Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She now lives in Brussels and writes, on Substack, about foreign influence operations:
I’ve spent the last several years screaming from the rooftops about the corrosive effects of foreign influence operations on democratic societies. Now, I’ve decided to put all that information into a newsletter so that maybe you will start screaming from the rooftops, too. The more we understand how these influence operations tie into national security and corruption, the better we can arm ourselves against them.
I thought it would be interesting to have her on the podcast to discuss what we’re seeing.
How Russia captured a slice of the American mind
America’s response to Trump’s so-called peace plan proves just how successful Russia’s influence operations in America have been.
The KGB’s” active measures” system, refined in the late Soviet period and later adapted into the FSB/GRU playbook, rests on three principles: 1) Exploit existing divisions; don’t create fissures; widen them; 2) Use truth, half-truth, and lies interchangeably, whatever advances the psychological objective; 3) Obscure the source: The greatest triumph is when the target population spreads your messaging for you. Russian intelligence thinks in terms of cognitive openings: Any weakness—cultural, emotional, political, historical—becomes an entry point. America has a lot of entry points.
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