I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election" or "interfering with the election."
I also think the notion that there's a way to prevent external actors from influencing internal affairs in an ostensibly free and open republic in a networked world is somewhat... ill conceived: a democracy so fragile it needs a great firewall of some kind to protect its citizens from "fake" and "unhealthy" views is probably already on the road to failure.
If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective.
And of course that's not to mention all the inconsistent double standards. Where's the outrage over things like Confucius Institutes and other similar influence operations?
And that's not even getting in to the whole "do as I say, not as I do" aspect, where we try to pretend that dictatorships and totalitarian states should see our pro-democracy pro-human rights initiatives and NGOs and VOA and such as perfectly fine and friendly and obviously different than RT, etc.
The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well.
I also think the notion that there's a way to prevent external actors from influencing internal affairs in an ostensibly free and open republic in a networked world is somewhat... ill conceived: a democracy so fragile it needs a great firewall of some kind to protect its citizens from "fake" and "unhealthy" views is probably already on the road to failure.
If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective.
And of course that's not to mention all the inconsistent double standards. Where's the outrage over things like Confucius Institutes and other similar influence operations?
And that's not even getting in to the whole "do as I say, not as I do" aspect, where we try to pretend that dictatorships and totalitarian states should see our pro-democracy pro-human rights initiatives and NGOs and VOA and such as perfectly fine and friendly and obviously different than RT, etc.
The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well.