Russian Info, Cyber and Disinformation (Jan-June 2017).

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia's military admits for the first time the scale of its information warfare.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/39062663#

[AdamG]

Russia's military has admitted for the first time the scale of its information warfare effort, saying it was significantly expanded post-Cold War.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russian "information troops" were involved in "intelligent, effective propaganda", but he did not reveal details about the team or its targets.
The admission follows repeated allegations of cyberattacks against Western nations by the Russian state.
Nato is reported to be a top target.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39062663

[davidbfpo]

From a 2016 post by Outlaw09: From the archives: the Soviet military strategy of maskirovka dates back decades:http://warontherocks.com/2016/05/a-d...ling-red-army/

From AdamG in 2016: Maskirovka’ Is Russian Secret War

Sneaky tactics are an old Russian tradition:

The term is maskirovka, which in Russian literally means “something masked.” Maskirovka has its roots in the word “masquerade,” a synonym for “disguise.” It is a tactic as old as the Trojan horse … and a favorite of the Russian military.

“The Russians embrace maskirovka because it works,” said James Miller, managing editor of The Interpreter, a daily online journal that translates media from the Russian press and blogosphere into English for use by analysts and policymakers.

The staff at The Interpreter has tracked numerous examples of what they say are maskirovka tactics, Miller told War is Boring. What’s more, what they have found aligns with intelligence reports that NATO has released.

Link:https://warisboring.com/maskirovka-i...fb6#.ylwgw6vk8

[AdamG]

From a 2016 post by Outlaw09: From the archives: the Soviet military strategy of maskirovka dates back decades:http://warontherocks.com/2016/05/a-d...ling-red-army/

From AdamG in 2016: Maskirovka’ Is Russian Secret War

Sneaky tactics are an old Russian tradition:
Link:https://warisboring.com/maskirovka-i...fb6#.ylwgw6vk8

Russia, however, has a history of operating with a more complete inclusion of elements of political power and influence as well as Operational Art that ties combined arms to campaign objectives.# It is so important to Russian doctrine, they have used and continue to use the term, Maskirovka—the art of deception—to elevate the complete set of actions and conditions that fall short of war that enables battlefield victories to be decided before tanks and infantry close in battle.# It is Maskirovka, and the complementary technological changes to the character of warfare now and in the future, that make Russia the significant resurging threat to regional stability, NATO, and the U.S.#

http://www.realcleardefense.com/arti...on_110282.html

[OUTLAW 09]

Two Swedish Neo-Nazis charged over refugee home blast 'received military training in Russia' shortly before act.
https://www.thelocal.se/20170609/got...ing-in-russia#

[OUTLAW 09]

http://www.realcleardefense.com/arti...on_110282.html

NOW this is where the social media analysis starts to get extremely interesting....this social media analyst is doing some private work that equals what some top IT firms are doing...well actually not doing....and Twitter refuses to engage in this tzpe of public research on how twitter is being gamed for Russian info warfare

This contains data going back to the beginning of /r/The_Donald, total of 2,526,692 comments from 80,708 threads.

(It's still just a slice of the full content, but that would have taken weeks to download.)

It'll be a while before I have all of it, but this graph does a decent job of highlighting the major topics of discussion the last 3 months.

The vocabulary of /r/The_Donald users has changed over time - alt-right jargon has increased in frequency, for example.

This figure shows overall activity. It's what you'd expect - 24/7, but substantially lower activity when people in the USA are asleep.

[OUTLAW 09]

The time pattern is similar if we only include posts that contain the word "Hillary".

I looked at the timing patterns for other popular terms (in over 9000 posts in my dataset = "popular"). Here's "wall".

"Russia", "globalist", "Trump", and "cuck" show a similar pattern. Nothing special.

So do "Podesta" and "WikiLeaks". Oh, wait. I lied. Something's different here.

[OUTLAW 09]

Here's all nine plots side by side for comparison. "WikiLeaks" and "Podesta" show an odd burst of morning activity which the others lack.

Here is the theory let me see if it holds....

Timing. Wikileaks links are being placed on /r/The_Donald at the beginning of the US work day for folks to read while slacking off at work.

I kind of wanted to find another suspicious thing, so I started looking at the users linking Wikileaks and I found another suspicious thing.

Meet "Bad_Harambe", although you probably don't want to. They posted this gem a few months back: