re: Russian Twitter trolls inflamed Mizzou protests

quote:

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If you have info that contradicts the military report, please share it.

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First, it is by no means a military report.

It is an article influenced by individual research conducted by an USAF officer while attending SASS.

If you read the section of the article, you'd see that the end notes indicate the connection to the Russians was the author's own determination through self-analysis of the tweeting trends, his personal identification of "possible" bots and how they were connected, governmental reports on the M.O. of Russian info warfare groups, and a NY Times article of Russian rumor trolling in Louisiana.

That doesn't mean he is incorrect, but it could just as easily be a fat kid in his mom's basement with multiple accounts, no life, and similar trolling styles.

There are certainly no direct connections substantiated with military or other governmental sources indicated in the article (perhaps in his thesis but I've no real interest looking for it). As domestic issues fall outside of the purview of US military collection and analysis by US law, there likely would not be one either in terms of military reporting.

SASS, like JAWS (USMC) and SAMS-AMSP (Army), are Masters producing miltary programs focused on critical/creative thought and enhanced understanding of operational and strategic level problem solving. They encourage academic freedom through open-source research and publications of a monograph or thesis. They in themselves, again, are not "military" reports. Simply, the informed opinion of a military member based on his/her individual research. In fact, each thesis/monograph has a disclaimer stating as much.

Info operations vs info warfare is a trendy topic in the military right now as the military focuses on multi-domain battle (air, land, sea, cyber, space) within the electromagnetic spectrum and information environment, so it is of little surprise that a SASS student would write on the subject or a publication would pick it up and add his military rank. Doing so lends validity to the author's work as an appeal to expertise.

So, while I'm not stating that his assertions are false. I will state that his claims about Mizzou do not seem to be validated through any "military" reporting as you claimed. As such, throughout the article, he offers it as possible evidence of Russian influence.

Ironically, it creates a situation where a compelling argument with adequate research, buried end notes, crafty phrasing, and a bit of speculation creates the potential spark that may be fake news itself.

Last, no matter the source. The fact that a large segment of America truly believed that cops were marching alongside the KKK in today's age gives me the sadz for a variety of reasons.

Lol, even the Russians hate Mizzou.......