And because, you know, in order to make them stop or encourage them to stop these operations, you had to meet with them. And when you sit at the same table with Putin, even if that table is very long, as we saw during COVID, right? Like that's, I mean, that elevates him. That says to Russians, oh, Putin is a world leader again now. And, you know, we have this status that is to be coveted and we're going to continue engaging in these operations so that that asymmetrical control can keep happening. As

we learned from various U.S. intelligence agencies, Congress and social media companies after the 2016 election, one play out of the Russian Information Operations Playbook and used by their Internet Research Agency was to pose as American activists from across the political spectrum using various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They organized rallies in support of candidate Trump while simultaneously organizing counter-protests from the Secretary Clinton's side. When journalists asked the activists from either side if it bothered them that the Russians got them so mad that they came out to protest, some said that the Russian involvement didn't ultimately matter to them. Their perspective was that regardless of who organized the events, the causes that they they were advocating for were real and important. In their view, the authenticity of the issues, whether racial justice, immigration reform, or other social concerns, was not diminished by the origin of the rally's organization. Talk about a bespoke reality. The Russians learned that using existing social movements rather than fabricating issues out of thin air were more effective. A notable instance occurred in Houston, Texas, where Russian-linked accounts promoted both a pro-Muslim rally and an anti-Muslim counter-protest. By promoting these opposing events, Russian operatives sought to sow chaos, confusion, and conflict with the American population. And so far in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the Department of Justice seized over 30 websites linked to a Russian disinformation campaign known as Doppelganger. The campaign used social media platforms to distribute content, sometimes using fake pages resembling prominent news outlets to add credibility to their messaging. Scott Small is the Director of Cyber Threat Intelligence at Tidal Cyber, and full disclosure, I'm on the Tidal Cyber's advisory board. But when we began researching this propaganda series here at N2K, we immediately found Scott's 2024 white paper called Election Cyber Interference, Threats and Defenses, a Data-Driven Study. So we invited him on the show. I started by asking him about the thesis of the paper. So what we're trying

to accomplish with the white paper is the entire globe is facing a huge threat around election interference. What we're seeing is a very, very large portion of the total global population is going into democratic elections this year. Many of them have occurred now at this point in the conversation.