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The internet allows for mass influence of the population by third party actors. This is largely China vs Russia. I have trouble not playing this out at scale

The internet allows for mass influence of the population by third party actors. This is largely China vs Russia. I have trouble not playing this out at scale and drawing the conclusion the internet inherently invalidates a lot of the assumptions democracy (as in the American Experiment™ version of it) requires to function. I hope I'm wrong and overly pessimistic.

g42gregory 6y ago
> This is largely China vs Russia. I would like to question this a bit. If this were true, wouldn't this mean that China won this time since Biden is the President (vs Russia won in 2016 since Trump was the President)? I think there are a lot more internal actors, such as special interest groups, PACs, activist groups, etc..., that may dwarf the external influence. There is so much money involved in politics and elections. I wonder how can we curtail the flow of money to make things more civil in politics?
- mhh__ 6y ago
  > wouldn't this mean that China won this time since Biden is the President Only if there was interaction between the Biden campaign and the Chinese state, which there was in the case of the Trump campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates_and_Russian_officials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
tsimionescu 6y ago
You're forgetting the largest player, which dwarfs all the others 10 times over - the US itself. The US propaganda machine is so far ahead of Russia and China that even discussing Russian and Chinese influence over the Internet of all places is laughable.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Very true. There are huge language barriers that makes this unlikely. You don't get a 5 cent army of people highly proficient in another language and presenting manipulative talking points. There are those people, but they would still have difficulties reaching large audiences.

g42gregory 6y ago

> This is largely China vs Russia. I would like to question this a bit. If this were true, wouldn't this mean that China won this time since Biden is the President (vs Russia won in 2016 since Trump was the President)? I think there are a lot more internal actors, such as special interest groups, PACs, activist groups, etc..., that may dwarf the external influence. There is so much money involved in politics and elections. I wonder how can we curtail the flow of money to make things more civil in politics?

mhh__ 6y ago
> wouldn't this mean that China won this time since Biden is the President Only if there was interaction between the Biden campaign and the Chinese state, which there was in the case of the Trump campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates_and_Russian_officials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...

tsimionescu 6y ago

You're forgetting the largest player, which dwarfs all the others 10 times over - the US itself. The US propaganda machine is so far ahead of Russia and China that even discussing Russian and Chinese influence over the Internet of all places is laughable.

raxxorrax 6y ago
Very true. There are huge language barriers that makes this unlikely. You don't get a 5 cent army of people highly proficient in another language and presenting manipulative talking points. There are those people, but they would still have difficulties reaching large audiences.