Former CIA Director John Brennan Says Trump's Disinformation Campaign More Dangerous Than Russia's
by John Lawrence, November 30, 2020
Fantastic! The President of the United States is more dangerous to US interests than Putin's Russia. Former CIA Director John Brennan said so. Trump is probably the worst head of state since Caligula. Forget ranking him against US Presidents. He seems determined now to leave Joe Biden and Kamala Harris with the biggest mess he possibly can. A mess in terms of foreign policy. A mess in terms of the economy. A mess in terms of the coronavirus. It seems obvious now that domestic terrorism is a bigger threat than foreign terrorism, and Trump is stoking the fires. Thank God, that at least so far there hasn't been gun fire in the streets by Trump supporters.
Trump has his echo chamber amplifiers like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones, conservative talk show hosts who have no hesitation to stoke the flames as high as they can because that's how they make their money. It should be obvious by now that there is no foreign threat to the US comparable to the threat caused by US disinformation campaigns and the spreading of conspiracy theories and other false information. So why is there still a trillion dollar a a year defense budget aimed at foreign supposed enemies, some of whom at least want to cooperate with the US instead of competing with it or trying to destroy it. The forces of destruction are coming from inside the US, and they are coming from those who have shown how to exploit every loophole or unforeseen consequence in the Constitution. But trying to plug those holes is virtually impossible.
The New York Times reported:
A deluge of misinformation is hitting the U.S. elections, and this time election experts are more worried about it coming from Americans.
Back in 2016, Kremlin-linked Russian trolls surprised social media companies with an online disinformation campaign. Russian trolls developed an effective playbook — they used a large network of fake accounts to spread incendiary political content to millions of Americans, took advantage of existing divisions in American society and sowed doubt about the election process. In the years since, the U.S. intelligence community, social media companies and the public have become aware of the threat of foreign disinformation campaigns. But America’s election information problem has evolved.
“We see that playbook being used by political operatives in the U.S. and we see that same playbook being used by individuals in their basements who are angry and frustrated with life,” said Claire Wardle, the U.S. director of First Draft, a nonprofit organization focused on addressing misinformation and disinformation.
Whoever creates these memes on Facebook is unknown. But then people hit "share" and they get passed around. Perhaps Facebook should credit the originators of these memes and banners. Social media really needs a makeover. Some tweets are being fact checked. Fact checking should be in place for all social media. The rest should all be either taken down if they are false or at least challenged. This is the only way to tamp down misinformation and disinformation. Much firmer control has to be implemented either by the platforms themselves or by the US government. Hiring more people to do this will eat into the profits of the social media platforms but so be it. They don't want to limit disinformation because it's so profitable. There are many more eyeballs on their ads than there are from sober reporting of the news.
In any event something must be done about the fake news and conspiracy theories being purveyed over social media even if it cuts into the profit margins of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.
