When the most brazen incidents of Russian interference into the 2016 US Federal Election were uncovered in the months following the election of Donald Trump, I must admit to have been a little surprised America didn’t take things into their own hands and lob a few (metaphorical, or not) grenades into the opposing camp.

Then again, Donald Trump was President. From his perspective no retribution was necessary. The right outcome had been achieved so he was at the very least indifferent to counter measures.

What we got was a taste of the kind of “full spectrum” war Russia had been waging against Ukraine for years. For years, NATO’s response was tepid. Propaganda is a big part of this warfare and the kind of propaganda we saw then — and are seeing following the full invasion of Ukraine — is intended to unmoor us from reality.

The Russian method blurs the line between war and peace.

During the Cold War the Soviet Union took similar measures to check American hypocrisy and adventurism.

But modern Russia is not the Soviet Union, so what is going on here?

I really don’ know. Past fears of encirclement don’t really make sense: if anything, Russia has more to lose from Chinese power in the future, whereas it rightly worried about the American block in the past.

The Russian tactic is to confuse, dismay, divide, and delay Western actions? Is Russia afraid of the west becoming united on climate change, or income inequality? Not likely. Is Russia afraid of a Libyan coup that leaves Putin in a ditch with his head cut off?

Is Putin afraid that people really don’t know how much money he and his cronies have syphoned out of the Russian economy? (The last estimate I saw was about US $800 billion.)

This book gives us an inkling about what life will mean when the powerful have no fear of facts. It includes references to a manual for dissidents and some examples in Russia and elsewhere where dissent is still possible.

America is stuck in its own information war which is having serious consequences for its own polity and the rest of us. American radicals have cottoned on to the Russian disinformation techniques.

That is worrisome on its own.

“Post cold war will be a period of sovereign murderers, where everyone invents their own “normal” humanity and their own “right” history.”

What is good for democracy in this age of information abundance?

Fact-checking for sure, but what else? ( )

ça n'est pas de la propagande, c'est notre (méta)réalité. Un livre majeur. ( )

Den prisbelönte journalisten Peter Pomerantsev tar oss med på en resa in till informationskrigets kärna, där osynliga arméer och auktoritära makthavare försöker omdefiniera sanningen. Han lär sig informationstaktik från demonstranter i Serbien, knarkkungar i Mexiko, Fox News-programledare i USA, Brexit-motståndare och jihadister. Fyrtio år efter att hans dissidentföräldrar jagades av KGB återvänder han till Ryssland för att finna ett Kreml som med enorm framgång återuppväckt sin kraftfulla propagandamaskin.

A fascinating read that made me think. Lots of information in this book and plenty of ideas and opinions. I liked the research and meeting people who were either producing propaganda or fighting the growth of propaganda best. These were interesting. His own thoughts and analysis were sometimes too difficult to grasp. He includes stories about his parents which i enjoyed but I'm not sure what they added to the book. ( )

This book is a good introduction on current-day information warfare and how it affects pretty much everything, from governments to our daily lives. It's a bit Russia-centric, not just because Russia plays a large role in the information wars, but also because Peter Pomerantsev sprinkles the book with stories of his family (and in particular his father) under the Soviet Union. He also meets with several people all over the globe who have anecdotes of their own battles.

I thoroughly enjoyed the stories and the anecdotes but even as a non-expert, I can't say I've gained much insight. Pomerantsev's analyses never go much beyond what his subjects tell him. More in-depth research would've of course made the book much longer, but I think the superficial treatment weakens the arguments somewhat. The section on Cambridge Analytica is particularly bad: he essentially reproduces the company's claims on their algorithms and methods, but there's not a lot of real evidence of their effectiveness.

From reading this, my own interpretation is that there's so much psyops these days that looking for more information will only make it harder for you to believe in anything, and this leads you into complete cynicism or misplaced rage.

Some bits I enjoyed: the concept of "manufacturing consensus", done by using bots or trolls to create discourse online that make you change your beliefs on what the mainstream opinion is; the idea of winning in politics by getting your opponent to use your language (which I had seen before in Metaphors We Live By); propaganda as the centerpiece of conflict (military operations nowadays play second fiddle to the information war, rather than the other way around); the way the right wing has coopted leftist social movements' rejection of objectivity and created a reality that favors them. ( )