Indictments reveal how Russia taps digital tools to stir up discord in US
Russia has been trolling the United States for decades.
It bankrolled American authors who claimed Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy under the direction of the FBI and CIA; it planted articles arguing Martin Luther King Jr. was not radical enough; and it spread a conspiracy theory that the U.S. manufactured the AIDS virus.
None of these disinformation campaigns succeeded in undermining American stability, in part because the Soviets didn't have access to what may be the world's most powerful weapon for fomenting fear, outrage and unverified information: social media.
The indictments last week by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III against 13 Russians and three Russian companies accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election laid bare the way America's biggest tech platforms
