The Plot to Hack America

Putin has successfully manipulated people from when he was a junior spy, parlaying his ascent to the premiership of Russia. The new FSB methods are exactly the same as the old KGB methods he learned, but harness technology to speed up operational timelines. Not only has Putin used human intelligence and espionage asset management to great effect, but he has also led the way in using the computer information systems technology he was tasked to steal in the 1980s. The creation of new perceptions through propaganda to secure the state has always been a mainstay of the Soviet systems, now it just protects the assets and standing of the oligarchy. Russia fully understood the potential of the internet age to mold perceptions and create its own reality, and information warfare is a central tenet of Russian political, diplomatic, and military operations. The internet age has just sped up the time that propaganda—both innocent and malicious—can infect the global information flow and corrupt whatever target Vladimir Putin desires.

A defector from the KGB, Yuri Bezmenov, gave a series of lectures on KGB recruitment strategies and precisely whom the organization targeted for recruitment by its officers. Bezmenov’s information was confirmed by other former Russian officers as standard fare for recruitment of spies worldwide, particularly in the West.

To some it may come as a surprise that the KGB considered extremist leftists, communists, and so forth, ill-suited to divulge the secrets the KGB wanted, or to gain the highest levels of government clearance. After the 1950s it was KGB policy to always try to recruit the highest level spies from circles that were unexpected; they specifically targeted Westerners from conservative ideological profiles. Bezmenov said:

My KGB instructors specifically made a point. Never border with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. Try to get into wide circulation, established conservative media. The rich. Filthy rich movie makers. Intellectuals. So-called academic circles. Cynical egocentric people who can look into your eyes with an angelic expression and tell you a lie.⁹

If there were ever a candidate for recruitment by hostile intelligence agency then Trump would be moved to the head of the class. When he came onto the political scene, FSB officers must have surely remembered this lesson about recruiting the rich, the egomaniacs, and the liars. The record is patently clear that Donald Trump misleads and deceives with impunity. Trump’s methodology of denial, deception, misdirection, tacit victim-blaming, and outright fabrication has come to permeate every aspect of his campaign.

Trump has proven time and again he cannot keep the truth straight when it comes to claiming prestige and high level associates. During a planned trip to the USA by Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, Trump claimed he would be showing him a $19 million dollar apartment during a visit to Trump Tower. This was one in a long list of false stories that Trump seeded in the press. To add insult to injury, a Gorbachev impersonator was brought to the tower and shepherded around by Trump, who was completely fooled, despite later denials.¹⁰

At the end of the year the political fact-checking group POLITIFACT categorized virtually everything the Trump campaign said in 2015 as “Lie of the Year.” It was bold and audacious to just let lies, innuendo, and fabrications be the main thrust in seizing a nomination, but it was a strategy the spies of the Kremlin could appreciate. To them, Trump would not only fit the bill of a potential asset, but he seemed to have adopted—or learned through guile—the fundamental tenets of Russian psychological and information warfare’s “active measures”: Deny, Deceive, and Defeat.

Play and Manipulate the Subject’s Ego

In discussions with confidential sources, I have learned that the FSB still maintains the policies and techniques that have worked for over a century in recruiting agents to be unwitting suppliers of information. They will either find a willing asset who voluntarily works with them for personal, financial, or ideological reasons, or they will find a suitable candidate and “develop” him or her into a useful asset, whether that asset discovers his or her role. This is called an “unwitting” asset or agent.