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Tommaso De Zan - Global Issues - 28/2/2018

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In November 2017, The New York Times reported that Italy was bracing
itself for an electoral season of fake news. Anxiety was building as the The power of words in today’s China: fully
country was expected to become the victim of a destabilizing campaign of under the Party’s control
false information and propaganda. A month later, former US Vice President John Lloyd - Asian Waves - 28/2/2018
Joe Biden wrote in Foreign Affairs that Moscow was supporting the Northern
League and the Five Star Movement in Italy’s upcoming parliamentary Raccontare l’Unione Europea tra élites e sfera
elections. Ironically, the leaders of both political parties quickly dismissed pubblica
Biden’s words as fake news, although Michael Carpenter, former Deputy Giovanni Collot - Old Continent - 28/2/2018
Assistant Secretary of Defense under the Obama administration, later Il circolo vizioso dell’informazione digitale e il
confirmed Biden’s article. caso Russia: allerta ma niente panico
Roberto Menotti - From the Editors - 22/2/2018
To date, there has been little evidence of Russian meddling in the Italian elections. Nonetheless, overlooking Russian
activities in recent latest electoral processes underestimates Moscow’s use of ICT tools to advance its foreign and
security policy ambitions. Russian hacking and disinformation operations should be taken seriously and framed in
the current power struggle between the Kremlin and Western countries. Moscow is waging asymmetric warfare
About the author
against the West, and disinformation and ICT are among the most used tools in its arsenal.

Tommaso De Zan
Information operations and Russian asymmetric warfare
Tommaso De Zan is a PhD researcher
There is already ample proof of Russian attempts to sway the political faith of some Western countries. in Cyber Security at the...

The 2016 US presidential elections will probably become the textbook example of Russian meddling in electoral Read more
processes. In January 2017, US intelligence assessed that Russian security agencies successfully hacked into the
Democratic Party’s information systems and spread contentious emails to influence the outcome of the elections. A
year later, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, concluded that prior
Syrian issue in context
to the elections the voter registration rolls of 21 states were targeted by Russian hackers and “an exceptionally
small number of them were actually successfully penetrated.” In addition to its hacking activities, Russia was
particularly active in shaping the American social media environment, especially in swing states. One indicative
figure shows that between September 1 and November 15, 2016, Russian bots shared Donald Trump’s tweets
470,000 times compared to only 50,000 of Hilary Clinton’s. In February 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller La strategia di “America First” in azione
indicted 13 Russian citizens and three organizations for interfering with the US political and electoral processes, Roberto Menotti
including the 2016 elections.

But the US is not alone. On the eve of the French elections, nine gigabytes of torrent files belonging to Emmanuel I curdi iracheni nel calderone regionale
Macron’s campaign were stolen and leaked on the internet. The hack was however ineffective as French law prevents Fernando D'Aniello
candidates from speaking publicly for two days ahead of an election. In Germany, bots on Twitter and other social
media promoted anti-Merkel and anti-immigrant sentiments, even though the elections were generally marked as The Syrian army: An Arab force backed by
free from the Kremlin’s interference. Moscow has not only tried to pursue its strategy during electoral processes, it Russia and Iran
has also been found to be particularly active in the Nordic-Baltic information environment. In the region, Moscow Bernard Selwan Khoury
has attempted to tone down claims related to the Russian threat, labeled opponents as Russophobic and provided (if
not rewritten) another version of Nordic-Baltic history by lionizing the Soviet one. Remarkably, when an American
I nuovi equilibri mediorientali in
delegation presented its findings on Russian meddling in US elections during a NATO meeting in Brussels, European
composizione
allies were not impressed, “This is what we have been telling you for some time. This is what we lived with.
Eleonora Ardemagni
Welcome to our lives.”

Hacking and computational propaganda – the use of algorithms, automation, and human curation to purposefully La Siria come crisi macro-regionale: una
distribute misleading information over social media networks – are part of a wider spectrum of tools Russians are “guerra per le pipeline”?
using to advance their political objectives. The main objectives of this asymmetric warfare are destabilization and Jacopo Maria Pepe
the imposition of will. The Russian military theorized that the greater the degree of destabilization caused in
targeted countries, the weaker the political and societal structures, which will in turn increase Russian ability to
shape events in those states.

What makes Russian asymmetric warfare particularly effective, and its effects potentially pernicious, is the timely Geopolitics in the Gulf
and coordinated use of all sorts of tools of national power, which are played together like musical instruments in an
orchestra. These tools are: 1) governance, including religion, culture and law (using Russian minorities in other
states and their cultural proximity to Russia to influence foreign states internal affairs); 2) economics and energy; 3)
politics and political violence (backing up pro-Russian political parties and/or politicians, assassinations and
blackmails); 4) military power; 5) diplomacy and public outreach; 6) information warfare, comprising hacking and
computational propaganda, among other things. By using all these tools in such a highly-integrated manner, some
believe that Russia is arguably “reinventing strategic art for the 21st century.”

The strategic logic of hacking and fake news

There are important political and strategic reasons why Russia has pushed such an assertive policy towards the
West.

Against the backdrop of NATO’s enlargement of 2004 (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and The age of ports: Gulf monarchies and sea
Slovenia) the Kremlin became more and more suspicious of Western intentions. Furthermore, it seems that Vladimir rivalry
Putin had come to develop a “visceral fear of instability” after the “color revolutions” in Georgia (2003), Ukraine Eleonora Ardemagni
(2004) and Kyrgyzstan (2005), which he believed had been instigated by the West. Broadly speaking, Russia wants
to challenge what it perceives to be a Western-dominated international system, reinforce the Westphalian principles
of state sovereignty as opposed to a borderless globalization drenched with universal liberal values, and be La metamorfosi in corso dell’Opec e una
recognized as a great power in an increasingly multipolar world. nuova geopolitica

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4/24/2018 Hacking, fake news and elections: Moscow’s new weapons | Aspenia online
From a military perspective, on the other hand, Russian defense officials believe that strategic confrontations Maurizio Sgroi
between major powers will not occur in the future, largely because more refined means have superseded
conventional wars. The use of asymmetric tactics is a means to win contemporary conflicts without the need for
Saudi Arabia vs Iran: A lukewarm war
“physical” confrontation. In other words, in Russian military circles the idea now prevails that there should be “the
that risks becoming nuclear
predominance of the psychological over the physical” in the conduct of modern warfare.
Bernard Selwan Khoury
Allegedly, the main actor behind Russian information operations is the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). The GRU
and the rest of the intelligence services share Putin’s belief that Russia faces an imminent threat from the West, Dove va l'Arabia Saudita?
regarding themselves as already at war, and thus operating accordingly. Within the security services, there is the Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo
widespread belief that instruments such as disinformation campaigns – paired with other tools hinging on
subversion, corruption and misdirection – are perfectly suited to accomplish the desired results without the need to
incur the use of kinetic operations. Another important actor is the Internet Research Agency, which was charged by
US Special Counsel Mueller for its disinformation operations before and during the latest presidential elections. Latest dossiers
Whether the Agency has operational links with the GRU is unclear. But according to US intelligence, the likely donor
of the “trolls-factory” is a close ally of Putin and tied to Russian intelligence. Social media dilemmas

In this context, any EU and NATO country (obviously including Italy) is a palatable target for Russian information Democracy questioned
warriors. Therefore, It is risky for Italian political leaders to think that Russian involvement in electoral processes are
Changing trends in the world economy
“trifles” and to take for granted that Putin will respect Italian sovereign voting decisions. Trivializing hacking and
computational propaganda fails to recognize that these operations are designed to polarize. As social media The revival of nukes
increasingly assume a more significant role in our political processes and become the primary platforms over which
A background on the Syrian crisis in context
young people develop their political identities, it is important to develop countermeasures against those who seek to
use them to destabilize the foundations of Western societies. Hungary's message to Europe
Africa and its global challenges
Russia’s prospects and choices
Egypt’s grave challenges, well beyond the vote
Evolving geopolitics in the Persian Gulf

Keywords

Arab Spring China economy Egypt

Europe Germany Obama Russia Special
US Election Analysis Syria Trump USA
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