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CCIP · 06-17-15, 07:10 AM

Well, let's not forget the Arab spring either for example - which owed a lot to social media to get the momentum going, something that decades of attempted revolts had failed to do through conventional means. And then, of course, Islamists proved even more successful at capitalizing on the instability, using that same social media, and that was the end of the Arab Spring.

And for Russia this too is nothing new - in many ways, the Bolsheviks (who were politically among the weakest factions going into the revolution in 1917) succeeded thanks to their ability to leverage grass-roots media of the day and put agitators in the right places (military units, workers' organizations) - not many in number, but generating the right amount of noise at the right time to direct events. And when the right moment came, they proved best at leveraging that ability to agitate.

So the playbook on this matter is pretty old, just the technology is new. Everybody who can, does use it - because it's been shown to work, historically.

06-17-15, 07:10 AM	#9
CCIP Navy Seal Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Waterloo, Canada Posts: 8,700 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 2	Well, let's not forget the Arab spring either for example - which owed a lot to social media to get the momentum going, something that decades of attempted revolts had failed to do through conventional means. And then, of course, Islamists proved even more successful at capitalizing on the instability, using that same social media, and that was the end of the Arab Spring. And for Russia this too is nothing new - in many ways, the Bolsheviks (who were politically among the weakest factions going into the revolution in 1917) succeeded thanks to their ability to leverage grass-roots media of the day and put agitators in the right places (military units, workers' organizations) - not many in number, but generating the right amount of noise at the right time to direct events. And when the right moment came, they proved best at leveraging that ability to agitate. So the playbook on this matter is pretty old, just the technology is new. Everybody who can, does use it - because it's been shown to work, historically. __________________ There are only forty people in the world and five of them are hamburgers. -Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)