It's kind of funny. At first I was going to say, what do you expect - a line on his CV 'worked as a medium for US propaganda'? But bizarrely enough, that's completely accurate. Michael Weiss is editor in chief at the 'Institute of Modern Russia.' It's part of Radio Free Europe [2], which is literally a propaganda outlet owned by the US government.

But the reason I decided to look this up is something much more simple than these facts. That Atlantic article reeks of state propaganda, and if it's not sending your propaganda detector to 11, you really need to get it tuned a bit - especially in this day and age. More often than not, you're not going to be able to find a link on somebody's CV or Wiki or whatever directly tying them to state interests, but I mean this just isn't how "normal" people think, behave, or write. It's like he's desperately trying to convince you of a position, by making you believe that thinking otherwise would be absurd. Note the stark similarities in style and rhetoric to something like this [3] piece from the NYtimes in the leadup to the Iraq War.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Modern_Russia

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Libert...

[3] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...