As everyone reading this blog hopefully knows, I am not a military tactician or geopolitical expert. Most of my military insight comes from studying ancient historical battles, a brief excursion to Afghanistan during which time I got to hang out with mercenaries and about four years dating a British army officer (during which time I was generally a terrible nuisance at all army related events). And yeah, I’ve read some books.
The below consequently carries a major SPECULATIVE warning.
But it goes something like this…
My general gut feeling is that the information space is so polluted it’s probably impossible to discern who is telling the truth for sure. My hunch is that almost everyone is lying about something. On all sides. Whether it’s Putin. The West. Or China. Or a plethora of other entities from corporations to political groups or NGOs.
Anyway when it comes to info war, there is no mightier army than a troll army. We know about the Chinese 10 cent army, funded by state coin. And we know about the crypto trolls, funded by speculation coin. But there’s another less known but equally powerful — and far more global — reservist troll army out there. It is the legacy pyramid funded army of now deceased Sergey Mavrodi.
And it just so happens that one of its chief former lieutenants may have been Denis Pushilin, the current leader of the Donetsk breakaway republic.
I’m super tied up today so I didn’t have a chance to write this up properly, so in the meantime here’s a Tweet thread I quickly did to explain the connection. Please pay attention to the caveats, as I haven’t finished verifying things.
THREAD: the media space is currently going nuts but here’s a quick thread about why it’s important to stay calm and measured about what’s going on. We are all digital pawns in the larger theatre of info war.
— Izabella Kaminska (@izakaminska) February 24, 2022