My Byline Column: Hot Type — Curing American Amnesia By Tallying Up Russian Interference
In my new column in Byline, I do the math on Russian covert influence activities and explain why JD Vance is whinging about censorship
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My latest Hot Type column was published today, and if you are already a Byline Supplement supporter, you can read the full report here:
Below is an excerpt:
HOT TYPE: A Russian Influence Op By the Numbers
In an exclusive report for Byline Supplement, Heidi Siegmund Cuda urges the world to wake up to the influence operations threatening to turn the US election on its head
A fine tactic in oligarch-owned media is to downplay the efficacy of Russia’s attacks on the West. Always lurking beneath the fold is the Great Minimizing Moment, a sentence or clause that says the reach born of the lie factories was limited.
In other words, ‘move along, nothing to see here’.
But when elections in the US come down to just a few thousand votes in a handful of states, then any infiltration by foreign enemy states into our infosphere matters. A lot.
Let’s just take a look at one simple example: last week, on the national debate stage stood two candidates. They played so nice, but only one platforms Nazis. Literal Nazis.
In a long ago forgotten headline in the Wall Street Journal, it was noted that “Peter Thiel and JD Vance invest in Rumble Video, a platform popular on political right”.
And there was JD Vance, in front of the nation at last Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, minimizing Russia’s attack on America in 2016 as just “$500,000 worth of Facebook ads.” There he was, repeatedly claiming VP Kamala Harris is censoring free speech.
Why would he do that? What could he possibly have to gain? Why after a month of bombshells on Russian interference would an Ohio senator take the side of Russia? He did so just days after the US State Department declared that “covert influence activities are not journalism.”
Perhaps because on the very day he made that statement, while spitting lie after lie after lie to tens of millions of amnesiatic Americans, RT on Rumble had 23.9 million views of its livestream.
And what did we just learn about the internationally banned RT, formerly Russia Today? According to the US State Department, the “Russian government embedded within RT an entity with cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence. This cyber entity has focused primarily on influence and intelligence operations all over the world.”
That quote comes from a State Department fact sheet from September 13, 2024 titled: Alerting the World to RT’s Global Covert Activities.
So there, playing nice in front of America, was an enemy combatant, who platforms the most venal elements in society, while offering a safe harbor for Russian intelligence operations.
As the report continues, I add up numbers to reveal the scope of the attack from Russia’s doppelganger operation, which are staggering despite being minimized by national media. Here is my original report on the doppelganger affidavit:
I also reveal how JD Vance’s Rumble not only offers a safe harbor for Russian intelligence operations and is infested with Nazi content, but it continues to platform Tenet Media, which the US Justice Department just revealed was a multi-million dollar covert operation funded by two indicted RT employees linked directly to Russian military intelligence.
In other words, WTF America…
I round it out by noting that despite Jack Smith dropping a bombshell court filing last week, America is talking about conspiracies related to Hurricane Helene. We’ve got one more month until the election, and on Tuesday, please join Bette’s Happy Hour as Martin Sheil walks us through Smith’s filing:
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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.
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