> Russia for example aims to sow discord. One classic example is the Black Lives Matter movement. This was not a Russian disinformation campaign - but they did propagate views that exist outside the bell curve of the moderate. They push scenes of cops being under siege for the right and racist policing for the left. They amplify the voices of the most angry, the most extreme and the most radical on both sides of the spectrum to create confusion, distrust and societal division.
> China by comparison takes a much more subtle view. They choose to erode what they call "civilizational confidence" by highlighting systemic failures, inconvenient truths, or otherwise undermine institutional credibility. When you read an article and find a moderating factor buried in the last paragraph that is the flavor of Chinese action. The general malaise about American exceptionalism failing and China's inevitable ascent stems from their work. Rather than pure division they aim to emotionally exhaust you into "acquiescence from inevitability".
The only reason these approaches work is because there is generally a lot of truth in the things they push and a complete lack of transparency on that reality from powerful Americans, both government and oligarchy. If it wasn't "a lot of truth with some bullshit mixed in" but "only bullshit", it wouldn't work. If the state of the US hadn't made the bullshit realistic and plausible, it wouldn't work.
Those are the issues to fix. You name the PATRIOT Act, yet another thing that has caused much more harm than benefit.
> China by comparison takes a much more subtle view. They choose to erode what they call "civilizational confidence" by highlighting systemic failures, inconvenient truths, or otherwise undermine institutional credibility. When you read an article and find a moderating factor buried in the last paragraph that is the flavor of Chinese action. The general malaise about American exceptionalism failing and China's inevitable ascent stems from their work. Rather than pure division they aim to emotionally exhaust you into "acquiescence from inevitability".
They mostly bring light to the worst things that happen in the US, which would otherwise go underreported because the people suffering them have no power and the media is already entirely controlled by Bezos et al.
It's laughable to defend this on the basis of foreign influence. The bad actor influencers are inside the house. They're called Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch, and so on. And the information they spread isn't any more truthful or beneficial than that spread by the likes of China.
Rupert Murdoch has done more for misinformation, polarization and extremism over the last 2 decades than China and Russia combined. He's foreign, by the way.