Vox - Yes, Russia is interfering in the 2020 election

[TomCADem]

What is interesting is that while Russia works to consolidate support behind Trump such as amplifying QAnon conspiracies that support Trump, Russia also works to create and amplify divisions on the left to try to undermine support for Democrats. It is not equal opportunity chaos, but chaos targeted towards promoting Trump, Republicans and racial divisions in the U.S.

https://www.vox.com/2020/9/21/21401149/russia-2020-election-meddling-trump-biden

The Russians are seizing on other charged social and political issues. Moscow has exploited racial politics and police brutality in America since the Cold War, but it’s particularly salient now, given the summer of protests against police brutality.

Russian trolls also promote “us versus them” narratives, as Young Mie Kim, an affiliated scholar with the Brennan Center, wrote in March 2020, that target the disillusioned on both the left and the right. And they try to create confusion within coalitions — trying to promote divisions within the Democratic Party, for instance, by attacking Biden for not being left-wing enough, or trying to play up Sen. Kamala Harris’s criminal justice record.

But, again, these social and political fissures already exist in the US. Russia just turns up the volume to make the cracks even wider.

“Most of the misinformation or the hyperpartisan stories that are out there are successful because we’re all kind of part of the environment in which we would like to believe horrible things about our opponents or people who don’t think like we do,” Priscilla Moriuchi, an expert on state-sponsored cyber operations and fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, said.

[Blue Owl]

1. K&R for exposure