US built ‘Cuban Twitter’ to stir unrest (2014)

In retrospect it will seem obvious that every secret services in the world would have taken similar initiative.

We are already familiar with Russian troll Farms and Chinese influencers / censors.

From a military strategy perspective, if we considere those as weapons, it would not be possible to let competing countries access to such capabilities and not to try to develop them.

Since generally weapons need to be tested to evaluate their effectiveness and since the staff needs to be trained, it's probably not the only instance of large scale manipulation launched by the US government.

Finally, purely on a capacity perspective, the work of those is very similar to the services offered by good public relation firms / analytics companies: content / meme creation, fake accounts management, generation of "organic" discussions / interests around a subject. They are already offering their services to the private sector, nothing prevents their contracting by the public sector.

What blatently lacks right now, is counter intelligence and the capacity of detection of such initiatives.

I will conclude with what i believe to be two recent large scale communication campaigns. Note that I don't have any evidence except from their relatively sudden apparition. The support for Johny Depp in his private problems and the various boycott of Chinese products in India.