A great take from @SevaUT Gunitsky on what’s wrong with the fight against Russian disinformation. This is becoming a pretty serious problem, and it’s fed by three key mistakes about how we envision Russia twisting facts to sow discord. THREAD https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/21/democracies-disinformation-russia-china-homegrown/

First, policymakers in the west tend to vastly overestimate Russian capabilities. This is the case across several vectors of the political war that Russia is waging, but it’s particularly stark when it comes to disinformation.

As Gunitsky notes, oftentimes the messages produced by Russian media simply chime with the fake news being churned out domestically – there are surprising similarities, after all, in what our id generates.

And while their content can go viral, I have yet to see any serious analysis of a causal relationship between messages sown by real or suspected Kremlin agents and voting patterns.

Secondly, policymakers overestimate Russian control, especially of its media. I’ve worked for state media. There are red lines, not directives – you don’t often know what they are, and you don’t always get punished for crossing them.

We forget, also, that there’s an independent media in Russia that continues to flourish despite the pressure. It produces content that, as of recently, sometimes exceeds even the current standards for objectivity in some US media.

Here’s an op-ed by Vedomosti openly criticizing its own newly-appointed acting editor in chief, for blocking publication of independent opinion polls and undermining trust in the paper. It hasn’t been taken down yet. https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2020/04/23/827133-novie-vedomosti

And finally – intent. This isn’t just about disinformation, but there’s a distinct, and growing sense in US policy circles that everything that Russia does is about America.

It’s not.

It’s about hedging, protecting, furthering, where it can with limited capabilities and pretty small budget, its own interests.

Those interests are as varied as the actors and agents, whether government or freelance, that are carrying them out. In other words, there is no single Russia sowing disinformation.

There's a hybrid authoritarian regime overseeing pluralistic forces that are driven, gasp, by some of the same impulses that churn out endless content in any Western society.

Sometimes the Kremlin, optimizing its limited capabilities and capitalizing on the enthusiasm of private citizens, channels that for its strategic purposes.

When it does so, it can't always control the result.

But it can certainly reap the benefits when the New York Times, or the growing policy sector funded and tasked to fight Russian disinformation, amplifies a message that the Kremlin didn't even know it wanted to send out.

At no cost to itself.