I realize that the revelation doesn’t exactly shatter the earth but, as a measure of what American democracy is up against in cyberspace, and as a measure of the damage to it that already has been done, and as a measure of the infinitely greater damage that could be done down the road, what Facebook did here strikes me as extraordinarily compelling. From The Washington Post:

The social media company that it couldn’t tie the activity to Russia, which interfered on its platform around the 2016 presidential election. But Facebook said the profiles shared a pattern of behavior with the previous Russian disinformation campaign, which was led by a group with Kremlin ties called the Internet Research Agency. Facebook briefed congressional aides this week. A congressional aide said that there’s no evidence that political candidates were targeted in the new disinformation effort but that pages and accounts sought to spread politically divisive content around social issues. “It’s clear that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past,” Facebook said in a post. “We believe this could be partly due to changes we’ve made over the last year to make this kind of abuse much harder. But security is not something that’s ever done. We face determined, well-funded adversaries who will never give up and are constantly changing tactics. It’s an arms race and we need to constantly improve too.”

The story goes on to point out that Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence, has been jumping up and down warning the country that attacks like this are ongoing. The White House was unavailable for comment because there is no indication that the president* or anyone close to him gives a flea’s ear about this crisis. There isn’t a lot of urgency coming from the majority party in either house of Congress, either.

“The attribution is going to get increasingly complex, as adversaries are not going to make sloppy mistakes paying for ads in rubles in this next go-round. Also, the playbook is established, so we are seeing domestic ideologues, economically motivated actors and others come in the replicate it,” said Renée DiResta, an expert on disinformation and research director at New Knowledge, a nonprofit advocacy group of technologists that focus on disinformation.

That seems serious. Maybe we should talk to the Secretary of Homeland Security, see what she has to say. From The Washington Examiner:

"DHS was founded 15 years ago to prevent another 9/11, but today I believe the next major attack is more likely to reach us online than on an airplane," Nielsen told hundreds of private sector leaders and government officials at the department's first summit on cybersecurity in lower Manhattan. "Cyber threats collectively now exceed the danger of physical attacks against us. This is a major sea change for my department and for our country’s security."

Not to be too picky, but the “next major attack” already has occurred. It’s how Ms. Nielsen has the job she has.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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