Thursday, February 13, 2020

U.S. Military Tracking Russian Government News Agencies For Disinformation On Coronavirus

Prime Minister Mishustin closed Russia's border with China to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus. Kirill Zykov / Moskva News Agency

Newsweek: Exclusive: Documents Reveal U.S. Military is Tracking Russian Government News Agencies For Disinformation on Coronavirus

The U.S. military is bracing for possible Russian disinformation regarding the spread of the coronavirus outbreak, according to Department of Defense documents obtained by Newsweek.

Military planners are actively tracking disinformation campaigns promulgated by accounts operated by — or attributable to — the Russian government. Between January 28 and February 3, the "coronavirus" hashtag was the most used by major Russian news Twitter accounts, according to the documents.

Information about the new coronavirus flooding social media was cause for concern among World Health Organization (WHO) officials who said they were working to diminish an "infodemic." Such campaigns, while not uncommon, are an obstacle for implementing an effective response, those officials said.

But the documents obtained by Newsweek more broadly reveal U.S. military efforts to track and detail social media during a heated election year as cyber officials at U.S. Cyber Command are anticipating further Russian meddling in the 2020 presidential elections which could rival Kremlin efforts in 2016.

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WNU Editor: I have been following this story since the beginning. For now the Russian government news agencies have been saying the same thing as everyone else.

4 comments:

Carl said...

These people are nuts! I agree with RT. American resources would be better spent on efforts to actually contain and kill the virus than on data mining and deconstructing the internet for imaginary threats. Let's give up the geopolitics and act like adult human beings instead.

Anonymous said...

Carl-
Am resources? what do you think is going on? the military is doing something else...how does our military track? you need to be a bit more aware of things. The CDC had big cuts (they are the outfit that works to prevent or deal with diseases) and Trump cut the hell out of their budget some time ago

Anonymous said...

Russian Media Outlets are Blaming the Coronavirus on the United States
Conspiracies pushed by Kremlin-linked sites allege the epidemic is an American bioweapon.

Not Russian government news papers so deniable?

"The economic version of the narrative, published by Topcor.ru ..."

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/02/russian-disinformation-coronavirus/

Anonymous said...

Learn your country. Work in food processing at the ground floor.

Some scientist or academics have weighed in and opined that travel bans for the virus are not warranted given severity & contagiousness. They have said that the bans harm more than help.

This started in December. It is now February. Will you still be as stressed out in May?

Just remember most of your coworkers do not wash their hands for #1 or #2. I worry about that more than the corona virus.