Real quick: I wouldn't call those gov't agencies nor are they gov't-funded. The RNC and DNC are not gov't entities, they are "private" "non-profit"s. It's fair to believe that a ton of astro-turfing and false media are bankrolled by these agencies, but I don't think it's healthy to walk about life day-to-day imagining your tax dollars are used to actively battle back trolls on imageboards.

Hm, not sure left leaning organizations would have any success on 4chan. There was an obvious alt right Astro turfing campaign for the past few years, though. 4chan used to be a solid seat of extreme liberalism, and it swapped seemingly overnight to hardcore conservativism. Same with /r/conspiracy

TrendMicro also issued a 'technical' report that basically just said 'we think this was the same APT as in Crowdstrike's report' without any discernible discussion of how they came to that conclusion.

I'm not sure you can actually know such efforts ever existed there.

We both know we're talking about /pol/ here, and one of /pol/'s things is that literally anyone disagreeing with the extreme hivemind there for any reason is considered a shill. It's to the point where an honest effort at shilling couldn't be differentiated from trolling, as they'd both be received the same way.

I'd be much more worried about paid posters on some place like Reddit - it's much more mainstream and has a much more credulous population.