Cyberwarfare and Propaganda

At Wired State, Catherine Fitzpatrick has compiled a detailed timeline that highlights the deep interrelation of events surrounding the WikiLeaks state security-breaking campaign, the Snowden affair and the involvement of the Russian government and intelligence services in both. As she points out, there is a clear mutual, though not necessarily causal connection between

Kremlin TV's propagandistic celebration of US hackers in Anonymous; WikiLeaks and Occupy; Russia's own crackdown on Internet freedom and "foreign agents" at home (mirroring its one-time championing of Western peace movements by the Soviet government even as it jailed pacifists at home).

Fitzpatrick also notes that

America has enemies from both domestic and foreign non-state and foreign state actors, some of whom show signs of collusion with each other; they are succeeding to alarming degrees; the pushback against them causes new backlashes and enables enemies to portray the US as "oppressive" and distract from the greater oppression of Russia, China, Iran and other authoritarian states...