| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK 17:20 - Mar 12 with 62929 views | westwalesed |
Extraordinary statement by Mrs May and also quite scary.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43377856
She has essentially said that the Russian Government is "highly likely" to have carried out a Chemical Attack on the United Kingdom, using a "military grade nerve agent" developed by the Russian Military and threatening hundreds of British Citizens. This is incredibly worrying.
On another note, Mr Corbyn in his response attempted to conflate donations from Russian Oligarchs to the Conservative Party with this act. Disgraceful. [Post edited 12 Mar 2018 17:22]
|  |
| |  |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 02:48 - Sep 10 with 2273 views | DJack |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 02:11 - Sep 10 by Groo |
I'm amazed how many support an aggressive foreign government against their own Country.
70 odd years ago they would have been shot. |
Questioning your government is fine, pushing a set patently false narratives is horrendous. |  |
| It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. - Carl Sagan |
| |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 06:53 - Sep 10 with 2243 views | peenemunde |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 02:11 - Sep 10 by Groo |
I'm amazed how many support an aggressive foreign government against their own Country.
70 odd years ago they would have been shot. |
In what way is Russia being aggressive ?
You watch to much bbc. |  | | |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 13:44 - Sep 10 with 2183 views | Kilkennyjack |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 02:11 - Sep 10 by Groo |
I'm amazed how many support an aggressive foreign government against their own Country.
70 odd years ago they would have been shot. |
Our country has recently led us into a number of illegal wars. Fact.
Your simplistic blind faith would be touching..... if you were a young child.
Robust modern democratic governments welcome scrutiny and challenge.
Its makes them stronger. |  |
| Beware of the Risen People
|
| |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 17:23 - Sep 10 with 2148 views | JJJack |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 21:36 - Sep 9 by Shaky |
Sergei Skripal and the Russian disinformation game
By Joel Gunter & Olga Robinson
BBC News, 9 September 2018
When the UK authorities announced on Wednesday that they suspected two alleged Russian agents in the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, they released CCTV images of the suspects arriving at Gatwick airport.
Two of the images, framed side by side, began to spread on social media, driven by pro-Russia conspiracy theorists and suspected troll accounts. They showed the alleged agents - Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov - passing through a non-return gate at the airport.
The images had identical timestamps. How could two men be in exactly the same place at the same time, a flood of tweets asked.
Speaking on state TV, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that either "the date and the exact time were superimposed on the image" or that Russian intelligence officers had "mastered the skill of walking simultaneously".
Her remarks were echoed by pro-Kremlin accounts on Twitter and on the messaging app Telegram, which is popular in Russia. Users suggested the CCTV images had been manipulated. They mocked the British authorities and alleged it was an MI6 operation.
Soon it would not necessarily matter that the background of the CCTV images were not identical; that the camera was at a different angle; that Google Maps shows that the non-return gates at Gatwick are a series of near-identical corridors that the two men could easily have passed down, adjacent to one another, at the same time.
What would matter would be that some people following the story would begin to question what was real and what wasn't. Some might even begin to question the very idea that there was a real, reliable version of events at all.
Russia denies any involvement in the Skripal case, and its embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment from the BBC, but analysts say the Russian state is now the chief exponent of a new kind of information warfare.
A loosely-defined network of Russian state actors, state-controlled media, and armies of social media bots and trolls is said to work in unison to spread and amplify multiple narratives and conspiracies around cases like the Skripal poisoning. The goal is no longer to deny or disprove an official version of events, it is to flood the zone with so many competing versions that nothing seems to make sense.
"What is really striking is that you no longer see the Russian machine pushing a single message, it pushes dozens of messages," said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who studies Russian disinformation. "The idea is to confuse people."
Other theories circulating on Wednesday included a claim that the suspects were British actors, stars of a (non-existent) KGB spy series broadcast on British television in the 2000s. Another suggested the attempted assassination in Salisbury, and the deaths of other Russian nationals in Britain, were part of an MI6 plot. "Why do all these horrible events only happen in Britain?" asked Andrei Klimov, a Russian member of parliament, on state TV.
"The more different theories you put out, the more different Google results you're going to get," said Mr Nimmo. "So instead of seeing two or three different versions of the story you're seeing 20 or 30. And for someone who is not following the story regularly that becomes more and more confusing until they give up. And at that point, the Russian disinformation has had its effect."
Early evidence of the tactic can be traced back to the 2000s but it first drew serious international attention in 2014 when Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing 298 people. The evidence pointed to a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile fired from rebel-held territory in east Ukraine.
Russia had already been accused of deploying crude disinformation techniques around its actions in east Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea, but its response to being linked to the downing of MH-17 was on a different scale - the "tipping point where Russian information warfare kicked into high gear", Mr Nimmo said.
In the days and months after the aircraft was shot down, Russian state media and pro-Kremlin social accounts pushed out a raft of different and wildly contradictory theories: that a Ukrainian Su-25 combat aircraft had been picked up by radar near MH-17; that video evidence showed a missile being fired from government, not separatist, territory; that Ukrainian fighters had mistaken MH-17 for Vladimir Putin's plane in an assassination attempt; that the CIA was behind it.
"MH-17 is really the classic example," said Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher on computational propaganda at the University of Oxford.
"You saw a whole series of different conspiracies and competing narratives emerge, attached to various hashtags and social media campaigns. The goal was to confuse people, to polarise them, to push them further and further away from reality."
The technique expanded and evolved in the years after the MH-17 attack, with Russia linked to disinformation campaigns around its actions in Syria, the 2016 US election, the murder of Boris Nemtsov, and a UK inquiry into the murder of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko in London.
A key component in recent iterations of the tactic has been the use of humour and ridicule. When a UK inquiry found in 2016 that Russian president Vladimir Putin "probably approved" the murder of Litvinenko, a hashtag - #putinprobablyapproved - spread through Twitter, with tweets suggesting Mr Putin had "probably approved" the assassination of JFK, the invasion of Iraq, climate change and more.
In the hours after the UK named the suspects in the Skripal case, a flood of near-identical tweets used pictures of comedians, historical figures and Hollywood spies - from Joseph Stalin to Jason Bourne - in place of the suspects, mocking the UK's announcement.
The official account of the Russian embassy in London even joined in, posting an image of the two Skripal suspects allegedly carrying the Novichok toxin alongside a picture of British police in biohazard suits, asking users to "spot the difference". On Russian state news bulletins, anchors reported the news with a mixture of disbelief and sarcasm.
"The strategy is optimised for the internet, it's meant to go viral," said Mr Nimmo. "That's why mockery and sarcasm and attempts at funny memes are so much a part of this ... It is disinformation for the information age."
In 2015, the European Union was sufficiently alarmed by Russian disinformation that it created a task force - the East Stratcom team - directed solely at counteracting the perceived threat. The small team attempts to debunk fake stories in real time, but it is reportedly vastly outmatched by the amount of material coming its way.
Peter Wilson, the UK ambassador to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said earlier this year the OPCW had counted more than 30 different Russian theories swirling around the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
The effectiveness and reach of this type of disinformation operation in the West is debatable. A YouGov poll conducted earlier found that 75% of Britons believed that the Russian state was behind the Skripal poisoning, while just 5% said they thought Russia was innocent. But the sheer volume of Russian disinformation being exported abroad remained a major cause for concern, said one EU official who works on the issue but was not authorised to speak about it publicly.
"Some people like to think this tactic was used around Brexit and it went away, or it was used around Skripal and went away, but it's happening 24/7," he said. "Others also use disinformation, of course ... But this aggression, this exporting of information narratives abroad, this is really something where Russia is number one in the world."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45454142 |
That's quite possibly the biggest load of bull I've seen on the internet in eons.
We're expected to believe that us in the West - which pretty much mastered the art of disinformation decades ago but particularly highlighted because of its effectiveness in WW2, are now being outdone by Russia. All the might of the EU and they can't cope with a bit of Russian money/technology.....
I have no firm viewpoint on this whole thing other than the continued attempt to create Russia as some kind of strategic & technological behemoth that is somehow able to outspend, outmanoeuvre and outthink the whole of the Western world on a consistent basis, manipulate our election results and is planning to attack the rest of Europe is even more far-feteched than North Korea nuking the U.S.
It's fecking bonkers and it actually quite annoys me that people in the U.K. with so much internet access etc can actually believe that Russia is the aggressor when everything that is actually happening suggests the opposite - it's NATO and in particular the EU that are the aggressors. And that much is so obvious it's painful.
Russia??!! Jesus wept...…. |  | | |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 17:36 - Sep 10 with 2142 views | LeonWasGod |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 17:23 - Sep 10 by JJJack |
That's quite possibly the biggest load of bull I've seen on the internet in eons.
We're expected to believe that us in the West - which pretty much mastered the art of disinformation decades ago but particularly highlighted because of its effectiveness in WW2, are now being outdone by Russia. All the might of the EU and they can't cope with a bit of Russian money/technology.....
I have no firm viewpoint on this whole thing other than the continued attempt to create Russia as some kind of strategic & technological behemoth that is somehow able to outspend, outmanoeuvre and outthink the whole of the Western world on a consistent basis, manipulate our election results and is planning to attack the rest of Europe is even more far-feteched than North Korea nuking the U.S.
It's fecking bonkers and it actually quite annoys me that people in the U.K. with so much internet access etc can actually believe that Russia is the aggressor when everything that is actually happening suggests the opposite - it's NATO and in particular the EU that are the aggressors. And that much is so obvious it's painful.
Russia??!! Jesus wept...…. |
Nice rant, but that’s not what the article is saying. Near the end it says the impact is questionable to smsll at best. They don’t reslly need to outsmart the west either - the way social media is set up they only have to convince a handfull of gullable or sympathetic people and a message spresds no problem. Luckily most people still ignore it. |  | | |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 17:49 - Sep 10 with 2140 views | JJJack |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 17:36 - Sep 10 by LeonWasGod |
Nice rant, but that’s not what the article is saying. Near the end it says the impact is questionable to smsll at best. They don’t reslly need to outsmart the west either - the way social media is set up they only have to convince a handfull of gullable or sympathetic people and a message spresds no problem. Luckily most people still ignore it. |
And I agree with your point and their final point. But the way I've read that article is that the EU has created a think tank to "outsmart/negate" any Russian propaganda tools for creating fake media. If you look at the other thread relating to the Govt/media influence (just below on the Forum) it's painfully obvious as to why believing we're somehow at threat from Russia in terms of fake news is absurd. The UK and U.S. media bombard us with "fake news" 24/7 and quite how folk are oblivious to this is staggering. | | | |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 18:23 - Sep 10 with 2122 views | LeonWasGod |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 17:49 - Sep 10 by JJJack |
And I agree with your point and their final point. But the way I've read that article is that the EU has created a think tank to "outsmart/negate" any Russian propaganda tools for creating fake media. If you look at the other thread relating to the Govt/media influence (just below on the Forum) it's painfully obvious as to why believing we're somehow at threat from Russia in terms of fake news is absurd. The UK and U.S. media bombard us with "fake news" 24/7 and quite how folk are oblivious to this is staggering. |
Quite a few academics work on this issue, so there must be something in it. They must have something to work on and I can easily imagine a state carrying out organised propaganda on social media. No idea to what extent though.
Quite right on the bombardment though - it’s coming in from all angles. I’ve had a few things I’ve worked on over the years reported in the printed press (broadsheet papers and popular science magazines like New Scientist). And the ocassional tv news coverage. In the best of cases I barely recognise the coverage, and that’s where agendas aren’t at play. Throw in agendas snd deliberate spinning of information and people would be quite right in not believing any of it. | | | |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 02:40 - Sep 11 with 2050 views | DJack |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 18:02 - Sep 9 by Kilkennyjack |
So- just so we are clear ....
Atteck is in March, first photos in September ...why ? With identical time stamps ?
The switch of clothes to near identical clothes is part of the (not very) cunning plan ...
These ‘professional agents’ failed to do their job, and used the only weapon on earth that leads directly back to russia.
The person they wanted dead was held by Russia for years and they did not kill him
Uk forces sealed the property, but sealed inside a number of pets that then starved to death.
Ok - nothing here to see, move along please .... |
"The person they wanted dead was held by Russia for years and they did not kill him "
More for you to ponder...
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/vladimir-putins-chilling-threat-novichok-1 | |
| It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. - Carl Sagan |
| |
Login to get fewer ads
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 09:28 - Sep 11 with 1990 views | Shaky |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 17:23 - Sep 10 by JJJack |
That's quite possibly the biggest load of bull I've seen on the internet in eons.
We're expected to believe that us in the West - which pretty much mastered the art of disinformation decades ago but particularly highlighted because of its effectiveness in WW2, are now being outdone by Russia. All the might of the EU and they can't cope with a bit of Russian money/technology.....
I have no firm viewpoint on this whole thing other than the continued attempt to create Russia as some kind of strategic & technological behemoth that is somehow able to outspend, outmanoeuvre and outthink the whole of the Western world on a consistent basis, manipulate our election results and is planning to attack the rest of Europe is even more far-feteched than North Korea nuking the U.S.
It's fecking bonkers and it actually quite annoys me that people in the U.K. with so much internet access etc can actually believe that Russia is the aggressor when everything that is actually happening suggests the opposite - it's NATO and in particular the EU that are the aggressors. And that much is so obvious it's painful.
Russia??!! Jesus wept...…. |
The Gerasimov Doctrine; It’s Russia’s new chaos theory of political warfare. And it’s probably being used on you.
By MOLLY K. MCKEW
Politico, September/October 2017
Lately, Russia appears to be coming at the United States from all kinds of contradictory angles. Russian bots amplified Donald Trump during the campaign, but in office, Kremlin-backed media portray him as weak. Vladimir Putin is expelling U.S. diplomats from Russia, limiting options for warmer relations with the administration he wanted in place. As Congress pushes a harder line against Russia, plenty of headlines declare that Putin’s gamble on Trump has failed.
Confused? Only if you don’t understand the Gerasimov Doctrine.
In February 2013, General Valery Gerasimov–Russia’s chief of the General Staff, comparable to the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff–published a 2,000-word article, “The Value of Science Is in the Foresight,” in the weekly Russian trade paper Military-Industrial Kurier. Gerasimov took tactics developed by the Soviets, blended them with strategic military thinking about total war, and laid out a new theory of modern warfare–one that looks more like hacking an enemy’s society than attacking it head-on. He wrote: “The very ‘rules of war’ have changed. The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness. … All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character.”
The article is considered by many to be the most useful articulation of Russia’s modern strategy, a vision of total warfare that places politics and war within the same spectrum of activities–philosophically, but also logistically. The approach is guerrilla, and waged on all fronts with a range of actors and tools–for example, hackers, media, businessmen, leaks and, yes, fake news, as well as conventional and asymmetric military means. Thanks to the internet and social media, the kinds of operations Soviet psy-ops teams once could only fantasize about–upending the domestic affairs of nations with information alone–are now plausible. The Gerasimov Doctrine builds a framework for these new tools, and declares that non-military tactics are not auxiliary to the use of force but the preferred way to win. That they are, in fact, the actual war. Chaos is the strategy the Kremlin pursues: Gerasimov specifies that the objective is to achieve an environment of permanent unrest and conflict within an enemy state.
Does it work? Former captive nations Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania all sounded the alarm in recent years about Russian attempts to influence their domestic politics and security, as the Obama administration downplayed concerns over a new Cold War. But all three countries now have parties with Russian financial connections leading their governments, which softly advocate for a more open approach to Moscow.
In Ukraine, Russia has been deploying the Gerasimov Doctrine for the past several years. During the 2014 protests there, the Kremlin supported extremists on both sides of the fight–pro-Russian forces and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists–fueling conflict that the Kremlin used as a pretext to seize Crimea and launch the war in eastern Ukraine. Add a heavy dose of information warfare, and this confusing environment–in which no one is sure of anybody’s motives, and pretty much no one is a hero–is one in which the Kremlin can readily exert control. This is the Gerasimov Doctrine in the field.
The United States is the latest target. The Russian security state defines America as the primary adversary. The Russians know they can’t compete head-to-head with us–economically, militarily, technologically–so they create new battlefields. They are not aiming to become stronger than us, but to weaken us until we are equivalent.
Russia might not have hacked American voting machines, but by selectively amplifying targeted disinformation and misinformation on social media–sometimes using materials acquired by hacking–and forging de facto information alliances with certain groups in the United States, it arguably won a significant battle without most Americans realizing it ever took place. The U.S. electoral system is the heart of the world’s most powerful democracy, and now–thanks to Russian actions–we’re locked in a national argument over its legitimacy. We’re at war with ourselves, and the enemy never fired a physical shot. “The information space opens wide asymmetrical possibilities for reducing the fighting potential of the enemy,” Gerasimov writes. (He also writes of using “internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state.”)
Not all Russia-watchers agree on the Gerasimov Doctrine’s importance. Some say this is simply a new and well-articulated version of what Russians have always done, or that Putin is inflated as an all-powerful boogeyman, or that competition among the various oligarchic factions within the Kremlin means there is no central strategic purpose to their activities. But there’s no question that Russian intervention is systematic and multi-layered. This structure challenges us, because we don’t necessarily understand how it has been put into practice; like all guerrilla doctrine, it prioritizes conservation of resources and decentralization, which makes it harder to detect and follow. And strategically, its goals aren’t the ones we’re used to talking about. The Kremlin isn’t picking a winner; it’s weakening the enemy and building an environment in which anyone but the Kremlin loses.
Herein lies the real power of the Gerasimov-style shadow war: It’s hard to muster resistance to an enemy you can’t see, or aren’t even sure is there. But it’s not an all-powerful approach; the shadowy puppeteering at the heart of the Gerasimov Doctrine also makes it inherently fragile. Its tactics begin to fail when light is thrown onto how they work and what they aim to achieve. This requires leadership and clarity about the threat–which we saw briefly in France, when the government rallied to warn voters about Russian info ops in advance of the presidential election. For now, though, America is still in the dark–not even on defense, let alone offense.
Molly K. McKew, an expert on information warfare, advises governments and political parties on foreign policy and strategic communications. She advised Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government from 2009-13, and former Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat in 2014-15.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/gerasimov-doctrine-russia-for |  |
| |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 09:36 - Sep 11 with 1981 views | Shaky |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 17:36 - Sep 10 by LeonWasGod |
Nice rant, but that’s not what the article is saying. Near the end it says the impact is questionable to smsll at best. They don’t reslly need to outsmart the west either - the way social media is set up they only have to convince a handfull of gullable or sympathetic people and a message spresds no problem. Luckily most people still ignore it. |
The real world impact of this stuff is small? Tell that to the residents of Eastern Ukraine, Georgia, etc. Or Macedonia where the Russians nearly got away with staging a coup against the democratically elected government.
The impact on public opinion on this stuff is debatable, with my own view being it is very significant at the margin where democratic questions are decided. in the West that is.
However, If you are a hapless citizen of some former Soviet vassal state where the Russians seize control, and apply totalitarian levers to the control of mass media, it really doesn't matter what you think. | |
| |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 12:31 - Sep 11 with 1947 views | JJJack |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 09:28 - Sep 11 by Shaky |
The Gerasimov Doctrine; It’s Russia’s new chaos theory of political warfare. And it’s probably being used on you.
By MOLLY K. MCKEW
Politico, September/October 2017
Lately, Russia appears to be coming at the United States from all kinds of contradictory angles. Russian bots amplified Donald Trump during the campaign, but in office, Kremlin-backed media portray him as weak. Vladimir Putin is expelling U.S. diplomats from Russia, limiting options for warmer relations with the administration he wanted in place. As Congress pushes a harder line against Russia, plenty of headlines declare that Putin’s gamble on Trump has failed.
Confused? Only if you don’t understand the Gerasimov Doctrine.
In February 2013, General Valery Gerasimov–Russia’s chief of the General Staff, comparable to the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff–published a 2,000-word article, “The Value of Science Is in the Foresight,” in the weekly Russian trade paper Military-Industrial Kurier. Gerasimov took tactics developed by the Soviets, blended them with strategic military thinking about total war, and laid out a new theory of modern warfare–one that looks more like hacking an enemy’s society than attacking it head-on. He wrote: “The very ‘rules of war’ have changed. The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness. … All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character.”
The article is considered by many to be the most useful articulation of Russia’s modern strategy, a vision of total warfare that places politics and war within the same spectrum of activities–philosophically, but also logistically. The approach is guerrilla, and waged on all fronts with a range of actors and tools–for example, hackers, media, businessmen, leaks and, yes, fake news, as well as conventional and asymmetric military means. Thanks to the internet and social media, the kinds of operations Soviet psy-ops teams once could only fantasize about–upending the domestic affairs of nations with information alone–are now plausible. The Gerasimov Doctrine builds a framework for these new tools, and declares that non-military tactics are not auxiliary to the use of force but the preferred way to win. That they are, in fact, the actual war. Chaos is the strategy the Kremlin pursues: Gerasimov specifies that the objective is to achieve an environment of permanent unrest and conflict within an enemy state.
Does it work? Former captive nations Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania all sounded the alarm in recent years about Russian attempts to influence their domestic politics and security, as the Obama administration downplayed concerns over a new Cold War. But all three countries now have parties with Russian financial connections leading their governments, which softly advocate for a more open approach to Moscow.
In Ukraine, Russia has been deploying the Gerasimov Doctrine for the past several years. During the 2014 protests there, the Kremlin supported extremists on both sides of the fight–pro-Russian forces and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists–fueling conflict that the Kremlin used as a pretext to seize Crimea and launch the war in eastern Ukraine. Add a heavy dose of information warfare, and this confusing environment–in which no one is sure of anybody’s motives, and pretty much no one is a hero–is one in which the Kremlin can readily exert control. This is the Gerasimov Doctrine in the field.
The United States is the latest target. The Russian security state defines America as the primary adversary. The Russians know they can’t compete head-to-head with us–economically, militarily, technologically–so they create new battlefields. They are not aiming to become stronger than us, but to weaken us until we are equivalent.
Russia might not have hacked American voting machines, but by selectively amplifying targeted disinformation and misinformation on social media–sometimes using materials acquired by hacking–and forging de facto information alliances with certain groups in the United States, it arguably won a significant battle without most Americans realizing it ever took place. The U.S. electoral system is the heart of the world’s most powerful democracy, and now–thanks to Russian actions–we’re locked in a national argument over its legitimacy. We’re at war with ourselves, and the enemy never fired a physical shot. “The information space opens wide asymmetrical possibilities for reducing the fighting potential of the enemy,” Gerasimov writes. (He also writes of using “internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state.”)
Not all Russia-watchers agree on the Gerasimov Doctrine’s importance. Some say this is simply a new and well-articulated version of what Russians have always done, or that Putin is inflated as an all-powerful boogeyman, or that competition among the various oligarchic factions within the Kremlin means there is no central strategic purpose to their activities. But there’s no question that Russian intervention is systematic and multi-layered. This structure challenges us, because we don’t necessarily understand how it has been put into practice; like all guerrilla doctrine, it prioritizes conservation of resources and decentralization, which makes it harder to detect and follow. And strategically, its goals aren’t the ones we’re used to talking about. The Kremlin isn’t picking a winner; it’s weakening the enemy and building an environment in which anyone but the Kremlin loses.
Herein lies the real power of the Gerasimov-style shadow war: It’s hard to muster resistance to an enemy you can’t see, or aren’t even sure is there. But it’s not an all-powerful approach; the shadowy puppeteering at the heart of the Gerasimov Doctrine also makes it inherently fragile. Its tactics begin to fail when light is thrown onto how they work and what they aim to achieve. This requires leadership and clarity about the threat–which we saw briefly in France, when the government rallied to warn voters about Russian info ops in advance of the presidential election. For now, though, America is still in the dark–not even on defense, let alone offense.
Molly K. McKew, an expert on information warfare, advises governments and political parties on foreign policy and strategic communications. She advised Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government from 2009-13, and former Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat in 2014-15.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/gerasimov-doctrine-russia-for |
Nice article Shaky, thank you. I wasn't aware of this Gerasimov Doctrine though I don't doubt it is in use. As I said previously though, the idea that the U.S. are the major European players are somehow "behind" in this form of "warfare" is laughable. More, it seems they "don't like it up 'em". The CIA and MI5/MI6 have been operating chaos theory as their foreign policies for decades.
I can honestly say I virtually never see this Russian online news bombardment - I just see , with increasing unease, an all too obvious attempt to drag us back to the 1950s Cold War times. Bogeymen everywhere. | | | |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 12:39 - Sep 11 with 1945 views | JJJack |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 18:23 - Sep 10 by LeonWasGod |
Quite a few academics work on this issue, so there must be something in it. They must have something to work on and I can easily imagine a state carrying out organised propaganda on social media. No idea to what extent though.
Quite right on the bombardment though - it’s coming in from all angles. I’ve had a few things I’ve worked on over the years reported in the printed press (broadsheet papers and popular science magazines like New Scientist). And the ocassional tv news coverage. In the best of cases I barely recognise the coverage, and that’s where agendas aren’t at play. Throw in agendas snd deliberate spinning of information and people would be quite right in not believing any of it. |
Great post - something I suppose most suspect is happening but do not hear the actual stories - as you mention your own experiences.
A few years ago I got dragged into a hugely public murder case because of circumstances. Having the national press camped on your doorstep for several weeks certainly gives you an insight into how the media operate. They described the case as "perfect" and "gold dust" for them. Nothing that was said to them was used in any sort of context. The agenda was already set and without having a clue what was happening I found myself being paraphrased all over the tabloids even though I had absolutely nothing to do with the actual events as all I'd done was rent a flat at the murder scene.....only several years prior to the event! They kept my name out of it but I was livid. | | | |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 17:35 - Sep 11 with 1904 views | Shaky |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 12:31 - Sep 11 by JJJack |
Nice article Shaky, thank you. I wasn't aware of this Gerasimov Doctrine though I don't doubt it is in use. As I said previously though, the idea that the U.S. are the major European players are somehow "behind" in this form of "warfare" is laughable. More, it seems they "don't like it up 'em". The CIA and MI5/MI6 have been operating chaos theory as their foreign policies for decades.
I can honestly say I virtually never see this Russian online news bombardment - I just see , with increasing unease, an all too obvious attempt to drag us back to the 1950s Cold War times. Bogeymen everywhere. |
Are you aware that the Russian military Intelligence service GRU operates a brigade strength force of officers specifically running disinformation efforts in support of Russia's policy objectives globally? Who are in turn running god knows how many bots and fake accounts each
That's well over 2,000 people so employed!
Quite apart from the demonstrated fact that Putin's regime go around bumping dissidents, journalists, politicians, etc off, do you believe the West is engaged in anything remotely resembling that effort? | |
| |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 17:54 - Sep 11 with 1897 views | Shaky |
This is also worth reading:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War
What lay behind Russia’s interference in the 2016 election–and what lies ahead?
By Evan Osnos, David Remnick, and Joshua Yaffa
New Yorker, Annals of Diplomacy, March 6, 2017 Issue
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war | |
| |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 12:15 - Sep 12 with 1810 views | JJJack |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 17:35 - Sep 11 by Shaky |
Are you aware that the Russian military Intelligence service GRU operates a brigade strength force of officers specifically running disinformation efforts in support of Russia's policy objectives globally? Who are in turn running god knows how many bots and fake accounts each
That's well over 2,000 people so employed!
Quite apart from the demonstrated fact that Putin's regime go around bumping dissidents, journalists, politicians, etc off, do you believe the West is engaged in anything remotely resembling that effort? |
Yes. 100% I do.
David Kelly and Robin Cook being just 2 high profile victims. | | | |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 12:19 - Sep 12 with 1807 views | JJJack |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 12:15 - Sep 12 by JJJack |
Yes. 100% I do.
David Kelly and Robin Cook being just 2 high profile victims. |
Shaky - genuine question . Why is it less concerning/acceptable for the USA and the UK to enter into so many wars/conflicts illegally but it’s apparently terrifying if Russia tries to influence other countries’ thinking. Can you not see the obvious double standards? | | | |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 13:15 - Sep 12 with 1776 views | Shaky |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 12:19 - Sep 12 by JJJack |
Shaky - genuine question . Why is it less concerning/acceptable for the USA and the UK to enter into so many wars/conflicts illegally but it’s apparently terrifying if Russia tries to influence other countries’ thinking. Can you not see the obvious double standards? |
i dispute your use of the term 'many'. Seems to me you are primarily thinking of 1 war, Iraq. And I agree it was unwarranted and has dangerously destabilised the Middle East.
But this was 1 war, carried out under the auspices of an overtly Neoconservative US administration that had as an explicit objective to remodel the world. And BTW was also grounded in a Neoplatonic philosophy that specifically embraces lying to the ordinary people, on account of the superior breeding of their masters.
All now swept aside by Obama, but even that represented progress from the days of the Monroe Doctrine, which meant the CIA was able to freely organise military coups in Argentina, Chile, etc, while the world had been carved up in such a way as to let the Soviets send tanks in to Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc, to quell rebellion on their home turf.
It may be hard to spot but in my view that clearly represents a discernible line of progress away from using undemocratic means in international security politics.
Until the Russians reversed course. I think the article from the New Yorker brilliantly summarises the context for that, but it is a clear step back to a darker and significantly more dangerous time. And especially so with that idiot Trump at the helm in Washington. [Post edited 12 Sep 2018 13:16]
| |
| |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 15:03 - Sep 12 with 1743 views | felixstowe_jack |
Good to see Mr Putin say today that he had found the two innocent Russians who just happened to fly into the UK by aeroflot then make two visits to Salisbury in two days one of which was very near Mr Skripal and Yulia house then leave the UK the very same day on another aeroflot flight back to Russian.
Is this the usual behaviour of normal Russians tourist? | |
| |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 15:43 - Sep 12 with 1726 views | Batterseajack |
| PM Statement on Chemical Attack in the UK on 15:03 - Sep 12 by felixstowe_jack |
Good to see Mr Putin say today that he had found the two innocent Russians who just happened to fly into the UK by aeroflot then make two visits to Salisbury in two days one of which was very near Mr Skripal and Yulia house then leave the UK the very same day on another aeroflot flight back to Russian.
Is this the usual behaviour of normal Russians tourist? |
It's all a big joke to Putin. Make it as obvious as possible it was him, but clever enough to make it impossible to prove. | | | |
| |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
