Active measures

What Hacker News says

1. strictneinJul 2026
   Exactly. Russia has been doing it for decades and it would be foolish to assume China didn't learn from them. Thomas Rid's "Active Measures" covers this in detail, and it's somewhat maddening to read, because it details how much of the civil strife we've experienced that was exacerbated by their actions.

   https://www.amazon.com/Active-Measures-History-Disinformatio...

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2. strictneinApr 2026
   > "none of those supposed networks exists"

   Countries have been interfering in the internal workings of other countries for centuries, if not millennia. If you want to read up on more recent accounts of this, many of which predate social media, the book Active Measures by Thomas Rid is a good place to start.

   Or you can continue to think that this is all just made up "propaganda" and we're all fools, but you alone have seen the light.

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3. greesilJul 2024
   The russkies were doing the same. Read Thomas Rid's Active Measures. Choice quote from KGB colonel on publishing in western media: "If we didn't have the free press we would have had to invent it"
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4. sammalloyDec 2022
   I have no idea why you are getting downvoted, as there is a lot of good evidence supporting your position. The book "Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare" by Thomas Rid spends a great deal of time talking about this. I think the evidence so far shows that the power station attacks are likely linked to loosely affiliated white supremacist groups. It is unknown if Russia is funding them, but if you recall, Russia was linked to several secessionist groups in the US, with the head of the California group eventually moving to Russia.

   https://www.kqed.org/news/11217187/from-his-home-in-russia-c...

   https://www.npr.org/2018/04/25/586099619/the-russia-investig...

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5. mcguireOct 2022
   One interesting book is Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare by Thomas Rid. It's a history of disinformation, propaganda, and related shenanigans from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the 2016 election, mostly focused on the Cold War.

   For the most part, it's low-effort manipulations that very occasionally take hold---I can remember the anti-nuclear protests against the deployment of the Pershing II missiles in Europe---but the internet and social media have dropped the bar for "low-effort".

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6. thinkmassiveMar 2021
   Some books I recently enjoyed, mostly focused on the infosec aspect but still somewhat on topic:

   The Kill Chain, by Christian Brose

   Active Measures, by Thomas Rid

   Sandworm, by Andy Greenberg

   Fatal System Error, by Joseph Mann

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