How Russia’s Disinformation Strategy Keeps Succeeding

Anne Applebaum: “For decades now, Russian security services have studied a concept called ‘reflexive control’—the science of how to get your enemies to make mistakes. To be successful, practitioners must first analyze their opponents deeply, to understand where they get their information and why they trust it; then they need to find ways of playing with those trusted sources, in order to insert errors and mistakes. This way of thinking has huge implications for the military; consider how a piece of incorrect information might get a general to make a mistake.”

“But it works in politics too.”