I believe I speak for all of Reddit when I say God bless the CIA and their never-ending mission to serve to the benefit of all humankind.
Russia won parts of the information war online for so long because they threw out falsehoods and the only response was short denials of rebuttals. Those rebuttals were of course based on actual intelligence but not as impactful.
The new approach by western intelligence has really shown Russian disinformation for what it is. They accurately stated all of Russia’s pre war planning, and I’m sure the war would have started a few days earlier had they not specified the actual date, forcing a delay.
The first thing that I was thinking when I saw that in this conflict so much of the gained intelligence info was published was… doesn’t it endanger the information sources?
I mean the Russians are stupid but not that stupid. I was assuming that’s why you normally don’t publish it, because then you will able to use this specific source again, without it you know… being dead.
If it’s public then it’s no secret, it’s information used as a weapon… or propaganda.
I’d say that what’s so unusual about the invasion of Ukraine is that we had (and still have) to deal with a lot of propaganda, a lot more than usual. We were fed information like “Russian troops are fleeing” or “Putin is about to be ousted by a revolution”, not to mention all the falso information about ineffective Russian weapons and heroic actions by Ukrainians, or even how the EU should accept Ukraine membership without question.
I think that the UK/US was really afraid that the opinion wouldn’t support opposition to Russia, so they gave everything to promote hostility, even if I don’t think it was needed. Quite often it reminded me of the propaganda between Germany and France before and during WW1. Intelligence services and the medias did everything they could to deshumanize the Russian people as a whole (not just Putin) and to create insane expectations about the end of the crisis. Now there are people who really think that the economic sanctions can destroy Putin’s current regime and that Ukraine will suddenly become a model democracy that will join NATO and the EU for a bright future.
My only hope is that such idealistic visions don’t turn the world geopolitics into a new cold war.
4 comments
I believe I speak for all of Reddit when I say God bless the CIA and their never-ending mission to serve to the benefit of all humankind.
Russia won parts of the information war online for so long because they threw out falsehoods and the only response was short denials of rebuttals. Those rebuttals were of course based on actual intelligence but not as impactful.
The new approach by western intelligence has really shown Russian disinformation for what it is. They accurately stated all of Russia’s pre war planning, and I’m sure the war would have started a few days earlier had they not specified the actual date, forcing a delay.
The first thing that I was thinking when I saw that in this conflict so much of the gained intelligence info was published was… doesn’t it endanger the information sources?
I mean the Russians are stupid but not that stupid. I was assuming that’s why you normally don’t publish it, because then you will able to use this specific source again, without it you know… being dead.
If it’s public then it’s no secret, it’s information used as a weapon… or propaganda.
I’d say that what’s so unusual about the invasion of Ukraine is that we had (and still have) to deal with a lot of propaganda, a lot more than usual. We were fed information like “Russian troops are fleeing” or “Putin is about to be ousted by a revolution”, not to mention all the falso information about ineffective Russian weapons and heroic actions by Ukrainians, or even how the EU should accept Ukraine membership without question.
I think that the UK/US was really afraid that the opinion wouldn’t support opposition to Russia, so they gave everything to promote hostility, even if I don’t think it was needed. Quite often it reminded me of the propaganda between Germany and France before and during WW1. Intelligence services and the medias did everything they could to deshumanize the Russian people as a whole (not just Putin) and to create insane expectations about the end of the crisis. Now there are people who really think that the economic sanctions can destroy Putin’s current regime and that Ukraine will suddenly become a model democracy that will join NATO and the EU for a bright future.
My only hope is that such idealistic visions don’t turn the world geopolitics into a new cold war.