Their goal is to make our system dysfunctional by destroying people's trust in the information presented them.
It is what the Rand institute calls the "firehose of falsehood" https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
And they have been very successful at it.
Isn't this just the ol' "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" problem? Hundreds of years of ago we couldn't see germs with a microscope doesn't mean they weren't effective in our lives.
And because we couldn’t see them we misattributed their effects and treated people with bloodletting. Confidently declaring your understanding of an unseen enemy and applying seemingly-appropriate countermeasures is likely to be harmful.
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pillars-of-...
> The media multiplier effect can, at times, create disinformation storms with potentially dangerous effects for those Russia perceives as adversaries at the international, national, and local level. In the past, Russia has leveraged this dynamic to shield itself from criticism for its involvement in malign activity. This approach also allows Russia to be opportunistic, such as with COVID-19, where it has used the global pandemic as a hook to push longstanding disinformation and propaganda narratives.
> A key element of Moscow's strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives- including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against president Biden- to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.
> Throughout the election cycle, Russia's online influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow's long-standing goals of undermining confidence in US election processes and increasing sociopolitical divisions among the American people.
> Foreign intelligence services are certainly doing a lot of crap online but it's not clear whether they've actually accomplished anything.
?
Government resource allocation is seldom based on a rational cost / benefit analysis.
> Throughout the election cycle, Russia's online influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow's long-standing goals of undermining confidence in US election processes and increasing sociopolitical divisions among the American people.
The confidence undermining was all a local issue; Russia had nothing to do with it.