Cyber-campaign aims to divide US
UNITED STATES: Thousands of Kremlin-linked Twitter accounts were churning out material designed to splinter America along political, racial and religious lines yesterday - even as tech executives arrived at Capitol Hill to field questions about Russian meddling in last year’s US presidential election.
An analysis of 600 Twitter accounts linked by the German Marshall Fund, a think tank, to the Russian government has provided the most vivid insight yet into how the Kremlin is seeking to use social media to undermine Western societies.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s billionaire founder, has recognised the scale of the problem, admitting that he was wrong to dismiss as ‘‘crazy’’ the idea that Russian mis- information peddled on social media swayed the election.
This week the Russian Twitter accounts latched on to a racially tinged row - begun by President Donald Trump - over whether American football players should kneel during the national anthem as a protest over perceived police brutality against African-Americans, pumping out hashtags such as #boycottnfl and #takeaknee.
On Thursday they turned their attention to a story involving former first lady Michelle Obama, who became the target of a conservative backlash when she declared that ‘‘any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice’’.
The accounts also pushed messages with the hashtag #Maga - Make America Great Again, Trump’s campaign slogan.
US officials say Russia is applying a Cold War propaganda tactic. Bret Schafer, of the German Marshall Fund, said Russian trolls had demonstrated a ‘‘desire to latch on to anything divisive’’.
An analysis of Russian tweets being directed at Twitter users in Germany showed that the most common hashtag was #afd, a reference to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which won nearly 13 per cent of the vote in last Sunday’s election, enough to become the first far-right party to sit in the Bundestag for 50 years.
In recent months the Russianlinked accounts have also spread content promoting independence for Catalonia and Kurdistan, and have even lobbied for Texas to secede from the US. Last month they sought to intensify calls by alt-right pundits and websites for the removal of H R McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, alleging that he was a puppet of Jewish interests.
The Russian accounts have also frequently churned out anti-EU and anti-Nato material.
The revelations have left Silicon Valley’s most prominent companies on the back foot in Washington, with Twitter executives due to meet investigators for the Senate and House intelligence committees. They were expected to be asked about what they had known about Russia’s alleged attempts to meddle with the US election, and when they knew it.
Representatives of Twitter, Google and Facebook have been asked to appear in public before the Senate intelligence committee on November 1. Facebook and Twitter are thought to have already provided evidence to Robert Mueller, head of the special counsel investigation into Russia’s election interference.
Facebook, which is used regularly by two-thirds of American adults, admitted this month that Russian propagandists had spent at least US$100,000 on election advertisements on its platform last year - enough to reach tens of millions of voters. It also emerged that Russian operatives used the site to organise protest rallies in America, hoping to incite antiimmigrant sentiment.
Recent ‘‘fake news’’ stories include claims that US troops have allied with Islamic State fighters in Iraq. - The Times