In light of the Mueller report, is democracy still technically possible?
If you haven’t yet read US special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s 35-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, now might be a good time to do so. As expected, the prosecutor, a former head of the FBI, has carried out a highly rigorous, methodical and conclusive investigation that confirms the worst fears about the Kremlin’s nefarious activities.
The links in this article are to just a few of the many news stories I have come across over the last two days. They show that Russia has raped US democracy, spending millions on special structures to help Donald Trump win, using highly sophisticated techniques that included identity theft of US citizens and a focus on key states to inflame public opinion and provoke unprecedented division among the electorate.
Mueller’s investigation shows that Russia’s influential role in the US presidential election is now undeniable: the pathetic clown who now occupies the White House is there in part thanks to a Kremlin-run campaign to denigrate US democracy. A Russian government department, the Internet Research Agency, created thousands of false accounts on social networks, bought advertising, contacted and influenced hundreds of thousands of Americans and managed a budget of millions of dollars to create division among the electorate and influence the outcome of the elections. And the ease with which it carried out its campaign show that it had already acquired experience and expertise from similar activities in other countries.
US democracy has been violated, and what’s more, there’s nothing to be done to remedy the situation. That said, there is a certain poetic justice: the United States has a long history of interfering in elections around the world, typically to install puppets willing to protect its business interests. How the mighty are fallen. The Kremlin has shown itself far more adept and willing to apply the dark arts to the social networks.
It’s no overstatement to say that democracy now faces an unprecedented threat. Facebook can employ more people to monitor content and Twitter can wring its hands, but it has been shown that detecting fraudulent practices is near impossible. Russia has shown itself able to steal the identity of US citizens to create credible profiles with different social networks and then send out seemingly genuine messages that appear to originate from the United States. Russia has created machinery capable of infiltrating any election anywhere in the world and of polarizing opinion far more effectively than any electoral campaign. And what’s more, there’s nothing we can do to prevent it.
We now have to face the reality that democracy is no longer technically possible when a foreign power’s influence over voters is so decisive and so easy to carry out. Our democracies lack the means to defend themselves from this kind of interference. The Social networks have created the perfect environment for manipulation and fraud, available to be exploited by any party with sufficient resolve and resources. In the same way that advertising campaigns are manipulated and markets are segmented, making it possible to see new variables, an inflammatory or divisive message can now be delivered with pinpoint accuracy, where it will have maximum influence. Russia has found a new chink in democracy’s armor: any election campaign in any country is now subject to suspicion of Russian interference, either in its own interests or simply further refine its techniques.
Vladimir Putin’s repeated re-elections, along with the success of pro-Kremlin candidates in some former Soviet republics, are no coincidence: they are the result of tried and tested methods of wholesale social manipulation able to skewer any electoral process.
Russia has succeeded in undermining democracy. The question governments committed to the rule of law around the world must now address is how they can restore that confidence.
(En español, aquí)
