‘How Acts of Terror Help Information Warfare Triumph’ — My Latest Hot Type Column in Byline
For this week’s Hot Type column in Byline, I followed a lead from Russian spy whistleblower Sergei Cristo and examine how terrorism is often the catalyst for successful disinformation campaigns
***Please take out a membership to support the light of truth.***
In my weekly Hot Type column for Byline Supplement, the magazine edition of Byline Times, I report on the ingrained links between terrorism and Russian disinformation.
As always, thank you to everyone who supports the work we do at Byline Supplement — it means a great deal to those of us on the frontline of independent investigative reporting. If you are not yet a member of Byline, and you would like to read any of my paywalled columns in full, please reach out to me at bettedangerous/gmail.
Below, is an excerpt from this week’s Hot Type column…
Hot Type: How Acts of Terror Help Information Warfare Triumph
Heidi Siegmund Cuda reports on the ingrained links between terrorism and Russian disinformation
In a conversation with Russian spy whistleblower, Sergei Cristo, this week, I found a terribly plausible explanation.
I now understand why the West failed so miserably in defending its citizens from information warfare. The answer lies in terrorism.
Acts of terrorism, either intentionally or as a catalyst, diverted resources away from countering espionage.
I had asked Cristo why he thought there’s been such a limp response to Russian active measures that have succeeded in destabilizing democracies globally, and he responded:
“Probably they thought they were just the usual bumbling KGB officers — they didn’t think it would have the impact that it has had,” said Cristo, the subject of the podcast Sergei and the Westminister Spy Ring by investigative reporter Carole Cadwalldr and Byline Times co-founder Peter Jukes. “Also, let’s not forget that the resources committed to counter espionage in the UK have been drastically reduced due to the threat of terrorism.”
I reflected on that last statement and ran through the inventory in my head: the Russian apartment bombings in 1999; the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US; October 7, 2023 in Israel; the 2014 explosions in the Czech Republic of ammunition depots, first thought to be organic then found to be GRU operations to disrupt weapons to Ukraine; the ongoing threat of nuclear terrorism which distracts from the very real threats that are actually occurring in real time.
Cristo continued:
“And Trump, sorry, that was a Freudian slip, Putin has helped this national security apparatus in the UK set its objectives accordingly. He helped reset the priorities from counter-intelligence to counter-terrorism.
“I think it was 2008 that the MI5 shadow budget was around five percent, maybe less, and then they tried to build the infrastructure up but without the officers who worked through the Cold War and could recognize active measures for what they are.”
Disinformation analyst Alex Alvarova told Byline Supplement that “human attention became the most precious commodity to mine.”
And that autocrats use “violent shock” to grab our attention.
“Our brain instantly switches its focus to potential violent threat,” she said. “People are mesmerized by violence or natural disasters, but you can not order a hurricane, so the only dirty deal left is terror.”
Alvarova grew up under Soviet Rule in what is now the Czech Republic, and she said the constant lies being churned out by the Soviet-ruled government made people “sick a little bit” — having to be two people at all times — your real internal self, and the self you present to the world publically.
Ever since reading the Doppelganger affidavit — which showed the massive Russian operation being run in the West to mimic real news sites and how thousands of influencers were deployed to create what the Russians called “nuclear psychosis”, I have always thought that one of the consequences of the Hamas attacks in Israel on Putin’s birthday in 2023 was a reduction in support for then US President Joe Biden.
In the Doppelganger affidavit, internal documents revealed that the Russian agents were debating creating a proxy war to derail Biden’s reelection.
No matter what the reality is, the genocide that is being unleashed on the Palestinian people is what On Tyranny author Timothy Snyder cautioned against.
On October 10, 2023, Snyder wrote in his Thinking About substack column titled Terror and Counter-Terror:
“Terror can be a weapon of the weak, designed to get the strong to use their strength against themselves… Usually part of the plan is to enrage.
“Americans have fallen for this. 9/11 was a successful terrorist attack because we made it so. Regardless of whether or not its planners and perpetrators lived to see this, it achieved its main goal: to weaken the United States…
“My point is that it is always worth asking, in such situations, whether you are following the terrorist's script. If what you want to do is what your enemy wants you to do, someone is mistaken. It might be your enemy. But it also might be you.”
We should also note that the US made tremendous strides in the post-9/11 era in creating the modern surveillance state.
I asked a woman in Gaza, who goes by the nickname A.H, if she sees disinformation playing a leading role in the war in Gaza and she said: “Yes, it indeed plays a big and very important role, and because of its importance, the Israeli army was able to assassinate 238 journalists, and prevent it from bringing in any international journalists or photography to mute the truth and not show it to the world and to hide the crimes, genocide and massive destruction in the facilities and infrastructure of the Gaza Strip as well as the engineering of starvation practiced against us by the Israeli army.”
Alvarova says the terrorist acts opening the floodgates for information war on a people is a Russian specialty. The 1999 apartment bombings in Russia helped Putin’s rise to power and enabled the second Chechen War — the bombings were blamed on Chechen terrorists. Later, they were linked to the FSB — the successor to the KGB — but those who investigated the bombings often turned up dead. Those bombings served as a catalyst to practice psychological control on an entire population.
“Putin wanted the power when Russia was pretty economically well off, prices of oil high and no one willing to agree with his desire for human rights restrictions. Then the bombings happened.”
And it all changed. And Russia is now a fascist mafia state.
And here’s the thing, it can happen anywhere resources are removed from protecting the population from threats from within and without. Anyone still holding out hope for protection against malign foreign influence operations in the US must face a new reality. Former special counsel for the US Department of Defense and NYU law professor Ryan Goodman reports that US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just eliminated the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center and the Foreign Malign Influence Center, further weakening America.
I often return to lessons from Craig Unger, the investigative journalist and author who has written a half dozen books on the Republican party and Trump-Russia.
America thought it had won the Cold War, he told Byline Supplement, and as the Soviet Union was collapsing, a young Attorney General named William Barr, under President George H. W. Bush, decided to repurpose agents away from Russia to focus on the crack cocaine epidemic — another type of terrorism, carried out by drug cartels.
According to his book, American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery, this created a gaping hole in America’s national security that would lead to the greatest intelligence coup in history: the installation of a Russian asset in the White House.
In 2021, Unger told Byline Times: “It is preposterous, the idea of having a Russian asset in the White House and yet it really is true. That’s what happened. And I think if we don’t come to terms with that reality, it will happen again. It can happen again.”
And it did happen again.
Why go to the effort to subvert a foreign government, when an inexpensive operation can trigger a threat sufficient for that government to subvert itself?
Always watch your flank.
****
The above excerpt of my weekly Hot Type column was originally published Saturday, August 23, 2025, in Byline Supplement.
To support one of the last truly independent, reader-funded newspapers in the world, check out Byline Times and its magazine Byline Supplement. As noted above, if you are unable to support Byline Supplement at this time, and wish to read any of my paywalled columns in full, please reach out to me at bettedangerous/gmail, as I am authorized to send upon individual request.
Bette and Byline members, please forward the column to your allies.
It also means a great deal to me when you like and share my work here and at Byline. It really helps our Byline team when you share our reporting with your personal networks.
I am so glad you are here, and eternally grateful that you support an anti-fascist mother doing her best in these dark days.
****
****
Related:
****
Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members.
I expose the corruption of billionaire fascists, while relying on memberships for support.
Thank you in advance for considering the following:
Share my reporting with allies
Buying my ebooks
A private link to an annual membership discount for older adults, those on fixed incomes or drawing disability, as well as activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous/gmail. 🥹
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
🤍
Begin each day with a grateful heart.
🤍