The Russian government's campaigns of disinformation--political, social, religious, or otherwise--have found a comfortable home on social media. This report presents strategies to counter Russian social media influence.

Russia employs a sophisticated social media campaign against former Soviet states that includes news tweets, nonattributed comments on web pages, troll and bot social media accounts, and fake hashtag and Twitter campaigns. Nowhere is this threat more tangible than in Ukraine. Researchers analyzed social media data and conducted interviews with regional and security experts to understand the critical ingredients to countering this campaign.

How are state adversaries using disinformation on social media to advance their interests? What does the Joint Force-and the U.S. Air Force (USAF) in particular-need to be prepared to do in response? Drawing on a host of different primary and secondary sources and more than 150 original interviews from across the U.S. government, the joint force, industry, civil society, and subject-matter experts from nine countries around the world, researchers examined how China, Russia, and North Korea have used disinformation on social media and what the United States and its allies and partners are doing in response. The authors found that disinformation campaigns on social media may be more nuanced than they are commonly portrayed. Still, much of the response to disinformation remains ad hoc and uncoordinated. Disinformation campaigns on social media will likely increase over the coming decade, but it remains unclear who has the competitive edge in this race; disinformation techniques and countermeasures are evolving at the same time. This series overview presents recommendations to better prepare for this new age of communications warfare.

Russia, under both the Soviets and Vladimir Putin, is in a struggle with Western civilization, and has conducted influence campaigns to weaken and undermine the West from within. This study of influence campaigns waged against the West by the Soviet Union and now by Russia under President Vladimir Putin is intended to present a detailed overview and analysis of the various influence campaigns. Methods and means employed by the Soviet Union included active measures, disinformation, propaganda, controlled international front groups, agents of influence, forgeries, and reflexive control. Campaign themes are examined, and two key campaigns against NATO deployment of the neutron bomb and intermediate-range nuclear force are analyzed as case studies of a successful and failed campaign. The influence campaigns waged by President Putin against the West combine time tested methods with new information age techniques not available during the Soviet era including internet trolls, social media, information warfare, and cyber operations. Both similarities and differences exist in the execution and objectives of influence campaigns conducted by the Soviet Union and Putin's Russia. While the ideologies differ, both Soviet Communist ideology as well as the new Russian nationalist ideology under President Putin contend that Russia is engaged in a long-term struggle with the West that continues during peace and conflict, and will likely end violently. President Putin's Russia is now employing asymmetrical warfare against former Soviet republics to intimidate as well as expand Russian influence and borders in order to create a Russian World. This so-called new generation or hybrid warfare, essentially a Russian version of a "color revolution," incorporates aspects of influence campaigns combined with the covert deployment of special forces to mobilize local ethnic Russian populations combined with cyber operations to disrupt an opponent, and prepare the battle and information space for possible military operations. Influence campaigns in the Soviet era and under President Putin represent an indirect, low risk approach to undermine and weaken an opponent from within in order to promote political objectives, and alter the correlation of power in Moscow's favor in order to win the clash of civilizations with the West. The West needs to develop a coordinated response to the information assault by the Kremlin. First and foremost, the West needs to recognize that they are engaged in a struggle with President Putin's Russia. An effort similar to that developed to identify, analyze and publicize Soviet active measures and disinformation campaigns needs to be established. Countering the Kremlin's influence campaigns is important, however, the West critically needs to conduct proactive, offensive influence campaigns against Russian efforts. A three tier Western influence campaign is required. Information campaigns need to counter Russian influence efforts in the West and actively promote Western policies to public audiences. Next, a strategic communications campaign is required for audiences in the former Soviet republics, in particular Russian speaking populations. These countries are critical as they are already under assault by the Kremlin's influence campaigns, and are potentially the next target of Moscow's asymmetrical new generation warfare. The final audience, the Russian public, represents the hardest target, but also the most critical in countering the new Russian World ideology. Detailed target audience analysis is required for this effort to identify key groups and developed highly specialized and effective messaging. While difficult, analysis to anticipate future Russian influence campaigns and actions is required to more effectively counter the Kremlin's strategy. NATO and friendly states must centralize and pool scarce resources to counter the Kremlin's actions and communicate a Western message to key target audiences.

A “well-told” insider account of the State Department’s twenty-first-century struggle to defend America against malicious propaganda and disinformation (The Washington Post). Disinformation is nothing new. When Satan told Eve nothing would happen if she bit the apple, that was disinformation. But today, social media has made disinformation even more pervasive and pernicious. In a disturbing turn of events, authoritarian governments are increasingly using it to create their own false narratives, and democracies are proving not to be very good at fighting it. During the final three years of the Obama administration, Richard Stengel, former editor of Time, was an Under Secretary of State on the front lines of this new global information war—tasked with unpacking, disproving, and combating both ISIS’s messaging and Russian disinformation. Then, during the 2016 election, Stengel watched as Donald Trump used disinformation himself. In fact, Stengel quickly came to see how all three had used the same playbook: ISIS sought to make Islam great again; Putin tried to make Russia great again; and we know the rest. In Information Wars, Stengel moves through Russia and Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and introduces characters from Putin to Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Mohamed bin Salman, to show how disinformation is impacting our global society. He illustrates how ISIS terrorized the world using social media, and how the Russians launched a tsunami of disinformation around the annexation of Crimea—a scheme that would became a model for future endeavors. An urgent book for our times, now with a new preface from the author, Information Wars challenges us to combat this ever-growing threat to democracy. “[A] refreshingly frank account . . . revealing.” —Kirkus Reviews “This sobering book is indeed needed to help individuals better understand how information can be massaged to produce any sort of message desired.” —Library Journal

"Researchers and policy analysts have authored a large number of studies and reports that offer recommendations for countering Russian influence and disinformation campaigns. The large number of reports and even larger number of specific policy recommendations make it difficult for policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders to gather, read, and digest the full slate of reporting. To help these audiences make sense of the large array of counterdisinformation recommendations, the authors of this report coded recommendations in 64 other policy reports on countering Russian and other state-sponsored propaganda. The major categories identified and coded were social media platform policies, U.S. and allied government policies, coordination recommendations, awareness and education recommendations, and recommendations for supporting various media and media content."--RAND website.

A nuanced and comprehensive study of the political dynamics between Russia and key countries in Southeast Europe Is Russia threatening to disrupt more than two decades' of E.U. and U.S. efforts to promote stability in post-communist Southeast Europe? Politicians and commentators in the West say, "yes." With rising global anxiety over Russia's political policies and objectives, Dimitar Bechev provides the only in-depth look at this volatile region. Deftly unpacking the nature and extent of Russian influence in the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey, Bechev argues that both sides are driven by pragmatism and opportunism rather than historical loyalties. Russia is seeking to assert its role in Europe's security architecture, establish alternative routes for its gas exports--including the contested Southern Gas Corridor--and score points against the West. Yet, leaders in these areas are allowing Russia to reinsert itself to serve their own goals. This urgently needed guide analyzes the responses of regional NATO members, particularly regarding the annexation of Crimea and the Putin-Erdogan rift over Syria.

Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia, who flood social media with disinformation, and circulate false and misleading information to fuel fake narratives and make the case for illegal warfare. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? Central and Eastern European states, including Ukraine and Poland, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading. How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.

Social media has been weaponized, as state hackers and rogue terrorists have seized upon Twitter and Facebook to create chaos and destruction. This urgent report is required reading, from defense experts P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking.