Ше один хороший узкій зламався

Has it really sunk in? It hasn't even been 10 fucking years.

I re-read the article by Harding and Nixon, who decided to get on and give some clarity on the information war. I quote in full:

“You have killed two generations of your people to launder our tax dollars. Soon you will have judgement day.”
“But you don’t represent Ukraine. Only the Kiev Junta that tries to rule the rest by violence.”
“Time for Russia to finish Ukraine . . . Time to arrest Zelenskyy for exploiting the war to enrich himself. Time for Ukraine to become Russian soil.”
—Posts exhibiting extremist views on Ukraine have proliferated on X

Negotiations for peace in Ukraine will face a headwind in the form of ones and zeros. In the run-up to talks, real critics and bots are likely to unleash a torrent of anger on social media, screaming from both ends of the spectrum. Politicians can easily interpret the screaming as reflective of public opinion, whether those opinions are real, represent a tiny minority, or are generated by Russian bots.
Moscow, Beijing, and others will have a strong incentive to shape public perceptions of a deal, with a goal of raising pressure on Zelenskyy and shaping the deal itself. In response, just as the United States and its allies worked to counter Russian disinformation before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, so too must these allied governments work to counter Russian attempts to shape the information space to benefit Moscow’s position in a negotiation. Further, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy must reinvigorate his own stellar public relations efforts to counterbalance uninformed or nefarious critics.

Disinformation works best when it hides in plain sight, cloaked in a veneer of “truthiness,” leading audiences to accept what they see online as fact rather than evaluating content for accuracy. One false idea can easily spread to millions of people on social media, quickly affecting global decisions and perceptions. The Covid-19 pandemic proved a natural test bed for disinformation and proved how deadly it can be. Erroneous ideas about how to cure or prevent Covid-19 included that patients should ingest bleach, use cocaine, or drink water every 15 minutes to cure the virus. According to the world health organisation in the first three months of 2020, approximately 6,000 people were hospitalized and 800 people died due to such misinformation. Similarly, false information affected people’s willingness to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, also resulting in preventable deaths. False rumors included that the vaccine causes fertility problems, alters people’s DNA, or contains a tracking microchip. In 2022, Brown University estimated that nearly one-third of the United States’s 1 million deaths during the pandemic could have been prevented if people had been vaccinated. While it is impossible to know how many people refused vaccination because they believed the disinformation, the conspiracy theories likely cost lives.
Similarly, a bot farm’s thousands of opinions can scream a message and seem like a mainstream opinion. In a recent example, a bot farm and thousands of TikTok profiles elevated a little-known candidate’s online popularity and helped him win an election. In late November 2024, Călin Georgescu, a relatively unknown, ultranationalist, and pro-Russia candidate won the first round of Romania’s presidential election, shocking the country and raising questions about the role of social media platforms. The Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) confirmed the activity of domestic bot farms, troll operations, and fake social media accounts. SRI highlighted that Georgescu was “massively promoted on . . . TikTok through coordinated accounts, recommendation algorithms and paid promotion,” and researchers attribute his win to his massive online presence.
Disinformation surrounding peace talks has the potential to combine the worst of these worlds. Social media can quickly advance a narrative that paints the parties as betraying their country or giving up too many concessions.

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Zelenskyy must recognize this pressure as merely a distraction and tune it out. He should focus his efforts on playing to his astonishing strength: communicating. As he makes decisions about negotiating or not negotiating, he needs to aggressively communicate the “why” behind those decisions to his people and the world. As the adage goes, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on,” but Zelenskyy is better than most at breaking through the lies with his messages. Meanwhile, he should have trusted, hardened, skeptical staff serving as a filter for any incoming interpretations of public opinion. He should stay away from the news.
The United States has historically been terrible at fighting disinformation. Washington is too slow, too careful, and too over-lawyered to respond quickly to a sophisticated information campaign. (The one exception is the National Park Service, which is on point with its social media.) But the United States is far better at anticipating likely information campaigns and “pre-bunking.” Washington should focus tightly on getting ahead on the information game before negotiations begin, in close coordination with Zelenskyy. It should pre-bunk likely Russian information operations around a loss of Ukrainian public confidence in the government or especially a falling off of U.S. and European support for the Ukrainian war effort.
Once, the victor in a conflict got to write the history. Today, that history is written in real time, as events unfold, and it will shape events in a way it never has before. It should be a high priority of the United States, Europe, and Ukraine to drive the narrative, rather than be driven by it.

Remark. Americans know how to make high-quality propaganda. They proved this during the Second World War with Why We Fight, a series of propaganda documentaries commissioned by the US government.

The films were shot in 1942-1945 by director Frank Capra and were intended to explain to American soldiers and citizens the reasons why the United States entered the war and the importance of fighting Nazism and fascism. The film was funded by the US Office of War Information (OWI) in conjunction with the US Department of Defence.

Moreover, it is a well-known fact that after the US entered the war, it was General George Marshall (yes, the Marshall Plan is about him), the Chief of Staff of the US Army, who commissioned Frank Capra to create a series of films that would explain to soldiers why they were fighting.

Capra was already a well-known director in Hollywood, winner of three Academy Awards for his films: "It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and You Can't Take It with You (1938). He was personally responsible for directing, general project management, scripts and selection of materials for the films.

Pay attention to how everything is chewed up, here's a list of the films in the series:

"Prelude to War (1942) - explains the causes of World War II, describes the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, and militarism in Japan.

"The Nazi Strike (1943) - examines the expansion of Nazi Germany and the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia.

"Divide and Conquer (1943) tells the story of the German invasion of France and the strategy of conquering Europe.

"The Battle of Britain (1943) is dedicated to the British resistance to German air attacks.

"Why We Fight: Russia" (The Battle of russia, 1943) - about the defence of the Soviet Union, key battles, including the Battle of Moscow and Stalingrad

"The Battle of China (1944) - describes Japan's aggression against China and the struggle of the Chinese people.

"War Comes to America (1945) is the final film in the series, which tells the story of the events leading up to the US entry into World War II, including the attack on Pearl Harbor, and demonstrates the contribution of American industry and people to the war effort.

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