What Intelligence Agencies Concluded About Russian Attack on the U.S. Election

What Intelligence Agencies Concluded About Russian Attack on the U.S. Election(nytimes.com)

14 points by RealGeek 9 years ago | 4 comments

Summary from a previously deleted comment here:

  "It's concerning how influential Russia's propaganda & PsyOps
  campaign has affected America(ns)"

It's interesting to hear about the recent talking points in major news media publications about "FAKE NEWS" which is just newspeak for Propaganda.

Some might not be aware, but in 2013 the US removed protections against domestic propaganda:

  The U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948
   (Public Law 80-402), popularly called the Smith–Mundt 
  Act, specifies the terms in which the United States 
  government can engage global audiences, also known as 
  propaganda. The act was first introduced as the Bloom 
  Bill in December 1945 in the 79th Congress and 
  subsequently passed by the 80th Congress and signed into 
  law by President Harry S. Truman on January 27, 1948.


  The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 
  2013 (section 1078 (a)) amended the United States 
  Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 and the 
  Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1987, allowing for 
  materials produced by the State Department and the 
  Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be released 
  within United States borders for the Archivist of the 
  United States.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/11210223804/anti-...

guscost 9 years ago |

Just a heads up, missing from the NYTimes highlights is a conclusion that RT ran anti-fracking activist programming as well, with the suggested goal being to increase dependence on Gazprom oil:

http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/06/us-intel-report-confirms-k...

To get the most complete information it is usually a good idea to read this kind of report directly:

https://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/155494946443/odni-stat...

The part about the anti-fracking stuff is on page 8.

Jill_the_Pill 9 years ago | |

Thanks, that is really interesting. Just last night, we were speculating what, besides general chaos, might be Russia's interest in Turnip, and fracking vs. oil came up.

It's kind of a baffling feeling, to be anti-fracking and to have to sort out what parts of your anti-fracking background information may have been derived from propaganda.

guscost 9 years ago | | |

I would bet that Russia also has a longstanding policy to push propaganda against nuclear power. RT was raising a great deal of alarm after Fukushima, for example.

I don't mean to claim that all propaganda is false, or that you have to start supporting fracking or fission or anything, but it is always important to consider potential conflicts of interest with this stuff. As another example, Friends of the Earth was started by an oil company executive:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_the_Earth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Orville_Anderson

The U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Public Law 80-402), popularly called the Smith–Mundt Act, specifies the terms in which the United States government can engage global audiences, also known as propaganda. The act was first introduced as the Bloom Bill in December 1945 in the 79th Congress and subsequently passed by the 80th Congress and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on January 27, 1948. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (section 1078 (a)) amended the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1987, allowing for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be released within United States borders for the Archivist of the United States.