Russia’s roulette

The alarming evidence of Russia’s involvement in the U.S. presidential election continues to grow.

First, Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, accused Russia of interfering with the election, citing WikiLeaks’ release of hacked information during the campaign.

Now, two teams of independent researchers have found that Russia was using a sophisticated propaganda campaign to spread misleading articles — fake news — online to undermine Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The researchers used analytics tools to trace the origins of social media posts and mapped connections among accounts that mysteriously kept delivering synchronized messages. They discovered that many of these accounts belonged to controlled, Russian-backed networks.

As frightening as it is to imagine that Russia successfully interfered with the U.S. electoral process, it’s very possible.

The U.S. government doesn’t have many tools for detecting or fighting foreign propaganda. Americans are more credulous than they might be if we had experience with authoritarian governments; a recent Stanford study found that a large majority of U.S. students can’t tell the difference between real and fake news. Our social media platforms — where an increasing percentage of Americans are finding their news — are designed to boost company profitability, not to educate the citizenry.

Congress needs to investigate Russia’s election involvement, and our security agencies need to improve our technological defenses against foreign propaganda. A cyberwar with a foreign power may not involve guns and missiles, but it can still inflict great damage.