Poles Battle Russians

There are several news outlets carrying stories about Poland expelling a Russian woman and banning a few more from the country.  As an example, the Washington Post carried the story today. 

The Russians are accused of doing what they have done many times before, trying to influence the beliefs of individuals by manipulation of information.  The Russians still call this Information War, which is the right term in this case.  The Post says the Russian woman was accused of “non-military but subversive tactics” which included spreading views of history that would provoke conflicts between Poland and the Ukraine.  That included World War II, where Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists.  I imagine this was quite a bit more complex than just views of history.

The US Congress has released some Russian Facebook ads that were doing the same kind of thing by supporting issues that were divisive in the US during the 2016 national election.  Sometimes, they supported both sides of these issues, which is just a way to create tension between two political groups.  They didn’t really want to resolve an issue;  they were trying to perpetuate the divisions and foster distrust.  They invented some pretty good ways to do that, and have obviously found success.  And, they haven’t stopped doing it, even though the election is long over.  The groups that did the actual work were based in Russia, but fraudulently used identities of real people in the US.

This kind of warfare is very hard to stop because it doesn’t look like war.  In my new book, a rewrite of The Chinese Information War, I used some Russian examples to show how this can be successful.  The Facebook ads were only a small part of what the Russians were doing.  The selective release of stolen Democratic National Committee email about the activities of the Clinton campaign disrupted the election, but you can bet the Russians are still dividing he country by campaigns that perpetuate divisions between political parties and reduce the ability of White House to govern the country.  That has been very successful so far, and there are plenty of people willing to help them keep those issues going.  Poland and Ukraine should both be looking for the deeper kinds of disruptions that this expulsion has brought to the front.  Credit to the Polish Intelligence services for disrupting this operation.