrrhic victory in Moldova for an anti-European Union party.32 That party could not form a government, however, and a European-friendly party won in fresh elections later that year. Still, the GRU kept refining its methods. Returning to Ukraine in 2010, Russia finally succeeded in helping Viktor Yanukovych secure a victory in the Ukrainian presidential election. But in 2014, it failed to get him reelected, despite a massive effort that combined election influence operations with cyber warfare (including coordinated cyber attacks to fake vote totals and infect election servers).33 Amid protests and with the country on the brink of a civil war, Yanukovych was ousted, a move the Kremlin denounced as a “coup.” Following that, the pro-European Union candidate Petro Poroshenko won in a special election. After 2015, Russia expanded attacks on democratic elections in NATO and European Union countries and, in 2016, the U.S. presidential election. Although the Kremlin often fell short of the outcomes it wanted, efforts to subvert democratic processes in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Montenegro, Italy, Bulgaria, Austria, Spain, Malta, France, and the Czech Republic contributed to its principal goals of weakening citizens’ confidence and polarizing their societies.34
The Kremlin has learned to tailor disinformation campaigns to the target country. In smaller countries less able to resist Russian efforts, such as Montenegro, a country of 640,000 people on the Adriatic Sea, the Kremlin made audacious attempts to determine an election outcome. In large, more distant countries like the United States, Russia prioritized undermining confidence in democratic institutions and processes. Disinformation and sabotage in Montenegro and in the United States, both in 2016, reveal how the Kremlin customizes its campaigns based on opportunities, risks, and the ability of the target country to resist and retaliate.
“The smaller we are, the more vulnerable we are,” Montenegrin president Milo Dukanovic observed. In 2016, the Kremlin applied a broad range of new-generation warfare capabilities to prevent Montenegro from joining NATO and the European Union. Montenegro would be the last piece completing the jigsaw puzzle representing NATO’s control of the Adriatic coast. In the run-up to the October parliamentary election, Russian state entities directed funds to the parties challenging Mr. Dukanovic’s candidacy for president. Russia sp
read disinformation on social media and conducted cyber attacks against government and news websites. Russian agents felt especially emboldened in Montenegro, a small country with a large Slavic ethnic minority that tends to feel a kinship with ethnic Russians. If the election results did not go the Kremlin’s way, Russian agents were ready to initiate a violent coup d’état, assassinate Dukanovic, and install a pro-Russia government. On Election Day, Dukanovic was the projected winner.35
The coup failed. The night before, Montenegrin authorities arrested twenty Serbian and Montenegrin citizens. After the arrests, Serbia’s prime minister, Aleksandar Vucic, revealed that Serbian law enforcement had uncovered the plot and passed the information on to the Montenegrin authorities.36 Vucic soon received a visit from an angry Nikolai Patrushev. Serbia was supposed to support Russia’s efforts in the Balkans. In 2017, the Montenegrin High Court tried fourteen suspects, including two members of the GRU in absentia. Russia’s heavy-handed approach failed to determine the outcome of the elections or inhibit Montenegro’s application to NATO. Even though opposition parties sympathetic to Russia burned NATO flags, Montenegro’s parliament voted 46–0 to become the twenty-ninth member of the alliance, joining officially in June 2017. Montenegro applied for membership in the European Union not long afterward. On May 9, 2019, the court found all fourteen co-conspirators, including the two GRU agents, guilty of plotting the coup.37
Russian interference continued to push west, as reports surfaced about Russian agents using social media to influence the June 2016 referendum on the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Most analysts concluded that Russia also tried to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election in the United States, but recognizing limitations on its ability to do so, it focused primarily on polarizing America’s polity and undermining confidence in democratic principles, institutions, and processes. It succeeded.
Conditions in America were ripe for polarization. Many Americans were frustrated with politicians who did not seem to understand them and the problems they faced. Transformations in the global economy had left many without jobs. Though there were nearly nine million more jobs in the United States in 2016 than in 2007, the gains were not evenly distributed. Many white Americans, 700,000 of whom lost jobs over those nine years, were upset about their economic outlook. Furthermore, some remained impoverished in the wake of the housing and financial crises of 2008–2009. Others were burdened with student debt. Many voters were weary of protracted and indecisive wars overseas or disappointed that government remedies for problems, such as access to health care, had not delivered as advertised. People in neighborhoods depopulated after the departure of manufacturing jobs were vulnerable to crime and drug addiction, particularly a growing opioid crisis. Some neighborhoods became “food deserts” as businesses closed and people lost access to affordable and nutritious food.*38 Those left behind were angry over increasing income disparity and other inequities in services such as education. There was a crisis of confidence in America, and Russia took full advantage.
Donald Trump in the Republican Party and Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party appealed to a frustrated electorate looking for iconoclastic candidates. Sanders, a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, had nontraditional views. The most progressive candidate in the race, he advocated for universal health care, tax hikes for the rich, free college education, and climate change legislation. His views appealed to young voters disillusioned by their work prospects and mounting student debt. In the 2016 presidential primaries, Sanders captured 29 percent more votes among those under the age of thirty than either Trump or Hillary Clinton.39
Trump was a threat to the Republican Party establishment just as Sanders was to the Democratic Party establishment. While many were appalled by his rhetoric and personal behavior, other voters found in Trump what they thought the country needed: an antiestablishment candidate with wholly unconventional views who spoke his mind. They liked that he was “capable of saying anything to anyone at any time and anywhere.”40 Colleen Kelley, an associate professor of rhetoric, observed that a democratic socialist from Vermont and a billionaire from New York City both took advantage of disenfranchised voters who were tired of establishment politicians whom they regarded as corrupt, out of touch, and incompetent.
Democratic and Republican political party establishments opposed the two unconventional candidates. As the general election began, many Republicans, distraught over Trump’s nomination as their presidential candidate, signed “Never Trump” letters. At the Republican convention, “Never Trump” delegates made a failed attempt to revise the convention’s rules package to block Trump’s nomination. Similarly, party leadership of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) undermined Sanders to smooth the path for former First Lady, senator, and secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton to receive the nomination. Members of the DNC highlighted less favorable aspects of Sanders, such as his religious beliefs, affinity for socialist policies, and soft spot for Communist dictators. Divisions were apparent not only between the Republican and Democratic Parties, but also within them, and the Kremlin was quick to exploit those divisions.
Two years earlier, the Kremlin had intensified its use of the internet to widen political and social discord in the United States. It had learned from previous efforts, and by 2016, conditions were ideal for its refined cyber-enabled influence campaigns. The Internet Research Agency (IRA), a front organization for the GRU, turned the social network ecosystem invented in the United States against the American people, their democratic system, and their common identity. The IRA used Facebook (including its Instagram), Twitter, Google (including its YouTube, G+, Gmail, and Google Voice), Reddit, Tumblr, Medium, Vine, and Meetup to post content or support false personas. Russian agents even used music apps and games like Pokémon Go to reinforce themes and messages. The IRA maximized the potential of Facebook’s features, including Ads, Pages, Events, Messenger, and even Stickers. Cumulatively, it reached 126 million people on Facebook, posted 10.4 million tweets on Twitter, uploaded more than 1,000 videos to YouTube, and connected with more than 20 million users on Instagram.41
The IRA was persistent and sophisticated. It used vulnerabilities in the U.S. information ecosystem to exploit fissures in society. Facebook and Instagram were perfect platforms for persistent messaging to amplify divisive issues. Agents cultivated strong ties within social media groups with content designed to gain approval. They also inserted content intended to drive groups to extreme positions, sometimes pitting members against one another or against members of other groups. Some IRA content cultivated support for U.S. policy favorable to Russia, such as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria or Afghanistan. Russian agents recruited witting and unwitting American accomplices. The IRA and its abettors used Twitter to bend reactions to current events in divisive ways, using “click farms” to manufacture popularity and draw attention to extreme messages. On critical topics, the IRA created “media mirages,” interlinked ecosystems that surround audiences with a cacophony of manipulated content. The GRU used digital marketing best practices, evolving the page logos and typography over time.42
Russian manipulation was effective because of social media companies’ business models, their blind avarice, and their narrow focus on functionality without due consideration for how their platform could be used for nefarious purposes. Because tech companies prioritize holding users’ attention to expose them to more ads, the companies’ algorithms do not prioritize truth or accuracy, but instead help disseminate fake news and disinformation. The algorithms that determine the presentation of content in social media encourage further polarization and extreme views. For example, YouTube algorithms, in suggesting which videos to watch next, guide users toward more extreme and polarizing content. Those who interact on network platforms self-segregate into homogenous groups that share beliefs on contentious issues such as gun control, climate change, and immigration. Liberals interact with liberals and conservatives interact with conservatives
. The most divisive and emotional topics amplify different rather than common views. The internet and social media thus provided the GRU with a low-cost, easy way to divide and weaken America from within.43
Russian efforts to discredit Clinton in favor of her Democratic rival Sanders and in favor of the candidacy of Donald Trump were connected to the overall objective of weakening American society through racial, religious, and political polarization. While Russian disinformation showed a clear preference for Trump and a concerted effort to discredit Hillary Clinton, the majority of the content focused on socially divisive issues such as immigration, gun control, and race. The IRA’s main effort was to foment racial division, which it accomplished by amplifying white militia content while creating content for black audiences that highlighted the mistreatment of black Americans by police. The IRA began producing videos toward that end in September 2015. Of 1,107 videos across 17 channels, most content, an astounding 1,063 videos across 10 channels, was related to Black Lives Matter and police brutality.44
The IRA even tried to use race and anti-immigration sentiment to support fringe groups advocating for Texas and California to secede from the United States, using the same playbook Russian agents had used in support of the Brexit movement (which culminated in the 2020 departure of Britain from the European Union). It is likely that the GRU pulled that playbook out of KGB archives. In 1928, the Soviet-led Comintern (Communist International), an organization founded to spread Communist revolution globally, planned to recruit southern blacks to advocate for “self-determination in the Black Belt.” By 1930, the Comintern had initiated an operation to encourage a separate black state in the South that would expand the Communist revolution to North America.45