Americans often think of an attack on democracy as something spectacular: cyberattacks on power grids, agents exposed with explosions in downtown areas, spy scandals. In reality, the modern undermining of a system works much more prosaically – through small, everyday campaigns that hardly anyone pays attention to. They are born in Facebook groups, niche chats, and Telegram channels, spread through tight-knit communities, and accomplish what no “grand plan” ever could: they slowly and steadily corrode trust. This is exactly how Russia’s information war in the United States works – year after year, day after day, without pause and without grandiose staging.
A curious example of how a minor legal nuance can be turned into a frightening “fact” was a wave of claims among Russian-speaking truck drivers: supposedly Florida had banned driver’s licenses from several Democratic states, and as a result freight rates had soared. In reality, no – since 2023 Florida has recognized all standard driver’s licenses, but refuses to honor only very specific categories of documents issued in some states exclusively for individuals without verified legal status. This has nothing to do with regular licenses issued in any other U.S. state. This example shows how an infiltrated micro-diversion works. It begins with a half-truth: yes, the law does contain the word “non-recognition,” but it applies only to a narrow category of documents. Then comes a convenient domino effect: if licenses are not recognized – the risk of fines rises – drivers don’t go – rates increase. Algorithms amplify it. In interested chats, hundreds of reposts appear, because everyone is eager for an explanation of their problems and income losses. At this point, facts can never catch up with emotion. And truck drivers are a diverse and multiethnic group.
This is the anatomy of a disinformation injection. There is a “seed” – a real but narrow fact. There are “carriers” – niche communities that do not live by mainstream news but consume information through their own channels, where trust outweighs verification. And there are “amplifiers” – anonymous networks and content factories that specialize in multiplying a half-truth across hundreds of platforms. Why are issues like driver’s licenses or freight rates chosen? Because the local is intimate. It touches people’s wallets and their sense of security, and from such material it is very easy to mold polarization along the familiar lines of “red versus blue,” “ours versus theirs.”
These days another, much larger and geopolitical storyline offers a useful parallel. Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Narendra Modi appear together on one stage during the SCO summit in Tianjin: warm gestures, exchanges of “strategic” compliments, assurances of “principled partnership.” Moscow proudly uses such footage to erase its isolation, conversing with first-tier leaders in foreign countries (the U.S. and China), as if arrest warrants can be tossed into the trash. Russians are now “co-creators of order.” Beijing, pursuing its own game, allows Moscow to breathe without doing anything critical for it. Delhi demonstrates strategic autonomy, bargaining on several fronts at once.
The SCO summit and images of Xi, Putin, and Modi are not just diplomatic theater. For the Kremlin, this is a way to say the West is weak and divided, that there are other partners, that sanctions are not a sentence, that there are always alternatives. For Beijing, it is a way to cheaply expand its room for maneuver in its game with Washington. For India, it is a continuation of a long strategy of balancing in which Washington is not the only center of gravity. The picture of a new multipolar world works all the better the more we are distracted by our own quarrels. And that is why any domestic dispute – about transportation, migration, or taxes – becomes a convenient surface for external players to exploit.
Russia’s hybrid war against the U.S. did not begin and did not end with elections. A six-volume Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian operations in 2016 described in detail the mechanisms that since then have only become more complex – from troll factories to networks of “clone media” that mimic established outlets, publish fake news on “mirror” sites, and boost them with bots. Over the past year and a half, the U.S. intelligence community, the Justice Department, and major platforms have repeatedly warned: Kremlin active measures continue, adapt, and spread to niche audiences and private messengers. In practice, the Lubyanka is behind each such channel of communication. Russian intelligence may not own a Telegram channel, but they can be active participants in it. Wherever there is demand for simple explanations, supply will appear. When markets are unstable and costs rise, it is easier to find a single culprit – a law, a new rule, or a hostile state. The Kremlin pushes exactly this kind of thinking: it provides a short memetic package and plants it in the right groups. The only way to resist is to explain complexity. Such explanations always lose to a simple fake in speed of spread, but only they build immunity in the long run.
The response of government and platforms cannot be reduced to dry figures like “ten thousand accounts removed.” The public must understand the mechanics of threats. When the Justice Department shuts down clone-media domains, it should explain how they actually worked. When Meta publishes reports on “Doppelgänger,” it should show how a fake site imitating a reputable outlet ended up in a user’s news feed. When Microsoft describes new actors like Void Blizzard, it should show how these groups combine cyber-espionage with information operations. The more clearly the chain is shown, the fewer chances that the next fake will take root.
The strongest position is among communities that have learned to self-cleanse. Russian-speaking logistics groups, Ukrainian diaspora chats, and professional trucking associations can create their own “mini-newsrooms” – a handful of volunteers who, before sharing hot posts, make a phone call to an agency or check an official site. This really works, because resilience is built from such small details.
All media need to gradually change their model of attention: not only reporting on “big scandals” but also on micro-injections that affect specific communities. One can mock the myth of Florida banning all out-of-state driver’s licenses, but it is more useful to briefly explain the law and show how it was turned into a scare story. That is the job of newsrooms: to lay out facts clearly, cite sources, use plain language, and provide infographics. For citizens, new information hygiene means subscribing to CISA or ODNI bulletins, reading platform transparency reports, and paying attention to context.
Scenes from the SCO summit are just one of the screens showing an “alternative order.” For Russia it is vital that Americans look at this screen divided: Florida versus California, federal versus state, English-speakers versus Russian-speakers, government versus small business. When we argue among ourselves about myths that do not exist, we stop arguing about things that do: investment in cybersecurity, transparency of regulatory decisions, real access for migrants to English-language education. The main conclusion is clear: small seeds of lies eventually grow into large trees of distrust. And these trees are nearly impossible to uproot. Russia understands this perfectly well.
The most important question is whether the American government understands the scale and nature of this war. Let us assume that different institutions see different fragments of the mosaic: the Justice Department shuts down domains, intelligence agencies issue warnings, regulators pressure platforms. But is anyone assembling this mosaic into a coherent picture? Between “seeing” and “understanding” lies a gap of coordination, political will, and strategic imagination. Part of the state machinery acts reactively – patching leaks where the water is already gushing – instead of systematically changing the environment in which Russian sabotage cannot take root at all. This will require unpopular but comprehensible steps: transparency of platform algorithms, investment in media literacy as a core security infrastructure, constant public explanation of threat mechanics, and above all interagency coordination without electoral cycles and partisan distortion. If the government understands more than it appears to, it is still acting less decisively than it must. And if we truly want to win a war that unfolds every day – not only in Ukraine but across the American continent – the state will have to pick up speed and address even the smallest symptoms as systematically, persistently, and patiently as our common adversaries do.
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