Minerva-funded researchers Scott Atran, Richard Davis, and Hasan Davulcu's Owl in the Olive Tree post on "It Takes Social Science to Counter the Power of Russia's Malign Influence Campaign". Despite recent technical innovations, such as the use of social media, Russia’s current malign influence campaigns follow those of its Soviet predecessor. Unless we understand these strategies, we remain vulnerable to them. The new National Security Strategy acknowledges the return of great power competition along with a fundamental shift in the locus of struggle away from armed conflict toward cyberspace and non-kinetic information warfare. Nevertheless, our actions within the information domain, especially regarding social media, remain geared to response and mired in lack of awareness of how our adversaries, especially Russia, structure and implement malign influence campaigns.
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