Event Highlights: Russian Influence Operations in the Digital Age
By Aislinn O’Brien, Candidate for Bachelors of the Arts in International Relations and Political Science
On October 18th, the Center for the Study of Europe welcomed Dr. Alina Polyakova, a fellow at the Brookings Institute and a Professor at Johns Hopkins, to give a lecture on “Russian Influence Operations in the Digital Age”. Polyakova characterized Russian influence campaigns as a form of Russian political warfare that are unique insofar as they are multi-vector and multi-year. At the same time, Polyakova pushed back against the widely-accepted conception of Russian political influence operations targeting political power and changes in the United States as a new phenomenon. Rather, Polyakova provided several examples of Russian influence in United States politics throughout history. She dates the existence of “active measures” including influence campaigns by Russia in the U.S. back to the days of the KGB. For example, Russia has continually supported U.S. conspiracy theorists and broadly supported social phenomena which they viewed as driving division in the U.S. Russian influence campaigns in the past undermined support for MLK by supporting media that painted him as an “Uncle Tom”, among other negative characterizations.
Polyakova also then moved on to discuss how the use of the intelligence community by Russia has changed throughout recent history and why Russia has put so much emphasis on utilizing their intelligence community as the means to access the ends of various manifestations of political influence. These practices have become even more popular under Putin’s rule, beginning in 2000, according to Polyakova. Whereas the intelligence community was fairly decentralized in Russia under Yeltsin, Putin has reconsolidated the Russian intelligence community and brought it more firmly under the power of the government, to the point where it is now almost merged with the executive branch. She explains that this is a result of Russia reckoning that influence is a game of hearts and minds and that its comparative advantage in gaining influence exists best through its use of influence operations, not through traditional economic or political means. Having recognized this, Russia has moved its efforts to “digital disinformation”, using tactics such as “firehosing”, which refers to spreading a large amount of information they view as beneficial to Russian interests and meant to destabilize, regardless of whether it is true or not, perhaps even especially information which is false. Russian cyberwarfare has impacted support for political parties, individual candidates, and according to Polyakova, can even cause more tangible impacts such as blacking out powergrids, as has happened in Ukraine.
Unfortunately, she explained, this threat will likely only increase as we move into the future. In her view, we are headed for a “cambrian explosion” in technology, in which the digital means Russia and other countries could use for influence will grow in number and in variety. She believes the phenomenon of “deepfakes” is a frightening glimpse into what the future may hold. However, she views this future as a landscape of both more risk and more opportunity. As more types of influence operations come into existence, there are perhaps more ways the U.S. and other countries can intervene to mitigate the impact of influence campaigns. Polyakova also believes there are some steps the U.S. and others could already take to reduce the threat of these campaigns, including doing away with shell companies used to generate money for these campaigns in the U.S. and inspiring other countries to take similar steps through soft power. At the end of the day, she contended the future holds increased risk, but also offers the opportunity for increased defense against influence. All in all, a very interesting lecture from Dr. Polyakova and we were happy to have her at the CSE!
