Russia exports kleptocracy to America; Russia embraces disinformation about disinformation; detecting a Russian troll on social media, and more

Of course, one possible explanation is that the content of the conversations was completely innocent—totally normal directions and innocent chitchat about “adoptions,” sanctions, potential business deals, and geopolitical diplomacy. That could explain why Mueller thus far has only charged individuals, including Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, and Roger Stone, with lying about those contacts, not the underlying behavior.
Yet the evidence against such innocence seems clear too, in the form of consistent lies, omissions, and obfuscations about the numerous meetings, conversations, and contacts with Russians throughout the Trump campaign, transition, and presidency.
To take just two examples: Donald Trump lied extensively, for more than two years, about his dealings with Russia concerning the Trump Tower Moscow project, which suggests that he knew something about it was shady. If he’d really believed the project was on the up-and-up, it’s easy to imagine Trump as a candidate making a public to-do about the deal—arguing that he felt America’s relationship with Russia was off-track, and that as the world’s smartest businessman, he alone could set it right. Trump could have made the case on the campaign trail that he alone could make deals with Putin because he alone was making deals with Putin. Yet he didn’t make that argument, and remained entirely silent about the deal for years, even lying about his interest in Russia. Given how much Trump says, in all settings, all the time, his silences are just as conspicuous as Mueller’s.
And then there’s the continued controversy over Trump’s private conversations with Vladimir Putin at geopolitical gatherings, from Hamburg to Helsinki to Buenos Aires. Under normal circumstances and operations, US leaders meet with Russian leaders to advance geopolitical conversations, and then they “read out” those meetings to staff in order to execute the work and vision hashed out one-on-one. The entire point of those head-of-state conversations is to generate follow-up work for staff later—to come to agreements, to advance national interests, and to find common ground for action on areas of shared concern. And yet in city after city, President Trump has had suspicious conversations with Putin, where he goes out of his way to ensure that no American knows what to follow up on. In Hamburg he confiscated his translators’ notes. In Buenos Aires, he cut out American translators entirely.
If he’s truly advocating for the United States in these meetings, there’s no sign those conversations have translated into any action by White House or administration staff afterwards. Instead, quite the opposite. Trump has emerged from those conversations to spout Kremlin talking points, even, apparently, calling The New York Times from Air Force One on the way back from Hamburg to argue Putin’s point that he didn’t interfere with the 2016 election.

Does Michael Cohen have more to tell Mueller? (Tina Nguyen, Vanity Fair)
The former Trump lawyer’s testimony was delayed “in the interests of the investigation.”

Poll shows vast majority of Americans want public Mueller report (John Bowden, The Hill)
Almost 9 in 10 respondents to a new survey want Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation to end with a full, public report.
A CNN poll released Thursday finds that 87 percent of respondents, including a large majority of both parties, want to see a report at the conclusion of Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election interference and the Trump campaign. Only 9 percent oppose a public report.
The number is up slightly from the same CNN poll last year, which showed 84 percent wanting a public report, and includes an increase in the number of Republicans who say they want to see what Mueller’s investigation turns up, now up to 80 percent.

Here is how representatives for a Russian troll farm are using the US legal system to smear Mueller (Tom Boggioni, RawStory)
According to a report at the Atlantic, a filing made by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office on Wednesday exposed how Russian operatives are manipulating the court system by selectively leaking out-of-context and fake documents that cast Mueller in a bad light.

How to spot a Russian troll on social media (Amrita Khalid, Daily Dot)
More than two years after the 2016 presidential election, Russian trolls are still spreading disinformation and propaganda on the internet.
Russian trolls are not only multiplying their efforts across multiple platforms; they’re becoming more creative in how they spread their message. Russians broke down their messaging to target specific groups in America, ranging from Blacks to Muslims to the LGBTQ community. Longform blog content, promotion by Google Adwords and YouTube, and getting retweeted by influential people (including our commander-in-chief) were some of the many tactics that added to the legitimacy of the Russian propaganda operations.
Given their methods of disguise are so crafty, how do you spot a Russian troll on social media? Here are some signs to look out for on all the major social media platforms

How Russia exported kleptocracy to America (Franklin Foer, The Atlantic)
When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, Washington bet on the global spread of democratic capitalist values—and lost.

Google yanks services from Russian propaganda site (Lachlan Markay, Dean Sterling Jones, Daily Beast)
USA Really’s parent company was hit with sanctions from the U.S. government in December.

Russia embraces disinformation about disinformation (Renee DiResta and Bryan Jones, Slate)
It’s clear the U.S. needs to try something new to get Russia to knock it off.

Russian troll accounts purged by Twitter pushed Qanon and other conspiracy theories (Ben Collins and Joe Murphy, NBC News)
The accounts’ tweets featured the hashtag #MAGA, usually in support of President Trump, almost 38,000 times — the most of any hashtag.

Irish government fortifying IT systems for ‘fear of Russian interference’ in European elections (The Journal.ie)
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar admitted at the start of the year that he is concerned about potential interference.

New Georgian study offers insights on Russian disinformation (Dustin Gilbreathm Eurasianet)
The study found that old age and economic worries are predictors of susceptibility to disinformation.

Lithuania fears Russia will attempt to sway its elections (Reuters)
Lithuania’s intelligence agencies fear Russia will interfere in its forthcoming elections, including one in May to find a successor to the staunchly anti-Kremlin president, Dalia Grybauskaite.
The Baltic state, ruled from Moscow for much of the 20th century but now a member of both the European Union and NATO, was rattled by Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and hosts a German-led multinational battalion to deter any Russian invasion. It holds presidential, municipal and European Parliament elections this year and a parliamentary election in 2020.

Fake news: How Lithuania’s ‘elves’ take on Russian trolls (Michael Peel, Financial Times)
EU parliamentary elections are seen as vulnerable to disinformation, but some countries are policing false stories

Is Trump’s sanctions rollback deal with Oleg Deripaska a cop-out? (Adam Rawnsley, Daily Beast)
The Treasury Department says he’s a shady Putin crony. Here’s why it’s still rolling back sanctions on companies linked to him.

Sergei Millian, identified as an unwitting source for the Steele dossier, sought proximity to Trump’s world in 2016 (Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger, Washington Post)
Sergei Millian—a Belarus-born businessman who served as an unwitting source for the infamous Steele dossier—built a working relationship with Trump aide George Papadopoulos in 2016 and offered to serve as a go-between for the Trump campaign and a Belarusan author with connections to the Russian government.
Millian has disappeared from public view since he was revealed to be one of Christopher Steele’s sources and has rejected or ignored attempts from House and Senate intelligence committees to interview him. The new report suggests he was closer to Trump’s world than was previously known. Papadopoulos thinks Millian was working with the FBI to target the Trump campaign—a claim rejected by the Post’s FBI sources. In an interview in 2016 with ABC News, Millian claimed to have high-level contacts in the Russian government and to have met Michael Cohen and Trump himself. The Steele dossier cited Millian as a source for the assertion that a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” existed between the Trump campaign and Russian leaders, he was also cited as the source for the “pee tape” allegations.

Why did Soviets invade Afghanistan? Documents offer history lesson for Trump (Peter Baker, New York Times)

·  “One day in October 1979, an American diplomat named Archer K. Blood arrived at Afghanistan’s government headquarters, summoned by the new president [Hafizullah Amin] … Mr. Blood’s newly published cable sheds light on what really drove the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan only two months after his meeting with Mr. Amin.”

·  “It was not because of terrorism, as claimed this month by President Trump, who said the Soviets were right to invade. Among the real motivations, the cable and other documents suggest, was a fear that Afghanistan might switch loyalties to the West.”

·  “‘This was a key moment that raised the Soviet sense of threat,’ said Thomas S. Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive.”

Putin’s next playground or the EU’s last moral stand? (Ivan Krastev, New York Times)

·  “The confrontation in the Balkans between the West and Russia is changing both in nature and intensity. In the last decade, Russia was actively defending its economic and cultural presence in the region, but it never openly challenged NATO or European Union hegemony. Not anymore.”

·  “The conventional wisdom could be wrong. Moscow has sensed a critical vulnerability in the West’s position in the Balkans: While in places like Ukraine the European Union has been perceived as a symbol of change, in the Balkans it’s seen as the defender of a status quo that may be ready for disruption.”

·  “While polls show that a majority of people still sees joining the European Union as the best road to prosperity, the promise of European integration is losing its talismanic power.”

·  “[T]he Greek Parliament [has] finally approved Macedonia’s new name, North Macedonia, putting an end to one of the conflicts that has been haunting the Balkans. … Now, Europe should find similar energy and flexibility to push Serbia and Kosovo to find their own compromise. That’s the only way it can stay relevant in the region—not by being a force for the status quo.”

The unintended consequences of Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria (Lara Seligman, Foreign Policy)
It has already empowered Russia and Iran while undermining the Kurds.

Putin orders up a national AI strategy (Samuel Bendett, Defense One)
The Jan. 15 instruction follows a year of Russian efforts to better unify public and private AI research.

Canada’s plan to counter foreign interference is a good start, but the work’s not (Marcus Kolga, Globe and Mail)
For Western nations, the threat of foreign interference doesn’t just mean bad actors working to affect the outcome of an election, but also the systematic undermining of our democracy by sowing discord and breaking down trust in our institutions, media and society. And with a federal election looming, Canada needs to know that it is a target for the kind of attacks we’ve already seen in Europe and the United States in recent years.

Russian troll farms continue to have a presence on Reddit (Walter Yeates, Value Walk)
Engadget and Point worked in conjunction to investigate the continued activity of Russian troll farms on the popular social media platform, Reddit. For popular clarification, these troll farms are operated by the Russia Intelligence community, overseen by President Vladimir Putin and have no relation to the activity of non-government Russian citizens.

How Russia infiltrated the world of American religious-right filmmaking (Casey Michel, ThinkProgress)
Movieguide partnered with a key associate of a Russian oligarch sanctioned by the U.S.

The offbeat genius of a great American spy (Sam Walker, Wall Street Journal)
Tony Mendez, the CIA agent made famous by the movie, ‘Argo,’ helped outfox the KGB with wigs, makeup, false teeth, pop-up dummies and an Afghan hound costume

The unnerving kitsch of New York City’s new K.G.B. spy museum (Masha Gessen, New Yorker)
Imagine walking down Fourteenth Street in New York and seeing a sculpture of the head of a twentieth-century tyrant. The likeness of a man responsible for the deaths of millions, the imprisonment and torture of tens of millions, and the total subjugation of hundreds of millions has been placed on the sidewalk to entice you to visit a museum. If that appeals to you, then, for twenty-five dollars (twenty dollars for children, students, and seniors), you can enter New York’s new K.G.B. Spy Museum, which opened last week.