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

Published 7 February 2019

·  Senate Russia probe uncovering “something larger, more nefarious” than 2016 collusion, committee chair says

·  The U.S. military is quietly launching efforts to deter Russian meddling

·  What Robert Mueller knows—and isn’t telling us

·  Does Michael Cohen have more to tell Mueller?

·  Poll shows vast majority of Americans want public Mueller report

·  Here is how representatives for a Russian troll farm are using the US legal system to smear Mueller

·  How to spot a Russian troll on social media

·  How Russia exported kleptocracy to America

·  Google yanks services from Russian propaganda site

·  Russia embraces disinformation about disinformation

·  Russian troll accounts purged by Twitter pushed Qanon and other conspiracy theories

·  Irish government fortifying IT systems for ‘fear of Russian interference’ in European elections

·  New Georgian study offers insights on Russian disinformation

·  Lithuania fears Russia will attempt to sway its elections

·  Fake news: How Lithuania’s ‘elves’ take on Russian trolls

·  Is Trump’s sanctions rollback deal with Oleg Deripaska a cop-out?

·  Sergei Millian, identified as an unwitting source for the Steele dossier, sought proximity to Trump’s world in 2016

·  Why did Soviets invade Afghanistan? Documents offer history lesson for Trump

·  Putin’s next playground or the EU’s last moral stand?

·  The unintended consequences of Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria

·  Putin orders up a national AI strategy

·  Canada’s plan to counter foreign interference is a good start, but the work’s not

·  Russian troll farms continue to have a presence on Reddit

·  How Russia infiltrated the world of American religious-right filmmaking

·  The offbeat genius of a great American spy

·  The unnerving kitsch of New York City’s new K.G.B. spy museum

Senate Russia probe uncovering “something larger, more nefarious” than 2016 collusion, committee chair says (Jonathan Vankin, Inquisitr)
Republican Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr warns that the Senate’s own Russia investigation is uncovering a vast web of dark secrets. The senator said some questions raised over the investigation could occupy the committee “for the next decade,” and that portions of the final report could be so classified that they are never revealed to the public.

The U.S. military is quietly launching efforts to deter Russian meddling (David Ignatius, Washington Post)
With little public fanfare, U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s new center for combating electronic attacks against the United States, has launched operations to deter and disrupt Russians who have been interfering with the U.S. political system.
Like other U.S. cyberwar activities, the disruption effort against Russia is cloaked in secrecy. But it appears to involve, in part, a warning to suspected Russian hackers that echoes a menacing phrase that’s a staple of many fictional crime and spy thrillers: “We know where you live.”

What Robert Mueller knows—and isn’t telling us (Garrett M. Graff, Wired)
the increasingly sprawling investigations surrounding President Donald Trump this week have already sprawled even further. News came Monday that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York served a wide-ranging subpoena digging into the finances of the Trump inaugural committee. Then, Wednesday morning, the House Intelligence Committee—in its first meeting of the new congress—voted to hand over witness transcripts from its own Russia investigation to special counsel Robert Mueller, a move widely understood to be motivated by the belief of Democratic members that various witnesses, including perhaps Donald Trump Jr., have lied to them.
….
All told, according to a recent tally by The New York Times, “more than 100 in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter” took place between Trump associates and Russians during the campaign and transition. But while we’ve seen a lot of channels, we’ve thus far from Mueller’s court filings seen near silence about what was said during those contacts—and why. In court filings that are remarkable for their level of detail and knowledge, Mueller’s conspicuous silence about those conversations stands out.