The Americans Who Saw All This Coming

[erronis]

11. Putin played the long game. Slowly insinuating his power into the US - Congress, SCOTUS, Executive

He has done a fantastic job with a very poor hand. Using the NRA as a funnel for money as well as a wedge issue that reached across the political and demographic divides.

Putin understood very early how to use the media to manage his message. Social media were just an accelerant. The "Internet Research Agency" (a Russian tech group) was very early into using the internet as a weapon. With the development of bot farms they again magnified their reach by many orders of magnitude.

Propaganda, blackmail, extortion, death threats, mob tactics. The russians are masters and have been working in the US for many decades.