by Thomas Rid (Author)
This revelatory and dramatic history of disinformation traces the
rise of secret organized deception operations from the interwar period
to contemporary internet troll farms
We live in the age of disinformation―of
organized deception. Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking,
leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakening the very
foundation of liberal democracy: trust in facts. Thomas Rid, a renowned
expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to
sound the alarm. More than four months before the 2016 election, he
warned that Russian military intelligence was “carefully planning and
timing a high-stakes political campaign" to disrupt the democratic
process. But as crafty as such so-called active measures have become,
they are not new.
The story of modern disinformation begins with
the post-Russian Revolution clash between communism and capitalism,
which would come to define the Cold War. In Active Measures, Rid
reveals startling intelligence and security secrets from materials
written in more than ten languages across several nations, and from
interviews with current and former operatives. He exposes the disturbing
yet colorful history of professional, organized lying, revealing for
the first time some of the century’s most significant operations―many of
them nearly beyond belief. A White Russian ploy backfires and brings
down a New York police commissioner; a KGB-engineered, anti-Semitic hate
campaign creeps back across the Iron Curtain; the CIA backs a fake
publishing empire, run by a former Wehrmacht U-boat commander, that
produces Germany’s best jazz magazine. Rid tracks the rise of leaking,
and shows how spies began to exploit emerging internet culture many
years before WikiLeaks. Finally, he sheds new light on the 2016
election, especially the role of the infamous “troll farm” in St.
Petersburg as well as a much more harmful attack that unfolded in the
shadows.
Active Measures takes the reader on a guided tour
deep into a vast hall of mirrors old and new, pointing to a future of
engineered polarization, more active and less measured―but also offering
the tools to cut through the deception.
