It's extremely old strategy to fund internal divisions in a state you want to undermine... I actually have had trouble finding a first citation of it happening

It's extremely old strategy to fund internal divisions in a state you want to undermine... I actually have had trouble finding a first citation of it happening, because every reference I've ever found to it (dating back a few thousand BCE) treats it as an old and established problem to social order. The newness is in the mechanization of that attack via social networks to amplify your damage-per-cost and impact several groups at once from across the globe, but that's merely the industrialization of an old and established strategy. This is what warfare between nations looks like. It's what it's always looked like.