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Bedbug panic was stoked by Russia, says France
(www.lemonde.fr)
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this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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I don't want to sound like the soviet union nostalgic you'll find on grad. But there was a time when the KGB was supposed to be among the best secret service in the world with crazy operations. and now the best Russia can do to destabilize a democracy is… pretending there is some bedbugs in Paris
People have very limited bandwidth. You can only dedicate so much energy to care about things at a given moment. Bedbugs aren't a huge threat society wide, but individually they're devastating. So if you spend a bunch of personal energy and effort on making sure you don't bring bed bugs into your home, what things are you not paying attention to that normally would be a big deal?
Viral outrage campaigns don't need to be devastating on their own. Their purpose is to keep people distracted, tired, and apathetic.
The fact that you think this is an embarrassingly unsuccessful endeavor implies to me that they are doing a good job obscuring their actual objectives.
People really underestimate the psychological impact of something as seemingly annoying at best as a bug infestation.
I've encountered bedbugs over 10 years ago on holiday, luckily didn't bring them home. After all this time, the first thing I think about when something itches in bed: Bedbugs.
But they are pretty freaking good at it..
... are you saying they successfully tricked you, or that you had actual bedbugs?
They are good at destabilizing democracies. The bed bug story may play a small role in that.
Have you seen the US lately? What a shit show
Far from the best, it's only a small part of their social media propaganda effort.
Russia's systemic failures, significant as they are, will never be enough to displace their status as one of, if not, the best foreign intelligence operators. At least, not as long they're the Russian Federation.
That's not because they're magic, smarter, or genetically predisposed to being great spies. It's a function, or symptom, of their empire and how they cobbled it together with so many diverse and divergent ethnic groups, cultures, and religions.
America is a melting pot that forms a singular monoculture, more or less, but Russia is literally different nations stitched together from Europe to the opposite end of the Asian continent. It's kept together through the immense effort of their internal security services....and the occasional indiscriminate bombing campaign, but primarily their internal security services.
The continuation of the Russian empire necessitates the mass production of people for their internal security services, who also then just happen to have the same skill sets required for covert foreign intelligence work. So it's not really surprising why they excell at it, and will continue to for the foreseeable future.
Quite interesting that you are posting this on the same day some new Marsalek information came out. Don't underestimate russian intelligence