There’s no denying the pattern — Russia is attacking the credibility of U.S. institutions to create chaos and stir up distrust of our leaders, engineers, and scientists. This video looks at Russian efforts to spread anti-vaccination propaganda and to push for “energy choice,” a sneaky effort to break up the utilities that actually secure our energy grid (from their cyberattacks).
The dangers of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, are the stuff of nightmares — think widespread blackouts, halting of air travel, crippling of the U.S. economy and potential total social breakdown.
Officials have been warning for years that Russia, China, Iran or North Korea could unleash an EMP attack on the U.S. electric grid; or just as scary, one could be caused by a solar flare.
Recognizing the potential devastating effects an EMP would bring, the White House took action this week via an Executive Order from President Trump to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from EMPs, boost detection capabilities and plan for recovery should one occur.
While unleashing an EMP attack would be an indisputable act of war, and bring a swift response from the U.S., it could be a highly effective first strike. Military leaders in adversarial countries know this, and EMP weapons have become part of their planning doctrines, according to a government report.
“It is the policy of the United States to prepare for the effects of EMPs through targeted approaches that coordinate whole-of-government activities and encourage private-sector engagement,” the executive order said.
Hackers are at it again — seeking to disrupt industrial production and cause economic damage in the West through ransomware cyber attacks.
In the latest case, the giant Norwegian aluminum manufacturer Norsk Hydro was hit with a cyberattack that forced it to shut down some plants and operate others manually. These attacks are a far cry from the “election meddling” that has come to dominate our public perception of foreign interference. Rather, they are causing significant direct and indirect financial harm to the targets.
Aluminum prices rose to a 3-month high when news of the attack became public, while Norsk Hyrdo’s stock fell 3.4%.
It’s not yet clear who the perpetrators of the cyberattack were, or whether they succeeded in extracting a ransom payment from Norsk Hyrdo to “unlock” the hacked systems.
“Other cyber attacks have downed electricity grids and transport systems in recent years, and an attack on Italian oil services firm Saipem late last year destroyed more than 300 of the company’s computers.”
Reuters UK
Global aluminum production is dominated by just a few companies, with the 2 largest in China and Russia, and production problems can quickly escalate into disruptions of the global supply chain.
Fear of Russian interference and leverage over Ukraine, Germany and other U.S. allies in Europe is palpable, according to the U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
Gordon Sondland, the senior American diplomat at the EU, spoke of the tension that Russia is creating across the continent, in an interview with Euronews.
Sondland cited the NordStream2 project as one policy area where the U.S. disagrees with some allies — asserting that Europe has other viable energy sources and need not rely on Russian gas, which Russia has been known to curtail supply of in order to exert political pressure.
With the avalanche of Russia-related news this week—the Flynn sentencing hearing, the release of two Senate-commissioned reports on Russian social media meddling, the President’s surprise pull-out of U.S. troops from Syria, the undoing of sanctions on oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s companies, and more—it’s easy to get caught up in the latest developments and lose sight of what the Kremlin and its allies are achieving here.
Like the best Le Carré or Charles McCarry novels, recent news has been so full of interwoven characters and events that it’s nearly impossible to keep it all straight on first read. But revisit it we should, because far from some invented hardboiled espionage thriller, these plot twists are real and we are living in the story.
Russia is engaged in an extensive, multi-faceted, prolonged attack on U.S. institutions and civil society, including our electoral system, our energy infrastructure, our public discourse, and other facets of our economy.
Not only are Vladimir Putin and his government working to undermine American interests, they are going after our allies too: from the U.K. and France to Ukraine, the rest of Eastern Europe, the Baltic states and beyond.
From a 30,000 foot view—which can be deadly over Russian air space—the current Russian campaign is part of their zero-sum view of the world that has existed since at least the start of the Cold War. The West must be diminished so that Russia can rise again. By attacking the pillars of the West, steadily, secretly when possible, Russia can sow chaos and geopolitical turmoil, and use that instability to widen its sphere of influence.
Democracy, personal liberty, a free press, and the rule of law are all anathema to Putin and his oligarch cronies. Those niceties get in the way of the kleptocracy that Putin has taken great care to create and protect over the past two decades. But to feed their corrupt machine, they need economic wins. And per their zero-sum mentality, this means delivering economic losses to their adversaries.
So while 2016 election “meddling” remains a centerpiece of cable news, the Mueller investigation and several Congressional inquiries, we encourage everyone to follow the money and dig deeper into Russia’s ongoing interference in the U.S. economy.
Every day, vital American industries from telecom to energy to agriculture face threats and direct sabotage from Russia and other foreign adversaries—costing American businesses potentially billions of dollars, and robbing American workers of their jobs and financial security.
Alongside its election interference in the U.S. this decade, Russia has:
These attacks on our economic security are similar in nature to ones Russia has carried out against Ukraine and other allies. The playbook is effective and it’s being repeated here, threatening not just our exercise of commerce but our national security as well.
Congress and the Administration must address not just electoral meddling, as it has been, but the totality of Russian interference and the damage it is causing to the U.S. economy.
Today, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a report that addressed the lost economic benefits and job opportunities from recent anti-energy efforts in the U.S., such as New York State’s ban on hydraulic fracturing. The study found over $90 Billion in lost economic activity, 730,000 job opportunities missed, and another $20 Billion in unrealized tax revenue due to delays or cancellations of energy pipelines, power plants and terminals.
NOW CONSIDER THIS: A portion of this sizable economic damage can be attributed to Russian active measures. It’s not just homespun activism, litigation and legislative battles blocking these domestic projects. There is foreign interference too.
Russia has a clear motive to stifle U.S. domestic energy development wherever and however it can; its own economy is overwhelmingly dependent on exporting oil and gas. Russia also has a track record of butting into other countries’ matters around things such as fracking. And it has the wherewithal to finance and carry out influence operations abroad, as we saw most recently in the Mueller indictments of the IRA.
We don’t know yet how much to blame directly or indirectly on the Kremlin —more research is needed, along with more cooperation from social media companies to share evidence of Russian activities—but it could ultimately add up to a substantial percentage of the figures cited by the Chamber.
What’s more: this new study only looked at 15 specific projects and the New York fracking ban. There are numerous other major projects, including the Dakota Access Pipeline and Sabal Trail Pipeline to name just two, that weren’t even included in the Chamber study but saw undeniable Russian interference per a 2018 Congressional report (pdf). So the dollar figure could be higher still.
Do not naively dismiss Russia’s social media meddling as minimal in impact. For starters, as the pair of recent Senate Intelligence Committee reports demonstrated, we are still learning the full extent of the Kremlin’s online operations in 2016. They were “much more comprehensive, calculating and widespread than previously revealed.” And likely there are still more stones unturned.
Not only that, after-the-fact analyses of public debates can underestimate the effect that a well-placed, well-timed message can have on people “in the moment.” We must at least consider that the onslaught of troll and bot messages could have helped sway or cement someone’s opinion on a pipeline project or fracking referendum or, for that matter, other contentious issues like the safety of vaccines.
And, the scale of the Russian social posts, while once pooh-poohed in some corners, has indeed been shown to be large: IRA posts on Facebook and Instagram were shared by 30+ million people, according to the new reports by New Knowledge and the Oxford University Computational Propaganda Research Project
Lost jobs, lost business income, lost tax revenue… these are real economic consequences that have lasting impact. To say nothing of the family and societal turmoil that comes from economic insecurity.
From Kremlin-linked social media posts and television coverage that stirred up negative public sentiment to influence campaigns geared at policymakers to secret funneling of money to protest groups, Russia has been pursuing its own anti-Western agenda with aplomb.
It’s time that Congress and the Administration get serious about exposing the full scale of Russian interference… and stopping it.
The Citizens Against Foreign Interference have taken our fight to Change.org to demand action from Congress on the issues we’ve been posting about for months here and on Facebook. Read on below for what we’re asking…
Click here to sign the petition now.
Every day, vital American industries from telecom to energy to agriculture face threats and direct sabotage from Russia and other foreign adversaries—costing American businesses potentially BILLIONS of dollars, and robbing American workers of their jobs and financial security.
While Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections and the Mueller investigation tend to dominate the news, there’s MUCH more to the story. So, as Congress and the special counsel carry out their probes of Russian influence on the Trump campaign and presidency, we ask that they go further.
Beyond election interference, Russia and China have:
As you can see, it is a lengthy and serious set of topics that jeopardizes not only our economic security but also our national security.
These things are all happening beneath our eyes right now, often simultaneously, but neither Congress nor the Administration has investigated the totality of this interference and how it is damaging the U.S. economy.
For the sake of our economy and national security, we call on the relevant committee leadership in the new Congress to fully investigate and expose any such foreign influence operations or threats—to root out the sponsors, the perpetrators, and the funding networks that funnel money for these operations.
Click here to sign the petition now. And please, spread the word.
What motivates us at CAFI? Why have taken up the fight against foreign interference? This video gives you a quick introduction to the cause and why it’s so important, in under two minutes. Please watch and share.
At a bipartisan event on Tuesday that included Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Ron Johnson (R-WI), the Alliance for Securing Democracy launched its Authoritarian Interference Tracker.
The new tool will help expose the Kremlin’s online interference and help the public to better understand the threat.
Noted Johnson, “Our first line of defense is exposure. We over-classify information way too much. Exposure is the best defense we have. If we don’t respond to Vladimir Putin, he’ll take another step…and then another step.”
Added Shaheen, “The threat here is trying to divide us, trying to pit people against one another…It’s about putting out information that makes people doubt the news and doubt their government.”
The Alliance for Securing Democracy has cataloged Kremlin fingerprints on over 400 incidents of interference in 42 countries. Beyond bots and troll farms, the toolbox includes information operations, cyber-attacks, political subversion, strategic economic coercion, and maligned finance.
Do you agree with the Alliance for Securing Democracy that getting ahead of the threat will require Euro-Atlantic institutions to develop robust multilateral mechanisms to identify vulnerabilities and to coordinate rapid responses and effective deterrents?
The U.S. government is finally bringing its full force to bear against Russia’s heretofore largely unchecked campaign to meddle in the 2018 midterm elections.
In the past week, the government has fired off three public broadsides at the Russian government, most notably with the Justice Department’s indictment against Russian woman working for a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Prosecutors allege Elena Khusyaynova managed a $35 million budget to fund social media trolling operations as part of a years-long campaign to sow discord among Americans. Same as the 13 trolls charged by the Robert Mueller investigation, the operations Khusyaynova oversaw as chief accountant worked both sides of the political aisle as they tried to ramp up distrust of the political system.
The trolls picked hot-button issues like race relations, guns, immigration, women and tried to whip up passions on either side. It’s the same M.O. they use to create resistance against pipeline projects from North Dakota to Florida.
The charge against her, appropriately, is conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Then, the U.S. Cyber Command let it be known that it is identifying and tracking individual Russian trolls with an overseas cyber-operation billed as the first of its kind. What’s interesting is that the government made what should be a covert operation overt. There’s a reason – they want the public and the Russians to know.
The underlying reasons are different, though. For the American public, it’s a way to demonstrate that the government is acting and not sitting back. For the Russians, it’s an attempt at deterrence – warning that there are real-world risks for their online actions against the U.S. And it’s a good start.
Finally, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton fired a shot across the Kremlin’s bow from inside Moscow. During a trip to meet with Russian counterparts, he told a Moscow radio station that Russia’s interference in the 2016 election had backfired by creating distrust of Russia.
Bolton essentially called it a classic case of blowback – when covert operations go bad, they cause the opposite of the intended effect and “blow back” on the perpetrator. In his typically blunt manner, he said: “Don’t mess with U.S. elections.
The sum of all these developments is that it’s clear Russia has not abandoned its plans to interfere with our body politic, the same as it is doing around the world.
So much for the story that there was no evidence of Russian trolling in the midterm elections. We said it back then – a thief changes nothing but tactics.
