After Russian hackers allegedly sought to influence the US elections in Donald Trump’s favor, German intelligence officials have warned that Moscow is determined to undermine next year’s federal elections.
This comes amid widespread concerns over fake news, hacking and cyber-interference.
The German authorities fear that the Russians will repeat the game they played when they allegedly hacked classified US Democratic Party files and released them to sites like WikiLeaks, with damaging consequences in the already close American elections. There have also been substantive attacks against the German Parliament’s online database and political party electronic networks.
EU and NATO officials have likewise warned that President Putin is committed to a strategic policy of destabilizing Chancellor Merkel and other European leaders at a time when populist and far-right European political parties are riding the crest of a wave fueled by Trump’s election result. In half a dozen European states, similar populist far-right parties are viewed as strong contenders in forthcoming elections.
Only a decade ago the European Union was a confident and expansionary project — a center of gravity for the liberal world. Today the Eurozone is gripped by chronic economic crises and Brexit is only one of the forces pulling the union apart. In this volatile context, Russia’s attempts to undermine traditional European elites and unleash cyber-chaos could act as a political hand grenade.
Equally dangerous in manipulating public opinion is the deluge of politicized online “fake news” sweeping through social media networks. In the final stages of the US presidential campaign, a Buzzfeed analysis found that fake political news outperformed real news on Facebook. Hundreds of websites dedicated to promoting fake news in support of a Russian political agenda have been identified. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went from branding such concerns as “crazy” on the eve of Trump’s win; to promising radical new measures to check the ascendancy of fake news.
The Iranians are several years ahead of the Russians in pumping out propagandized fake news. Press TV emerged around a decade ago and defined the fake news genre for English-language audiences, but this was far from Iran’s first foray into bankrolling dishonest “news” outlets. There is little to distinguish Press TV and its protégé Russia Today in their conspiracy theory-mongering and clumsy politicized agendas. Today there is an entire constellation of Iran-affiliated media networks; ranging from the official state media; to the media offspring of its regional proxies; and dozens of other websites and TV channels bearing Iran’s fingerprints. Iranians may be unemployed and impoverished in ever-higher numbers, yet the Islamic Republic continues to see fake news and external subversion as an excellent way to spend the state budget.
Social media is comparably full of paid-up Assad and Hezbollah apologists — a scary parallel with all the shadowy alt-right, Islamophobe, KKK, white supremacist online armies, which so effectively fueled Trump’s campaign — swamping cyberspace with lies and hate speech.
Compared to Putin, Trump and Khamenei, Western career politicians are still in the dark ages in understanding how to exploit social media to promote themselves and challenge rivals. They live in an era of press conferences, set piece speeches and media statements; while Trump, Putin and their populist allies have gleefully embraced the immoral and Machiavellian rules of cyber-warfare.
After its own nuclear program falling victim to an Israeli “stuxnet” virus; Iran became a born-again convert to cyber-hacking. Over the last couple of years the Islamic Republic launched thousands of attacks against Saudi, American and global targets, wreaking chaos and disruption. The Revolutionary Guards’ cyber-warfare operation has a budget of tens of millions of dollars and thousands of staff. And experts have warned that Iran’s cyber threat may ultimately pose a greater danger than its nuclear program.
Today, Putin looks unassailable: His bombing campaign is rapidly dislodging the opposition fighters from their Aleppo stronghold at terrible human cost; and Moscow’s aggressive posture against Ukraine, Georgia and Eastern Europe is confronted with a NATO plagued by self-doubt. Speaking to Latvian, Finnish and Eastern European journalists, their fear is palpable in the face of a Russian leadership, which sees its opponents on the back foot. Stories of callous Russian harassment and intimidation of journalists are depressingly common.
Hillary Clinton was ultimately brought down by a critical mass of innuendo and leaks regarding personal emails and private speeches, released as tens of thousands of files via dubious online sources. Seventeen US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had been behind this massive campaign designed to destroy the Democratic Party’s candidacy. How did Trump respond? By declaring, “I love WikiLeaks!”
Trump has already refuted most of his election promises. His promise to “drain the swamp” of corrupt political dealings in Washington was undermined by his determination to continue mixing his business and political interests. “The President can’t have a conflict of interest” was his astounding retort to questions on the issue.
One promise that Trump hasn’t cast aside was his pledge to go after the media. In an off-the-record meeting with America’s most senior media bosses, described by attendees as a “firing squad” and “total disaster,” Trump attacked them as “dishonest, deceitful liars” and threatened that his relationship with the media would be very different from that of previous presidents. By undermining this institution whose craft is rooted in truth, accountability and fact-checking, Trump aspires to a “post-truth” era where it is simply a case of which voice shouts the loudest.
The Brexit referendum and the US polls have thus been justifiably described as post-truth elections. Speaking as a journalist, it was astounding how the exposure of obvious falsehoods, which previously would have wrecked a candidate’s campaign, had zero appreciable effect. Scandals simply bounced off Trump.
We should be terrified by the lessons that an upcoming political generation will have learned concerning fake news and outright lies. As the Nazi propagandist Goebbels repeatedly said: If you’re going to tell a lie, make it a really big one; then everybody will believe it. For Western democracy, industrialized fake news, systematic hacking of institutions and the mass online dumping of classified information appear to be a winning formula, which few nations have a serious or failsafe response to. If the multi-billion dollar US elections can be thus manipulated, we should spare a thought for more vulnerable nations. For more than a decade, experts and think tanks have been warning of such a day when the mightiest institutions could be brought down by state-sponsored hackers. Were we seriously this unprepared? Yes we were — and still are!
• Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the United Kingdom.
