Foreign Policy Research Institute A Nation Must Think Before it Acts Senior Fellow Clint Watts Quoted in Rolling Stone on Russian Fake News

Senior Fellow Clint Watts Quoted in Rolling Stone on Russian Fake News

Senior Fellow Clint Watts Quoted in Rolling Stone on Russian Fake News


Rolling Stone

It strains the imagination to think how Campbell – a cat lady in Missouri – had pieced together not only the story that Clinton was a sex-trafficking pedophile, but its details: NYPD officials, Weiner’s laptop, Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet. According to Clint Watts, a cyber and homeland-security expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Katz fits neatly into a well-worn blueprint for disinformation campaigns. For a story to gain traction, propagandists plant false information on anonymous chat boards, hoping real people will pick it up and add a “human touch” to acts of digital manipulation. “If you want to sow a conspiracy, you seed it someplace – 4chan or Reddit is a perfect vehicle,” he says, and wait for someone like Katz to take the bait. “Someone or some group,” Watts says, “possibly took this unwitting woman and made her the source that they need.”

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