Anita Parlow
In early September 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that it had disrupted thirty-two internet domains operated by a Russian government–directed disinformation campaign known as “Doppleganger.” The two-year campaign targeted Americans and Europeans with a combination of false domain names and cloned websites, and targeted cyber-generated social media.
That same month, the DOJ indicted two Russian nationals for “conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and conspiracy to commit money laundering” for a Russian state-directed and state-controlled media company based in Tennessee. In the DOJ brief, Attorney General Merrick Garland charged the two U.S.-based agents with conducting a “$10 million scheme” that Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said was intended to “illegally manipulate American public opinion by sowing discord and division.”
The threat of Russia cyberattacks directed at the West is intensifying, somewhat resembling the nonkinetic methods of hybrid warfare used during the Kremlin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Danish defense minister Troels Lund Poulson highlighted the unprecedented number and range of cyberattacks against his nation at the 2024 region-wide NORDEFCO meeting. (The Nordic Defense Cooperation is a defense alliance and includes Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.) The minister announced that Denmark’s Centre for Cyber Security (CFCS) had raised its threat level owing to increasing Russian cyber-threats. “Increasingly,” he said, “we see a Russia that is willing to challenge NATO countries through sabotage, influencing campaigns, and cyberattacks.”
Russia’s Toolkit
Russia has practiced a hybrid strategy of political-military warfare throughout its history. It has adapted this strategy to contemporary times by leveraging technology, culture, and asymmetric tactics to escalate geopolitical tensions, seeking to assemble just the right combination of these to achieve the desired effect.
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