The spy game is changing. It’s increasingly taking place in the daylight rather than in the shadows

Alex Finley

Mariia Butina wasn’t hiding. The red-headed, gun-toting young woman whom the FBI has accused of being a Russian spy posed with high-level Republican politicians, including Rick Santorum and Scott Walker, and other influential conservative players, like NRA chief Wayne LaPierre. She snapped photos at the National Prayer Breakfast, circulated at gun shows and conservative conferences, claiming she wanted to promote gun rights in Russia. She posed for Russian GQ, hoisting pistols while wearing stilettos, a black leather jacket and not much else. With her flaming red hair, which sometimes switched to blonde, she commanded—and got—attention.

The very brazenness of this makes some people doubt that it could really be part of an intelligence operation, especially one executed by Russia. After all, we’ve heard stories about Cold War KGB capers involving clandestine meetings and surreptitious missions. Back then, intelligence officers skulked quietly in government circles, hoping to use any number of leveraging tools to recruit diplomats and military and intelligence officials who could hand over their government’s top secrets. These recruited “assets” were people who, in intelligence parlance, “responded to tasking.” In other words, intelligence officials could “task” them to provide information on their government’s plans, intentions and capabilities. Secrecy throughout this process was paramount—the cost of an asset getting caught was simply too high.

But the spy game is changing. It’s increasingly taking place in the daylight rather than in the shadows. And, given social media, lax U.S. campaign finance laws and America’s hyper-partisan political climate, Russia doesn’t have to work as hard to recruit American assets anymore. In fact, the political environment the Russians are looking to manipulate is primed to be exploited.

The Russian operation that targeted our democratic institutions, and which continues to this day, is fundmentally different from Cold War schemes. Its main thrust isn’t data-collection, but rather an influence campaign—called Active Measures in intelligence parlance—designed to change people’s behavior, and ultimately to sow discord and push divisions inside the United States. This can take the form of spreading fake news over Facebook to sway voters, as we saw during the 2016 election. It also involves manipulating U.S. political officials, influencers and decision makers to push a more Russia-friendly political agenda. That’s what Butina was attempting.

According to the FBI’s affidavit, Butina and a Russian official, assumed to be Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Russian central bank, “took steps to develop relationships with American politicians in order to establish private, or as she called them, ‘back channel’ lines of communication. These lines could be used by the Russian Federation to penetrate the U.S. national decision-making apparatus to advance the agenda of the Russian Federation.” The two of them also infiltrated political organizations, including the NRA (the implication from the affidavit is that they infiltrated other conservative organizations, too). She was introduced to GOP members as a “representative of informal diplomacy” of Russia and, according to the grand jury indictment, aimed to “identify and exploit personal connections with U.S. persons having influence in American politics, who were in positions to advance the interests of the Russian Federation” and to open “unofficial lines of communication with U.S. politicians and political organizations for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation.”

Part of this effort required secrecy. Butina did not reveal she was following taskings directly from Moscow. She also seems to have recruited Paul Erickson, the Republican operative widely believed to be “U.S. Person 1” in the prosecution’s documents. According to the affidavit, Butina and Torshin worked with U.S. Person 1 “to develop the contours of the influence operation.” This suggests that Erickson was aware the Russian government was behind the efforts, but all parties took steps to hide the true hand behind the agenda. That is, they all created a certain amount of deniability.

However, a large part of the effort was carried out openly. Butina met people at conferences, breakfasts and gun shows, smiling for photos and comfortable to be seen in the open with the very people she was trying to influence. Partly, that’s by design: Butina used her public profile to reach her targets. But it’s also because—unlike during the Cold War, when the arrest of an asset could lead to the end of an sensitive operation—the cost for a foreign country of getting caught today is fairly low. Why should Russia, who is out to sow discord, care if Butina’s actions come to light? In fact, getting caught might even make the influence operation more successful.

In some ways, it’s even easier for Russia to recruit American assets today than it was during the Cold War—in fact, the Russians barely even need to bother recruiting anymore. All they need, as Butina’s case shows, is a young, red headed beauty capable of manipulating the right targets—even without direct control or leverage over them. Butina was able to find several political players who were “responsive to tasking” without any formal recruitment effort.

Why was it so easy for her? In intelligence circles, it is a truism that Covert Action—including Active Measures—can only take advantage of conditions that already exist; it cannot create those conditions. And here, Butina had a number of factors working in her favor.

First, she came wielding a sympathetic agenda. President Vladimir Putin presents himself as an advocate (and Russia as a bastion) of the conservative, Christian right. He speaks out against same-sex marriage and supported a law to protect the “feelings” of religious believers. Butina and her handlers recognized that the Republican Party, the NRA and other conservative groups were receptive to this thinking, and could easily be influenced. Whereas communism was flatly rejected by a majority of American society during the Cold War—and the penalties for supporting it were high—a large number of Americans today are openly sympathetic to Russia’s modern conservative ideology.

Second, Butina had the new tool of social media on her side. Certainly during the Cold War the Soviets launched propaganda campaigns, but they spread information through leaflets from sympathetic groups and editorials from sympathetic newspapers. This required recruiting assets inside the organizations to write and distribute the propaganda. But it also ran up against the limits of technology. Distribution of the information was limited.

Social media has changed all that. Butina and her Russian intelligence friends didn’t need to recruit anyone to spread or amplify a message. The trolls and bots back in Russia could handle the messaging, distribution and amplification of messages that might help Butina’s objectives, as well as Russia’s larger strategic objective. Butina could also post her own messages and photos on social media, and then make sure the right influencers saw it and bought into it. She posted pictures of herself with influential Republican and NRA officials, which would have added to her cachet and boosted her chances of meeting the next official. And she posted YouTube videos, explaining the purported purpose of her group, Right to Bear Arms. They were easy distribution channels for reaching a desired audience.

Third, U.S. campaign finance laws, which allow unlimited unchecked money into the political system, make it easy for a foreign country to arrange a massive payoff. We don’t know yet whether this happened in 2016, but the special counsel is reportedly investigating if any of the $30 million the NRA spent to help elect President Donald Trump came from Russia. Theoretically, Russian money could also have flowed into GOP PACs, in exchange for pushing a pro-Russia agenda. Butina would have found the GOP politicians open to such an arrangement. And it wouldn’t have looked strange because U.S. laws allow for it.

And here was the bonus for Russia: So what if Butina did get caught? The ultimate aim of the entire operation was to sow chaos and divide Americans in order to weaken the West, thus allowing Russia to pursue its agenda on the world stage. Now, half the country yells that the Republican Party was infiltrated by Russia, while the other half yells that it’s fake news and hyperbole. The payoff for Russia is still great, and they can now use Butina’s incarceration to continue to push their agenda of dividing the nation. There was no downside for Russia.