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Here’s what we need to fear…here are our real enemies…here is our biggest national security threat: deception and division, misinformation, disinformation, mistrust, and hatred.

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a proven conspiracy. My husband and I first heard about it from someone in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Putin knows Russia can destroy and conquer America without military force. The strategy is: Destroy the nation through polarization. He can do this through creating or just promoting polarizing posts, through fake social media profiles, through bribery of influencers, and now the Russians are using AI to improve their dastardly deceptions.

If we share polarizing posts, we are playing right into Putin’s plan.

For a better understanding of this issue, read (or listen to) the book Trust: America’s Best Chance by Pete Buttigieg.

MISINFORMATION IS NOT FREE SPEECH

Frank Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, explains that misinformation and propaganda is not “FREE speech” especially when it’s being paid for by Russia.

MENTAL WARFARE – A Real Russian Plot

July 9, 2024 – The Justice Department today announced the seizure of two domain names and the search of 968 social media accounts used by Russian actors to create an AI-enhanced social media bot farm that spread disinformation in the United States and abroad. The social media bot farm used elements of AI to create fictitious social media profiles — often purporting to belong to individuals in the United States — which the operators then used to promote messages in support of Russian government objectives. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-leads-efforts-among-federal-international-and-private-sector-partners

September 13, 2024, the U.S. Justice Department announced new evidence that Russian news outlet RT (Russia Today) is taking orders directly from the Kremlin and working with Russian military intelligence to spread disinformation around the world to undermine democracies.

Anthony Blinken, US Secretary of State, said, “The actions we are exposing today and the actions we exposed last week do not incorporate the full scope of Russia’s effort to undermine democracies — far from it. Russian disinformation to subvert and polarize freedom-loving societies extends to every part of the world.”

In Moldova, for example, “Russian efforts this year likely will be aimed at causing protests to turn violent,” he said.

Britain and Canada will join the United States in launching the campaign to rally allies and partners around the world to address “the threat posed by RT and other machinery of Russian disinformation and covert influence.”

Here’s a report by CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation): https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6502027

Tenet Media is a company founded by Canadian far-right commentator Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan. Through them, U.S.-based influencers and personalities were recruited to help with the nearly $10-million RT campaign to spread anti-Ukraine, pro-Trump propaganda by paying MAGA influencers like Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, and Matt Christiansen, and Canadians Tim Pool and Lauren Southern.
“One of the greatest enemies of our nation right now is Ukraine!” (The Culture War with Tim Pool) Such opinions were bought and paid for by the Kremlin.
They were also paid to stoke anger around immigration, inflation, to say the country was broken and headed for civil conflict – anything that would weaken national unity and drag America down.
Some of the influencers were in the dark about the Russian connection.

“We have not seen an adversary attempt to influence an American election to this degree ever before,” said Figliuzzi.

Vladislav Inozemtsev, a Russian columnist and Putin critic who now lives in the U.S., said Russian propaganda is about destabilizing countries that aren’t aligned with the Russian regime — not necessarily by ensuring preferred politicians win the race, but by stoking political tensions and distrust with regular citizens.
“Russian propaganda is very focused on the idea of undermining the existing political regimes in Western Europe and in the United States. It’s not about getting more Russia-friendly figures on the top … but to make [the country] more unstable,”

“Whatever divides the nation which [Putin] believes is unfriendly to Russia, it’s good for him.”

Putin, Musk & the Fifth Horseman

The book of Revelation was written by John, while he was exiled on the Island of Patmos. In the 6th chapter of the book of Revelation, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are:

• Conquerer (on a white horse – “bent on conquest”),
• War (on a fiery red horse – “given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other”)
• Famine (on a black horse)
• Death and Hades (on a pale horse)

I saw a cartoon on Facebook that showed the four horsemen, all hooded and ominous looking, all with their names on their hoodies, with a fifth hooded horseman riding on the right, looking down at his phone. The horseman labeled “Death” looks over to inquire, “And you are?” Without looking up from his phone, the 5th horseman responds, “Misinformation.”

ELON MUSK

There is a great song, with which most of us can identify, “If I Were a Rich Man, Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum.” It is sung by the Jewish father, Tevye, in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”

One of the best lines in the song is

“When you’re rich, they think you really know.”

Elon Musk is the richest man in the world with over 200 million followers on X who think he really knows.

After buying Twitter in 2022 and calling it X, Elon Musk laid off or fired about 75% of the staff, including about half of the data scientists, and ended rules banning hate speech and misinformation.

A lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can get his feet in the stirrups.

Rolling Stone has created a timeline of how Elon Musk has turned X into a misinformation weapon that spews falsehoods about migrants, gender, health and elections. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-twitter-misinformation-timeline-1235076786/

Musk recently changed the “block” function on X. In its new form, “blocking” someone still allows them to view your posts and your profile, tearing down an important way for some users to protect themselves against abuse on the site.

JD Vance complains about the Democrats trying to curb misinformation shared on social media. He said it is a violation of our freedom of speech. At the same time, Trump is saying he’s going to shut down (take the freedom of speech from) the news sites that fact-check him, which seems like a double standard to me.

Does “freedom of speech” = the freedom to lie? Is it right to demand the right to spread misinformation? So people can build their life and actions on sinking sand? And learn to demonize the “other” based on slander, misunderstanding, and falsehoods? Do we have the right to foment hatred and violence?

Elon, eager for political power to be added to his power of wealth and influence, has donated $75 million to His pro-Trump super PAC (political action committee). The PAC is paying $100 to each registered voter in Pennsylvania to sign Musk’s pro-Trump petition.

Musk loves to draw attention to himself and stir up unrest by posting things like “Civil war is inevitable” (regarding the UK). And he’s offered to give Taylor Swift a child, which is just creepy.

Judging by the way he was jumping up and down on stage at a Trump rally, it is obvious Elon is having a great deal of fun disseminating disinformation and seeing who will fall for it. Politics is a highly-entertaining rich man’s game for him, and his wealth gives him so many strings to pull.

He’s undoubtedly a clever man, but wisdom is a different matter. Trump promises to give him a role in his government if he’s elected.