[yowzadave]

It's a much lower bar to sow discord and chaos vs. being able to maintain a stable, functioning, low-corruption society. Just because a country is capable of one does not mean that they are capable of the other; also, the characteristics that lead a country to be effective in the former may prevent them from being successful at the latter.

[ivan_gammel]

There are several theories in this, which may feel plausible but ignore some other possibilities.

First, the assumption that Russian propaganda works on the West. There are no signs of that.

Second, that Russia does have those capabilities. Their main problem is that they don’t understand the modern West and still think in categories and definitions of XX century.

Third, that West is vulnerable. Western domestic propaganda is much more powerful and it’s budgets are much bigger.

[hkpack]

> First, the assumption that Russian propaganda works on the West. There are no signs of that.

Wow, that is the statement. I would say that Russian propaganda is the mainstream now in conservative media and among republicans. Half of Joe Rogan's talking points is spreading russia propaganda, half of Lex Fridman opinions - is russia propaganda. Elon Musk retweets and amplifies russia propaganda all day every day.

The problem is - you just don't know when you hear it since you don't have a frame of reference.

It is the same as I don't recognise Chinese or North Korean propaganda. Sometimes I see an obvious example of it on reddit, but in general, I cannot immediately recognise it when I hear it (since half of the top reddit commends are bots - I have problem to sometimes understand what their goals are).

I don't know whether they understand the west or not, but my intuition is that the understanding is not required. With modern social media you have enough feedback to perform complex information operations and have the desired outcomes.