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Leaked Documents Show Russian Trolls Tried to Infiltrate Left-Wing Media (Adam Rawnsley, Maxwell Tani, Daily Beast)
It’s no secret that Russia’s trolls, hackers, and spies are pulling for Donald Trump in 2020—just like they famously did at the last election. But Moscow’s propaganda-peddlers aren’t just pushing MAGA memes and Biden disinfo—they’re also attempting to infiltrate left-wing sites.
The Russian trolls’ private chat logs and emails, reviewed by The Daily Beast, show they tried to get their American contributors to write for Jacobin, a leading socialist outlet; recruited from Truthout, a left-leaning nonprofit news site; and tried to buy their way onto the website of the long-pedigreed liberal outlet In These Times.
None of the outlets showed any interest in content from the Russians or their shady business offers. But the outreach by “PeaceData,” a facade of a publishing operation linked to the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency and built up by American freelancers, demonstrates the ecumenical approach the Russians are taking to pollute the information ecosystem. So how did these Russian trolls try to expand their reach to legitimate left-wing media outlets and what does it show about how well they understand the American media landscape?

Disney’s ‘Mulan’ Disaster Highlights Dangers of China Deals (James Palmer, Foreign Policy)
The cost of doing business with Beijing has risen sharply and swiftly.

Wildfires Keep Getting Worse. So Do the Conspiracy Theories. (Kelly Weill, Daily Beast)
The hot new far-right trend across the planet is falsely blaming the leftie boogeymen of the moment—not climate change—for the flames.
In Oregon, where more than 500,000 people are under evacuation orders, law enforcement took to social media on Thursday to implore people to stop sharing hoaxes about the fires’ origins.
Those rumors sprang up in a heated political climate, in which President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused antifa, the decentralized anti-fascist movement, of unspecified destructive plots. As fires broke out across the state, social media users, like failed Oregon congressional candidate Paul Romero Jr., issued completely false statements.
“Douglas County Sheriff has 6 ANTIFA arsonists in custody,” Romero tweeted on Wednesday. “Many fires in Oregon. Obviously there are more to track down and arrest. Governor Kate Brown built this.”
The post was later linked to the anonymous internet personality “Q,” who is the figurehead of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, which falsely accuses President Donald Trump’s foes of Satanic pedophilia and cannibalism. The conspiracy theory had at least 3 million followers in Facebook groups as of this summer, according to an internal Facebook report, and recently enjoyed a tacit embrace in the White House, courtesy of the president of the United States himself.

Why Is California Burning? (Economist)
It’s time to think harder about incentives.

Florida: Futuristic Program to Stop Crime Before It Happens Harasses Families Across County (Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi, Tampa Bay Times)
Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco took office in 2011 with a bold plan: to create a cutting-edge intelligence program that could stop crime before it happened. What he actually built was a system to continuously monitor and harass Pasco County residents, a Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.
First the Sheriff’s Office generates lists of people it considers likely to break the law, based on arrest histories, unspecified intelligence and arbitrary decisions by police analysts.
Then it sends deputies to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a specific crime.
They swarm homes in the middle of the night, waking families and embarrassing people in front of their neighbors. They write tickets for missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, saddling residents with court dates and fines. They come again and again, making arrests for any reason they can.
One former deputy described the directive like this: “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”
In just five years, Nocco’s signature program has ensnared almost 1,000 people.
At least 1 in 10 were younger than 18, the Times found.