• Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    I don’t want to sound like the soviet union nostalgic you’ll find on grad. But there was a time when the KGB was supposed to be among the best secret service in the world with crazy operations. and now the best Russia can do to destabilize a democracy is… pretending there is some bedbugs in Paris

    • Fermion@mander.xyz
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      8 months ago

      People have very limited bandwidth. You can only dedicate so much energy to care about things at a given moment. Bedbugs aren’t a huge threat society wide, but individually they’re devastating. So if you spend a bunch of personal energy and effort on making sure you don’t bring bed bugs into your home, what things are you not paying attention to that normally would be a big deal?

      Viral outrage campaigns don’t need to be devastating on their own. Their purpose is to keep people distracted, tired, and apathetic.

      The fact that you think this is an embarrassingly unsuccessful endeavor implies to me that they are doing a good job obscuring their actual objectives.

      • suppenloeffel@feddit.de
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        8 months ago

        People really underestimate the psychological impact of something as seemingly annoying at best as a bug infestation.

        I’ve encountered bedbugs over 10 years ago on holiday, luckily didn’t bring them home. After all this time, the first thing I think about when something itches in bed: Bedbugs.

    • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Far from the best, it’s only a small part of their social media propaganda effort.

    • circuscritic@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      Russia’s systemic failures, significant as they are, will never be enough to displace their status as one of, if not, the best foreign intelligence operators. At least, not as long they’re the Russian Federation.

      That’s not because they’re magic, smarter, or genetically predisposed to being great spies. It’s a function, or symptom, of their empire and how they cobbled it together with so many diverse and divergent ethnic groups, cultures, and religions.

      America is a melting pot that forms a singular monoculture, more or less, but Russia is literally different nations stitched together from Europe to the opposite end of the Asian continent. It’s kept together through the immense effort of their internal security services…and the occasional indiscriminate bombing campaign, but primarily their internal security services.

      The continuation of the Russian empire necessitates the mass production of people for their internal security services, who also then just happen to have the same skill sets required for covert foreign intelligence work. So it’s not really surprising why they excell at it, and will continue to for the foreseeable future.

    • muelltonne@feddit.de
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      8 months ago

      Quite interesting that you are posting this on the same day some new Marsalek information came out. Don’t underestimate russian intelligence