Pirate's Cove

Interestingly, the question of “why didn’t Obama and the people under him do anything” is never asked

New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep

A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office.

The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat. The bipartisan panel hasn’t said whether it endorses the findings. It plans to release it publicly along with another study later this week.

The research — by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm — offers new details of how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for interfering in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging. These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found.

“What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump,” the report says. “Trump is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged these groups to support his campaign. The main groups that could challenge Trump were then provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage members from voting.”

Here’s two important points: first, the draft report, at least as far as the Washington Post’s reporting goes, doesn’t say that Team Trump was working with the Russians, only that they were trying to influence the election. And do they consider that perhaps it wasn’t so much pro-Trump (and had been pro-other Republican candidates prior), but anti-Hillary?

Second, there’s no mention in the story as to whether these operations had any real influence. Conservatives would support conservative positions anyhow. Me, I waited till election day and filled out the whole ballot before finally making a final decision on whether to vote for Trump or just leave that box blank.

The report offers the latest evidence that Russian agents sought to help Trump win the White House. Democrats and Republicans on the panel previously studied the U.S. intelligence community’s 2017 finding that Moscow aimed to assist Trump, and in July, they said investigators had come to the correct conclusion. Despite their work, some Republicans on Capitol Hill continue to doubt the nature of Russia’s interference in the last presidential election. (big snip)

The report traces the origins of Russian online influence operations to Russian domestic politics in 2009 and says that ambitions shifted to include U.S. politics as early as 2013 on Twitter. Of the tweets the company provided to the Senate, 57 percent are in Russian, 36 percent in English and smaller amounts in other languages.

Let’s look back

(Daily Caller)  U.S. intelligence overheard a Russian operative brag about targeting Hillary Clinton in the upcoming 2016 presidential election as payback for an “influence campaign” the former secretary of state ran against Vladimir Putin five years earlier.

Senior intelligence officials told Time that a Russian military intelligence officer with GRU said his group “was going to cause chaos in the upcoming U.S. election” to “pay Clinton back for what President Vladimir Putin believed was an influence operation she had run against him” during Russian elections.

Obama, with Hillary as his SecState, were interfering in the Russian elections at that time (the NY Times even noted this year that the U.S. interferes in elections in many countries all the time), and this may have been payback.

Putin and his operations didn’t seem to diminish the vote tallies for Hillary in Blue states, nor was it his fault she passed out on camera, demeaned millions of Americans, and failed to visit necessary states.

The report also notes how all the tech companies failed to deal with this. But, again, one big question remains: was it effective? Did it make a difference in the 2016 election outcome?

Because, really, we all know Russia was playing games. But, did it have an effect? Nor does this say anything about collusion. But you know the unhinged Trump haters will point to this as proof.