OUR PICKSThe New Propaganda War | Why Are More Chinese Migrants Arriving at the U.S. Southern Border? | Apple’s iPhone Spyware Problem, and more
· The New Propaganda War
Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world
· Key January 6th Instigator, Nick Fuentes, Reinstatement on Twitter/X: The Implications
Fuentes’s “America First” movement, dubbed the “Groypers,” is built on racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and misogyny
· Why Are More Chinese Migrants Arriving at the U.S. Southern Border?
Asylum-seekers and others are making the journey through the risky Darién Gap in the wake of the pandemic
· The Alleged LockBit Ransomware Mastermind Has Been Identified
Law enforcement officials say they’ve identified, sanctioned, and indicted the person behind LockBitSupp, the administrator at the heart of LockBit’s $500 million hacking rampage
· Apple’s iPhone Spyware Problem Is Getting Worse. Here’s What You Should Know
The iPhone maker has detected spyware attacks against people in more than 150 countries. Knowing if your device is infected can be tricky—but there are a few steps you can take to protect yourself
The New Propaganda War (Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic)
The story of how Africans—as well as Latin Americans, Asians, and indeed many Europeans and Americans—have come to spout Russian propaganda about Ukraine is not primarily a story of European colonial history, Western policy, or the Cold War. Rather, it involves China’s systematic efforts to buy or influence both popular and elite audiences around the world; carefully curated Russian propaganda campaigns, some open, some clandestine, some amplified by the American and European far right; and other autocracies using their own networks to promote the same language.
To be fair to the European diplomat, the convergence of what had been disparate authoritarian influence projects is still new. Russian information-laundering and Chinese propaganda have long had different goals. Chinese propagandists mostly stayed out of the democratic world’s politics, except to promote Chinese achievements, Chinese economic success, and Chinese narratives about Tibet or Hong Kong. Their efforts in Africa and Latin America tended to feature dull, unwatchable announcements of investments and state visits. Russian efforts were more aggressive—sometimes in conjunction with the far right or the far left in the democratic world—and aimed to distort debates and elections in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and elsewhere. Still, they often seemed unfocused, as if computer hackers were throwing spaghetti at the wall, just to see which crazy story might stick. Venezuela and Iran were fringe players, not real sources of influence.
Slowly, though, these autocracies have come together, not around particular stories, but around a set of ideas, or rather in opposition to a set of ideas. Transparency, for example. And rule of law. And democracy. They have heard language about those ideas—which originate in the democratic world—coming from their own dissidents, and have concluded that they are dangerous to their regimes. Their own rhetoric makes this clear.
None of these efforts would succeed without local actors who share the autocratic world’s goals. (Cont.)
