While the U.S. has had two years to do something substantive to deter Russian online efforts to sow discord and undermine faith in democracy, it does not seem foreign operatives tasked with spreading inflammatory rhetoric in the run-up to the next wave of elections have any intention of stopping.
In fact, they may just be warming up for 2020.
AFP:
#MAGA -- Trump's rallying call to "Make America Great Again" -- remains the top hashtag among 18,000 tweets pumped out daily by hundreds of Russia-backed and allied Twitter accounts monitored by Hamilton 68, a tracking operation of the Alliance for Securing Democracy in Washington.
The leading linked website this week? A Republican voter registration page.
"After the election in 2016, there was a lot of talk about whether the Russians will be back in 2018," said Suzanne Spaulding, senior advisor on the Homeland Security Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"We now know: they never left."
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On Friday, the US Justice Department announced criminal conspiracy charges against the Internet Research Agency clerk who manages the tens of millions of dollars the outfit spends on information operations in the United States and Europe.
The charges documented typical social media postings on IRA accounts that purported to be American and were mainly aimed at fanning the flames of political anger.
"Just a friendly reminder to get involved in the 2018 Midterms," said a tweet posted earlier this year by @johncopper16, which prosecutors say was an identity created by the IRA.
"They hate you. They hate your morals.... They hate the Police. They hate the Military. They hate YOUR President."
Such divisive messages could influence the November 6 vote ...
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"The biggest concern is really about undermining public confidence in the credibility of the outcome of the election," said Spaulding. "It is really a broader campaign to undermine democracy."
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Two weeks before the election, the Hamilton 68 site shows Moscow has not given up, even if the intensity of its activity has waned.
This week, the top 10 themes and linked articles in the accounts it monitors were strongly pro-Trump, pro-Republican: they highlighted Trump's most recent rally, the alleged threat of a migrant caravan in Mexico, and a hashtag newly favored by Trump, #jobsnotmobs.
James Lewis, a Russia and cyber expert at CSIS, thinks the Russians are honing their skills for the next presidential race, rather than attempting to impact the current election cycle.
"They may be saving their best tricks for 2020, he said.