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For half a divided America, it's a the wisdom that Vladimir Putin had a master plan to install Donald Trump as president. A measured analysis in 2017 of the intelligence community documents how Russia intervened in the US system. More breathtaking, New York the magazine launched the theory that Putin was the active manager of Trump.
It is not wrong that Russia has given Trump a boost. But it is now clear that his presidency is not the end of the Kremlin at all. It's a useful disruption in a larger campaign – and that's the one we need to worry about.
History continues below
In July, Facebook closed dozens of pages and profiles whose activity resembled fake Russian accounts previously identified. They are not pro-Trump groups, but feminist groups, minority rights and "anti-fascist" groups. This is in line with the trends observed in 2016, when the Kremlin's information campaigns supported Trump, but also Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein; amplified the "white nationalist" groups but also provoked protests against them; committed and military veterans, but also anti-war groups. If there were two sides of one thing, Russia was on both sides.
It's chaotic, but chaos is the strategy. Putin's goal is not so much a puppet president as an American society in permanent war with himself. Russia can not compete in the rules-based international order, but if the American bulwark of this order breaks, a weakened Russia will have more space to act as a world power. His new form of combat is evident in the details of the indictments of Special Adviser Robert Mueller and throughout the investigation conducted in Russia: information warfare conducted by the Internet Research Agency and the Russian intelligence services; widespread piracy of campaigns and electoral systems by Russian military pirates; the new informal "illegals", represented by Mariia Butina and Konstantin Kilimnik, each of whom has been indicted.
Now, it seems that the indicators of success of the Kremlin's online campaigns have evolved from preferences and clicks to the physical mobilization of Americans – and this should cause us deep concern. Several lines of effort are underway: we target as individuals, as citizens, to test ourselves to see how we react. And now, unfortunately, they like what they see.
