Rosen specializes in foreign influence in US elections; he denounced China and Russia’s interference and criticizes a willing mainstream media
US President Donald Trump announced over the weekend that the Attorney General Bill Barr would resign before Christmas. Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen would take over.
Jeff Rosen has relevant experience of foreign influence in the US elections. In an essay published in late August, Rosen wrote:
“But interference with infrastructure is not our only concern. We are also concerned about another threat, known as malign foreign influence. The key word is “influence.” Much of the time that is disguised propaganda. Other times, it is using pressure tactics on influential people. It can also take the form of hacking and disclosing private emails or phone messages. It comes in many different forms, all designed to influence how Americans think about issues and cast their votes. There are good lists of these on the FBI and ODNI websites.”
In his essay he also reports on his worries in the current situation:
“… But we are concerned when those preferences manifest themselves through malign foreign influence activities that are coercive, covert, or corrupt, whether the aim is specifically to influence our elections, or to influence policymaking and public discourse more broadly.”
Rosen discussed coercive measures and then went into covert activities by foreign agents, citing this example:
“After World War II, the Cold War produced a whole new set of challenges from malign foreign influence. The Soviet Union employed covert or deceptive tactics as part of its so-called “active measures,” a phrase it used to describe malign influence activities like disseminating forgeries, disinformation, and propaganda and sponsoring front publications to undermine American interests. Most active measures were directed abroad, such as when, just a few weeks before the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the KGB mailed athletes from Africa forged letters supposedly from the Ku Klux Klan with threats against them, or when the Soviets published stories in dozens of Soviet-controlled publications around the world claiming that the AIDS epidemic was started by U.S. military experiments. But the Soviets also used active measures to undermine public confidence or influence public opinion in the United States, including covertly forging documents and funding conspiracy-mongering books that supposedly tied the FBI and CIA to President Kennedy’s assassination or tied FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to the Ku Klux Klan.”
Rosen also describes the relationship with the mainstream media that serve as willing channels of infiltration:
“Historically, malign influence operations were often limited by their reliance on third parties, such as mainstream news outlets or popular magazines, to reach sizeable segments of the American public. For much of our history, the media were cautious about being used in this way.”
“But today, the media environment is considerably different, and the internet and social media also allow foreign actors to reach unprecedented numbers of Americans covertly, inexpensively, and directly, without ever setting foot on U.S. soil,” said Rosen.
Rosen seems to be perfectly attuned to the situation and will stand on Trump’s side and against the election fraud.
Transverse Waves 