THE MOST IMPORTANT DOCUMENT MOST PEOPLE WILL NEVER READ

The "Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence United States Senate on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Vol 2: Russia's Use of Social Media"  may be the most important document you ever read, or ignore.

Via Roll Call, we get these observations on the report:

Russians masqueraded as Americans, and used targeted advertising to falsify news articles. The goal was create doubt, not certainty. At the direction of the Kremlin, the goal was to harm Hillary Clinton and to bolster Donald Trump's chances of winning the presidency in 2016.

The committee made clear that Americans themselves need to both wake up and smarten up. Only by being more sophisticated and intelligent social media users will voters truly protect themselves and our elections in the years to come.

The committee reported that a single computer in Russia pushed out hundreds of both pro- and anti-Colin Kaepernick posts virtually simultaneously ... Why rile up Americans on both sides of an emotional racial controversy? It’s “like arming both sides of a civil war” before you have to deal with it yourself, a witness told Senate investigators.  

Using techniques the KGB tried on Soviet citizens during the Cold War, the committee described the hallmarks of the Russian disinformation campaign in 2016, including:  

* Messages to erode Americans’ trust in investigative and political journalists; 

* An emphasis on speed to win the first impression of readers, which is always the most resilient; 

* Topics designed to exploit racial divisions; and 

* A volume so enormous that overwhelmed audiences can no longer discern what’s real from what’s not. 

What makes it all worse is that almost all of the information was in bulk and deceptive, or as one committee witness called it, a “firehose of falsehood.” The goal, again, was to make sure Russia got what it wanted: Donald Trump in the White House.

None of this is new to anyone paying attention. Unfortunately, the people who are not paying attention are the ones being sucked in by Russia's cyber war misinformation campaigns. 

They also won't be reading the report, or this blog. 

- Mark