Quote of the Day: Russia is Trying to Destabilize the US

From a Washington post article today detailing the subjects of ads placed on Facebook by Russian agents: divisive social subjects, not the election as such…

“Is it a goal of the Kremlin to encourage discord in American society? The answer to that is yes,” said former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael A. McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “More generally, Putin has an idea that our society is imperfect, that our democracy is not better than his, so to see us in conflict on big social issues is in the Kremlin’s interests.”

Incidentally, the $100 K in ads that were discovered by Facebook investigators probably represents the tip of the iceberg of such advertisements– since all of them were from accounts disguised to look like they originated in the US, and they were difficult to trace.