Про Россию
Интересная статья в Boston Globe: "Spreading of false stories becomes powerful Russian weapon".
STOCKHOLM — In Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and now Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has flaunted a modernized and more muscular military. But he lacks the economic strength and overall might to openly confront NATO.По-моему, эта статья перекликается с тем, что я недавно писал в "Fox News как Россия".
Instead, he has invested heavily in a program of “weaponized” information, using a variety of means to sow doubt and division, analysts say. The goal is to weaken cohesion among member states, stir discord in their domestic politics, and blunt opposition to Russia.
With a vigorous national debate underway on whether Sweden should enter a military partnership with NATO, officials in Stockholm suddenly encountered an unsettling problem: a flood of distorted and outright false information on social media, confusing public perceptions of the issue.
The claims were alarming: If Sweden signed the deal, the alliance would stockpile secret nuclear weapons on Swedish soil; NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without government approval; NATO soldiers, immune from prosecution, could rape Swedish women without fear of criminal charges.
They were all false, but the disinformation had begun spilling into the traditional news media, and as the defense minister, Peter Hultqvist, traveled the country to promote the pact in speeches and town hall meetings, he was repeatedly grilled about the bogus stories.
“People were not used to it, and they got scared, asking what can be believed, what should be believed?” said Marinette Nyh Radebo, Hultqvist’s spokeswoman. [...]
“Moscow views world affairs as a system of special operations and very sincerely believes that it itself is an object of Western special operations,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, who helped establish the Kremlin’s information machine before 2008.
“I am sure that there are a lot of centers, some linked to the state, that are involved in inventing these kinds of fake stories,” Pavlovsky said. [...]
The fundamental purpose of dezinformatsiya, or Russian disinformation, experts said, is to undermine the official version of events — even the very idea that there is a true version of events — and foster a kind of policy paralysis.