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Comment by H8crilA | Hacker News Reader

Why is it that the KGB is not interested in surfacing facts about simar American or European disinformation operations, which surely also are happening? I mean why don't we hear about those?

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I would bet, in autocratic, tyrannical countries which have history of disinforming and controlling info access if their citizens; those citizens are much more resistant to disinformation. They are cynical and question what they are told.

The USA population is extremely nieave and trusting.

Freedom of press and of speech have lot to do with it as well. It's hard to disinform populace who's information sources are controlled by your adversary

That’s a really good point: like having a degree of immunity through prolonged exposure! Though couldn’t all that disinformation also mean that they eventually are bludgeoned into believing in whatever version of ‘reality’ has been constantly presented/ represented (or that they just simply ‘switch off’)? …reminds me of the idea of the ‘Overton Window’: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

That’s an interesting question. I’m sure as you say that there probably are such operations (…do you have articles/information you can find to link to?), but perhaps they are disguised differently, more effectively countered or perhaps subtler/different in nature? I would guess: firstly the KGB doesn’t exist any more, its successor (for the Russian Federation) is the ‘FSB’, but I would imagine that there’s a lot of crossover between the two in terms of tactics/specialities? (…esp. given the president started his career in the KGB…). Agencies on all ‘sides’ always have used various disinformation campaigns historically at one time or another (ideas of P.R./public relations initially concretized by Edward Bernays?: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays ). You could cite that the CIA would sometimes fund ‘soft power’ media like artists/films/music etc. that perhaps ‘worked’ in different ways, whilst KGB famously planted eg. fake news articles/plants to journalists etc.? The USSR seemed to excel at finding weak points in political/civic culture/society and exploiting those pressure points? Maybe the countering of these types of tactics is part of the idea behind isolating Russia’s internet, as China has more or less effectively done - also this could be an exportable commodity to authoritarian regimes - you can see the attraction perhaps to eg. customers of NSO group …counter to the old quote from Bill Clinton about ‘nailing jello to a wall’. The Russian Federations’ political model differs, perhaps in degree at least, to eg. the U.S.’s in that although a ‘representative democracy’, there is maybe a higher degree of integration, even if that is through networks of money/power/influence/intimidation etc. between the state and media and a higher acceptance of suppression of counter-narratives? The USA/Europe’s strength is partly built on freedom of information/ travel/ diversity/ flow of goods/services I would argue, but that can also be (rather cleverly) used against them in a kind of low-level assymetric ‘warfare’. A lot of ordinary people on both sides have neither the time nor will (and maybe effective education?) to try and separate facts from fiction basically and so these types of ops succeed... So: a difference in operational ‘philosophy’ and a historical/cultural background of different areas of ‘success’ to draw on maybe?

> American or European disinformation operations, which surely also are happening?

Are they? (I would tend to believe they indeed are, by the way ...)

It's called TV and movies, which the rest of the world eats up. People in and out of America need to wake up and realize that Hollywood is mostly psychological warfare.

I'm sure there are other more covert disinformation campaigns, but we can't ignore the elephant in the room.

Content as psy-ops. That's a thought ...

You're not up on your conspiracy theories I see: https://thegreatwork208716197.wordpress.com/2020/03/09/%E2%9...

I always appreciate a pointer ... :)

(The link is actually interesting, in a convoluted way ...)

You gotta do your reading just so you can stay involved in conversations. You know, at parties. Remember those?

> You know, at parties. Remember those?

Ah! Yes! So-called "social interaction"!

Yeah, I vaguely remember :)

Is this a new concept to you? Cool!

offers you red pill

Here’s a good starter article: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/op...

hesitantly takes the pill ... :)

... interesting article, appreciated - though it speaks more of how CIA and the like operate to have themselves be portrayed favourably ...

... that's more good PR than psy-ops!

How does this square with Hollywood's bending towards China? Or, the fact that Hollywood is fully independent from the US government?

Great question ...

(In fact, I've been waiting for the entrance into the worldwide "mainstream" of big Chinese productions ...

... ostensibly showcasing different values / agendas ...)

It's not like the US government pursued, investigated, or ran smear campaigns against people in the entertainment industry, right?

It doesn't. Hollywood is private and profit-seeking. They will soon start paying more attention to the demands of the Chinese government than they ever did to the US government. Because that's where the future growth in revenue is.

No. Europeans / US seek to convince people of their ideology which is called propaganda (democracy, human rights, climate change, etc.) They don't launch offensive operations with the sole goal of destroying the ability to have a conversation around the above (disinformation) and convince people there is no truth.

The fact people think everyone behaves the same way is, in a large way, a big victory for authoritarian govs trying to convince people this is the case.

After all, if everyone is guilty, no one is.

> They don't launch offensive operations with the sole goal of destroying the ability to have a conversation around the above

Maybe not the US government itself, but American corporations and various political and corporate interest groups do literally this all the time.

Yes, but it's not coming from the government. Key distinction.

Should there be stronger laws about dodgy private PR firms running disinfo and smear campaigns? Yes. Should platforms be held more responsible for not allowing their networks to be so easily gamed? Yes. But that is a separate matter.

And, also, as stated below, use "content" / culture to project and persuade as per their values ...

> ffensive operations with the sole goal of destroying the ability to have a conversation

This here being the differentiating factor here, indeed.-

There's a difference between attacking a rival political position, and attacking the concepts of truth and shared objective reality. Authoritarians want to spread cynicism and nihilism so their populations won't one day stop tolerating their corruption and oppression and demand political agency.

It's literally a life or death conflict for them. If the whole of Russia or China wakes up tomorrow and demands free and fair elections, it's game over.

> If the whole of Russia or China wakes up tomorrow and demands free and fair elections, it's game over.

I've often seriously wondered about this ...

Would they not just as well be gassed, fired upon, ie. have the full brunt of their respective militaries turned upon them for the sake of "public order" or, as China would have it "Social Harmony"? Would they not just get "harmonized"?

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