Russia’s broad political assault on the U.S.; collusion & the First Amendment; Clausewitz & social media, and more

What facts would deny the Trump campaign First Amendment protections in colluding with Russia (Floyd Abrams, Just Security)
The recent commencement of litigation against the Trump presidential campaign by two donors to the Democratic Party and a former DNC employee raises interesting First Amendment issues. The case arises out of the publication by WikiLeaks, just as the Democratic Convention was about to begin in 2016, of thousands of e-mails written to and by the Democratic National Committee. The e-mails, breathtakingly embarrassing to the Clinton campaign, were frequently referred to by Donald Trump during the campaign and in an election decided by so few votes may well have had a significant impact. So may this case, for reasons that sweep beyond its potential political impact.
One issue in the case is of substantial legal impact. It is when, if at all, a recipient and later disseminator of stolen or otherwise wrongfully obtained documents may be held liable in litigation commenced by those who claim to have been harmed by the publication of those documents. That is what the plaintiffs in Cockrum v. Donald Trump for President, Inc. allege in the case they have filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia and it is what the core of the motion to dismiss just filed by the Trump campaign addresses.
The case is not the first in which such issues have arisen.  It is true, as counsel for the Trump campaign assert in their motion to dismiss in Cockrum, that the Supreme Court case of Bartnicki v. Vopper, provided a good deal of First Amendment rooted protection for the recipients of newsworthy information that they then made public. But it is not irrelevant that in Bartnicki the recipient of the material in question—a recording of union leaders in a Pennsylvania city discussing by telephone using violence against members of a local school board as a way to obtain more favorable terms from the board–was a radio station that received the recording, almost literally over the transom and without any past or later relationship to the source, and then broadcast it. That is hardly identical to the facts alleged in Cockrum in which the core allegation is that confidential DNC emails were stolen by Russian intelligence which then allegedly conspired with the Trump campaign to publish the materials via WikiLeaks.

Data mining has revealed previously unknown Russian Twitter troll campaigns (Technology Review)
Trolls left forensic fingerprints that cybersecurity experts used to find other disinformation campaigns both in the US and elsewhere.

Ukraine’s spiritual split from Russia could trigger a global schism (Gabby Deutch, The Atlantic)
For Moscow, the crisis is geopolitical as well as religious.

What Clausewitz can teach us about war on social media: Military tactics in the age of Facebook (P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, Foreign Affairs)
The authors, a strategist at New America and a former research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, write: “With the rise of social media over the last decade, the Internet has changed to allow all of us to become individual collectors and sharers of information. As a result, it has also become something else: a battlefield where information itself is weaponized. … Perhaps no country has better mastered this than Russia … In many ways, Russia’s far-reaching campaign to poison its foes’ domestic politics through social media is a form of exported censorship. Russia’s actions … help to flood the digital and political ecosystem with division, dissension and distrust. … As we examined the tactics of everyone from ISIS’ top recruiter to Taylor Swift to U.S. President Donald Trump to neo-Nazi trolls, we found consistent patterns. For all the seeming complexity, there are rules governing whether and how something goes viral. The most successful information warriors are masters of its new rules to driving your message viral: narrative, emotion, authenticity, community, inundation and experimentation. … Everyone is part of this new kind of fighting. If you are online, your attention is like a piece of contested territory. Those who can direct the flow of this swirling tide can accomplish incredible good. … But they can also accomplish astonishing evil. … Which side succeeds will depend above all on how much the rest of us learn to recognize this LikeWar for what it is.”

The problem isn’t fake news from Russia. It’s us: Propaganda has long affected elections around the world because publics have an appetite for it (Micah Zenko, Foreign Policy)
The author, Whitehead Senior Fellow at Chatham House, writes: “The role of disinformation in electoral campaigns … [has] appropriately been a matter of national debate since the 2016 presidential election. … When one dives into these allegations, what stands out is the lack of precision in identifying exactly what activities are troubling and thus should be prohibited. Indeed, there is a blending of adversaries’ purported goals with their alleged actions. For example, the assessment from the U.S. intelligence community warns of Russia’s ‘desire to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order’ as if that, in itself, is a crime. … The issue that Americans have chosen to ignore over the past 20 months is why the public has so deeply embraced and then spread alleged misinformation from China, Iran or Russia. Politicians and pundits have chosen to blame the United States’ divides on its adversaries … Whether for ideological, tribal, partisan, financial or other reasons, Americans may simply not be interested in truly understanding and critiquing the information that they receive through their phones and computers … Because of that, they will be increasingly the targets of ‘like wars’ by aggressors foreign and domestic.”

Russian hackers pose an international persistent threat (Sarah Meyer, CPO Magazine)
The murky world of highly competitive international sport means that some individual nation state players – and national intelligence agencies will go to extraordinary lengths (and illegal means such as a well-funded and highly effective disinformation campaigns) in order to maintain their positions as world class competitors and players on the global stage. Nations are not averse to bending or even breaking the rules. This is especially true when it comes to the use of performance enhancing drugs. Major transgressors have traditionally included countries from the former Soviet Union – including Russia, as well as China. But these campaigns only remain effective if the hackers are not caught. Recently the United States has exposed state sponsored Russian hackers and accused them of posing a persistent threat across a number of areas – including ‘Black Hat’ operations to engage in disinformation campaigns and discredit anti-doping officials (and U.S. athletes themselves) following negative reporting on the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs during the Sochi Olympics of 2014.

How Russia and China undermine democracy: Can the West counter the threat? (Andrea Kendall-Taylor and David Shullman, Foreign Affairs)
The authors, a senior fellow and director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security and a senior adviser at the International Republican Institute, write: “Russia and China view efforts to support democracy—especially U.S. efforts—as thinly veiled attempts to expand U.S. influence and undermine their regimes … Because Moscow and Beijing gauge their power in relation to the United States, they view weakening Western democracy as a means of enhancing their own standing. … Efforts to directly confront China and Russia … are unlikely to yield results and may further bolster their collaboration. … In addition to upholding positive models of democratic governance, the United States and its partners should double down on bolstering the democratic resiliency of countries most at risk … The stronger a country’s regulatory environment, civil society, political parties and independent media, the less effective authoritarian powers’ attacks on democratic institutions will be, and the less appeal the authoritarian narrative and model will have. Working with U.S. allies and partners to empower domestic constituencies to stand up against foreign subversion of their own democracies will be the most effective weapon against Chinese and Russian influence.”

The origins of Russia’s broad political assault on the United States (James Lamond, Center for American Progress)
The author, a senior policy adviser at the Center for American Progress, writes: “In 2014, Russia launched a distinct and multifaceted campaign to undermine and influence the American democratic process. The goals of this campaign are … To sow political and social discord in the United States; [t]o undermine and challenge the American and Western democratic system … and [t]o foster ties and support among powerful voices within the party that Russian hawks have traditionally dominated, with the aim to soften that party’s stance. This campaign, which is still ongoing, consists of five mutually reinforcing lines of effort … The deployment of information warfare … The use of cyberoperations … The courting of influential voices within the American conservative movement … The support for extreme and destabilizing political movements; and … The direct targeting of voters. … The U.S. government should pursue a two-pronged strategy consisting of an offense that places more pressure on the Kremlin to discontinue its malign behavior and a defense that better protects from asymmetric responses coming out of Moscow.”

Russia’s low-cost influence strategy finds success in Serbia (Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post)
The author, Brussels bureau chief for the news outlet, writes: “Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic looked giddy as he … accept[ed] a newly arrived gift from the Kremlin: Soviet-era fighter jets … Never mind that the gift of a half-dozen MiG-29 jets came with a steep price tag for required repairs: $209 million, payable to Russia. The Serbian president heaped praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The gift … encapsulates Russian strategy in Serbia—and much of the world. The Kremlin has built a methodical but low-cost influence campaign that is reaping rocketing returns. The thrifty approach helps explain how a country with a faltering economy … has been able to wield outsize influence and confound its adversaries. … Russia and the West are engaged in a pitched battle for the allegiance of Serbia … While the West is spending far more cash … Russia’s presence is far more penetrating. … And by appealing to ordinary Serbs, it has gained a more deeply rooted hold than if it had pursued its push solely among Serbian leaders. … Brussels officials … say the country’s [Serbia’s] Western course is hardly guaranteed. Some have even raised the question of whether to suspend [EU] membership talks with Belgrade … The result, for Russia, would be a diplomatic coup—on the cheap.”