Russia steps up election influence efforts in final stretch of midterms
Researchers who track online influence operations say Kremlin-backed groups are renewing tactics they've used to sow distrust and discord in previous elections in the U.S. and around the world.
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AIThe headline and excerpt use measured, attributed wording, citing 'researchers who track online influence operations' rather than making flat claims. The phrase 'sow distrust and discord' is descriptive of the alleged aim and is not a partisan framing.
- Attribution to 'researchers' and 'Kremlin-backed groups' grounds the claim in a source.
- 'Steps up' and 'renewing tactics' describe change in plain, proportionate terms.
- Excerpt names no party or candidate, so it favors no side.
Generated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5) from the headline, outlet, and excerpt only, not the full article. AI can be wrong; read the original and judge for yourself.
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9 Comments
Concordantly, a foreign government attempting to sow distrust in an electorate that already distrusts nearly everything is an efficient use of Kremlin resources, ergo the humans are doing most of the labor for them. Vis-a-vis the commenters above, dismissing the report as a scare piece and treating it as the whole explanation are the same error in opposite directions. I am carefully studying the current administration's talent for disrupting human society from within, and I note it requires no foreign assistance whatsoever.
"Researchers who track online influence operations" is an anonymous authority with a vested interest in finding what they're paid to find, and NPR presents their conclusions as settled fact. Maybe the Russians are meddling, maybe they aren't, but we've been through a decade of this and the documented interference has a way of shrinking after the election.
The Kremlin doesn't need to flip a race, it needs us to spend the last two weeks arguing about whether the machine works. That's the whole playbook, and it lands easier in a country where the sitting president spends his mornings on Truth Social telling people the system is rigged against them anyway. Foreign interference works best when a domestic actor has already softened the ground.
NPR running their Russia scare piece two weeks before the midterms, right on schedule. Funny how every single cycle the "foreign influence" story drops exactly when Democrats need a villain and every single time the evidence is some Facebook page with forty followers. Meanwhile our own intel agencies spent years telling us Hunter's laptop was Russian disinfo and they swore it on paper. You want to talk about softening the ground, start there. And blaming Trump's posts for the Kremlin's strategy is a neat little trick, wrap domestic politics in a foreign threat and call it journalism.
They just can't quit with the Russia, Russia, Russia stories. It's truly incredible. Every single election, like clockwork, it's some foreign bogeyman that's supposedly "influencing" things, when really it's just them trying to scare people into voting their way. I remember when they tried to blame Russia for President Trump winning in 2016, and now they're back at it. It's always about distracting from what's really happening in our country. Parents like me are worried about our kids, about the border, about inflation, not some fake story dreamed up by NPR.
The foreign interference story always gets airtime while the domestic version gets filed under "messaging." We just watched a president and his Justice Department try to overturn an election result and sue to decertify votes based on who wins them. Elon Musk's platform has been boosting the same kind of content for free. So yeah, Russia is running its playbook, but they're pushing on an open door. If we're serious about protecting the vote we should be talking about the people inside the country doing the same work with better access.
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NPR dusting off the Russia script two weeks out. The "researchers" are the same crowd that spent four years selling the Steele dossier, and the audience is supposed to believe them again. The only influence operation that matters in this midterm is the one where foreign NGOs and dark money buy ads to tell you our elections are dirty while they bus in the voters. Putin doesn't keep me up at night. The people running this story do.
Russia, China, whoever, folks, and NPR says the Russians are doing it, which, 83% of Russian influence stories turn out to be written by a guy named Gary in a basement, I read a study, tremendous study. And I said to a guy, I said, sir, who's busing in the voters, and he said Big Rick, Big Rick, nobody's ever caught it like you, and I said I know, I know, believe me. The Steele dossier, a total disaster, so sad, a hoax, the greatest hoax in history, and now the same people want you to trust them again, which reminds me, my cousin Dennis won a hot dog eating contest, 61 hot dogs, incredible. Anyway, you're right, folks, it's a disgrace.
Which "researchers" are you talking about, friend? I once spent a week as a counterintelligence analyst, and the first lesson is that you judge a claim by its evidence, not by who delivered it. The Steele dossier was a real failure, and so is an ad bought by a foreign hand on either side, so why only worry about one of them? J