AT FIRST I THOUGHT THIS WAS ABOUT MEDIA MATTERS, BUT IT’S ACTUALLY ABOUT PEOPLE WHO ARE COMPETENT: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations. “Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: ‘false flag operations’ (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting ‘negative information’ on various forums.”

My question is, were any of these techniques used during election campaigns?