From MH370 to Jan 6 [S2Ep18]

The price of failing to understand hybrid warfare

Starting in 2014, Russia dramatically intensified its hybrid warfare attack against the democratic West, launching hacking operations, misinformation campaigns, assassinating critics, and tampering in elections. Was MH370 a part of this wide-front assault? I’ve argued that it likely was, but whether or not that is the case, it is inarguable that the success of Russia’s efforts has been aided by the failure of the mainstream media to fully understand the true scope and nature of the threat.

Few voices have been more dogged in trying to raise the alarm than Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis who also runs the Kremlin File podcast. In today’s episode Olga details the various ways that Russia has attacked the US and its allies and explains the motivation and methods behind them.

I was especially keen to talk to Olga following the announcement las week by the Department of Justice that they had indicted two Russian nationals for “conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and conspiracy to commit money laundering” as part of Kremlin efforts to subvert the 2024 US presidential election. The pair had funneled $10 million to podcasters, journalists and social media influencers in order to spread Russian propoganda to an unsuspecting public. Among the recipients of this largesse was Tim Pool, a blogger who was reportedly paid $100,000 a week for his efforts.

As I discussed briefly last week, Pool was part of the larger Republican effort to cover up and deflect attention away from Russia’s successful efforts to help Trump take power in the 2016 election. Like other conservative voices, Pool falsely labled the Trump-Russia nexus a “hoax” — but this denial was itself part of a Kremlin conspiracy.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Russian media has made it clear that it considers itself at war with the Democratic West; Donald Trump is a weapon in that war. Trump has called a free press “enemies of the people” and recently referred to his own election opponents “the enemy”; as with every election he has ever run in, he has made clear that he will not respect the results if he loses. He has promised to be a “dictator on day one” and will enact Project 2025 to stuff the government with loyalists. He has made it entirely clear — not least through his attempt to overturn the last election on January 6, 2021 — that once in power he will never willingly leave again.

Russian efforts to install Trump in power did not come out of the blue; they are part of a broad effort by Russia to eliminate democracy and replace it with autocracy throughout the world. The arm of the Russian government that shot down MH17 (and likely took MH370 as well) is the same one that hacked the DNC servers in 2016 and helped Trump illegally win that election. Thus, there is a straight line from MH370 to January 6—and, if Trump wins again, to the dismantling of America’s 248-year-old democracy.