New HBO documentary roots out the Agents Of Chaos who meddled in the 2016 election
TV Reviews Pre-Air
Of the many memes that have come to define the Trump era, “But her emails!” has reached iconic status. Set against a backdrop of a town sinking underwater, it’s a way to signal that so much of our current disaster could have been averted had enough people in swing states voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 elections. Here’s a question: What email scandal is it actually referring to? The Democratic National Convention leaks? Clinton’s use of a private server? The emails found during the Anthony Weiner investigation? The Podesta emails dumped by Wikileaks? Does anyone even remember those four separate yet interconnected scandals, or the concerns over Russian meddling? Do we really know what “Russian meddling” even means?
If you still can’t clearly define even one of the many tangled aspects of the hellish 2016 election, the new HBO docuseries Agents Of Chaos is here to give viewers a crash course on what Russian interference consisted of during the presidential campaign. Directed by the award-winning and prolific documentarian Alex Gibney (The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley, Going Clear: Scientology And The Prison Of Belief) and Javier Alberto Botero, the documentary parses out the multiple-pronged approach the Russian government used to undermine the democratic process in the United States.
Divided into two two-hour episodes, the first half of the documentary focuses on the work of Russian troll farms and the hacker operations of two different Russian intelligence services, the GRU and the SVR. The second part focuses on the allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, giving an overview of the different leaks and scandals that rocked the DNC and the questionable decisions made by the government to prevent further interference. Though there is previously unseen footage of troll farms and candid interviews from key figures, Agents Of Chaos doesn’t drop huge bombshells. Most of what’s described is already out there in the news, dissected to the point of exhaustion. What it does very successfully, though, is lay out an organized summary of the intricate web of fuckery Putin may have weaved, but that the United States was open to receive because of our own rabid homegrown dysfunction.
The result is a dizzying, overwhelming, yet compelling presentation of the different tactics the Russians employed. There is an effort to divide each aspect of Russian interference into easily digestible bites, but it proves to be an extremely difficult feat because of how convoluted it actually was. It’s a documentary that demands you actively engage with its content in order to keep track of every thread. If there wasn’t substantial evidence to back up some of the claims, it would sound like an unhinged conspiracy rant in a dark corner of the subreddit universe. Viewers may come out of the experience feeling caught up in another recognizable meme of our times: the Pepe Silvia scene in
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
Gibney interviews dozens of experts, journalists, government officials, whistleblowers, analysts, and university professors to guide us through the chaos. Though there are recognizable figures, including the likes of John Podesta and Harry Reid, the ones that really shine work in the less glamorous aspects of politics. Celeste Wallander, a former senior director of the Russia/Eurasia National Security Council, provides a sobering look at how the political upheaval in the Ukraine was a precursor to what later occurred here and the frustrating ways in which the U.S. government failed to take decisive action on the Russian attacks.
Camille François, a cybersecurity analyst who investigated the 2016 Russian interference, also offers a fascinating look into how the troll factories work. This is one of the highlights of the documentary, perhaps because it shows how truly mundane the task of sowing hatred and discord can be. Any person who has ever worked for a marketing firm will recognize the trolls’ strategies, which included keyword search and sharing posts from each other’s fake accounts in a circle jerk meant to flood other people’s feeds with their content. As Agents Of Chaos points out, Russian troll farms are not actual hackers (though hackers did play other roles in 2016). They simply use the platform the way influencers do.
The documentary also profiles a handful of sketchy figures, demonstrating how the U.S. was pushed to the edge by men who Glenn Simpson, founder of the research firm Fusion GPS, characterizes as “horny, hungry, ambitious, maybe not that bright, maybe a little bit eccentric.” It can be jaw-dropping to learn that Putin’s right-hand man in terms of troll operations used to be a former hot dog salesman, or how a cheesy wannabe pop star by the name of Emin Agalov became embroiled in the Mueller investigation. Carter Page, foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign in 2016, comes off as particularly daft. One wonders if the reason he agreed to speak for the cameras was a result of a particularly acute case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. As Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI notes, “It is the lack of sophistication that might make them particularly dangerous” and susceptible to the machinations of savvier and more powerful leaders.
This can be rage-inducing and depressing. It might also make some of us feel very smug, secure that we are above such manipulations. Not so fast—as François explains why the trolls were so effective, “they’re not injecting in that bloodstream anything that wasn’t already there.” But in a documentary with a cacophony of voices, there is one that is missing: that of American voters. Time and time again, we hear from experts that Russian interference was so successful because we were vulnerable. We were already polarized. We were primed to be pushed and prodded into echo chambers, bubbles and villainization, to the point where the infrastructure hackers planted to corrupt election results proved unnecessary, according to Agents Of Chaos.
The documentary attempts no explanation as to how our polarization came to be, which can be incredibly frustrating. We are living in a reality where facts have been rendered even more meaningless, leaving one to wonder if the goal of functioning as a warning for 2020 is futile. The documentary may answer many questions, but it fails to answer the most vexing question of all: How did the United States get to be that malleable? Felix Sater, one of Trump’s former business associates, shares the following Churchill quote in his interview: “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” But in Agents Of Chaos, that quote feels more applicable to us.
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Hyello, fellow Amereeken Citizen. I did to be enjoying the story of this, and cannot be waiting to watch sequel soon, here in cowntry of USA where I am from.
Flawless Crested Butte, Colorado accent.
Did you see the game last night? My team won by 22 footballs!
Yes, I saw the contest. My squadron won!
Yes comrade. Is very concerning.
But what about Moose and Squirrel?
Ha ha funny foreign person accent
‘What email scandal is it actually referring to?’I knew Clinton was in trouble in 2016 when Alonzo Bodden made a joke on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me built on his understanding that the Podesta emails were hacked from Clinton’s private server. If the respectable middlebrow pundits on NPR’s current affairs programming couldn’t keep the details of these various ‘hacking’ events separate there was no way the American voting public would.
I’d venture that what most people took away from the Clinton email scandal was not necessarily that she used a private server (which was, let’s face it, a terrible idea for a Secretary of State) but that she was caught lying about it repeatedly. She’d claim no classified emails were sent from it, or that she turned over all work-related emails and only deleted the personal ones, and immediately messages would surface that contradicted those claims. The fact that the final episode was discovered via Anthony Weiner’s (of all people) laptop was icing on the cake because it showed that her staff was equally careless. For someone already considered a dishonest control freak the overall result was damning. If she had just eaten the criticism at the beginning and switched all work traffic to a gov server the whole thing would have blown over.
The people who believe Clinton ever lied about her emails are the exact same people who believed she lied about Benghazi. After all, the email faux-scandal directly arose from the Benghazi conspiracy theories about a cover-up. Not a single intelligent person (on the left or right) believe Clinton did anything dishonest regarding her emails, but her enemies used it as cudgel to whip up an angry mob of morons to chant “lock her up” even though they could not explain what she did wrong if their lives depended on it.There was nothing Clinton could have done to appease these deplorables. After all, no matter how hard Obama tried and what evidence he provided, he could never convince these same assholes that he was born in the USA. Now they have curdled into QAnon, and are getting elected to Congress. “But her emails” will probably be marked by historians as the beginning of a dangerously stupid period in our country that will long outlive Obama, Clinton, and Trump.
It will be a reality for decades, and one that society, culture, common sense has to adapt to. We are slow to adjust to the transformations and vulnerabilities offered by new communication technologies. This adjustment will mostly go through this. That sort of thing. Fictions, documentaries, detailing aspects of these new threats, repeating them, making them as present in pop culture as the threat of car crash, armed robberies, rape and terrorism. It’s a parameter that has to be present on our ways to approach the world, and this requires a level of visibility that makes it a normal component of life.I hope it’s the first(-ish) of many docs and fictions on that matter. I hope it’ll become as omnipresent as AIDS or pollution awareness. It’s part of life, it must be part of our whole media landscape.And change the way we process information.
I’m going to run a quick tangent off of your point about how we process media, and say that the media itself is a huge reason why we are so polarized. All of the cable networks and broadcast newsrooms have a very specific political bent. You can watch the same story reported on multiple networks and come away with very different takes on the event, typically because of what is NOT reported coupled with the fact that opinion is now presented as information. People have settled on the network that most closely aligns with their personal political viewpoints and facts reported elsewhere are considered suspect. Of course the internet and social media have amplified this massively, but there is a reason people have become so distrustful of mainstream media news.
This is absolutely correct, and when I mention this to people, they assume I’m blaming one political party or another, when that’s simply not the case. This isn’t a grand conspiracy. It’s about the media outlets turning a profit. The way journalism is monetized has changed, primarily thanks to Facebook and Craigslist, and society hasn’t really reckoned with this yet. And we really, REALLY should.
Repealing of the Fairness Doctrine turned out to be the worst thing ever.
Fairness Doctrine only applied to broadcast networks. You could implement it now and it would change nothing. It doesn’t apply to cable, satellite radio, podcasts, or any other media that isn’t old broadcast network. And by the logic of the law, if you watched some Frontline piece on PBS on say the horrors of white nationalism, they’d be required to air at some point a counter argument from some Tucker Carlson schlub. It doesn’t have to be equal time, but the viewpoint had to be aired in some fashion. It could be a tiny ass segment in the special itself or it could be a public access show aired at some god forsaken hour, but all viewpoints had to be presented in some fashion.
The broadcast corporations own or control most of the media you’re talking about dude. And its no coicidence that Rush Limbaugh and AM talk radio appeared not too long after it was repealed which is the point you’re missing.
“Broadcast networks” means the channels that are broadcast over the air to everyone. That means NBC, ABC, CBS, etc. It doesn’t matter if Disney owns ABC and a bunch of cable channels or Comcast owns NBC and a bunch of cable channels. The law only applied to NBC, ABC, and the other broadcast networks, not the cable channels. They could do as they please with everything else.
Even though you’re still totally wrong, its not like they couldn’t just amend and change/update for cable, the internet and etc but I get it, you’re glad they repealed it so you can watch your Fox News unabated and keep the media free of libtard influence. First Amendment and all. Derp. Derp.
Fox News is a cable network. The Fairness Doctrine didn’t apply to cable networks. CNN is a cable network. It launched in the early 80s, before the Doctrine expired. If it could launch, there was nothing stopping Fox News from launching either. If you don’t understand this basic concept, there’s no point in having a discussion.
Yeah, so I’d say we’re done here. You clearly don’t understand what you’re talking about. You can’t respond with anything but attacks because you lack the understanding of what is actually being talked about. So save your energy and read up on the law, why it was implemented, what it actually covered, how it expired, how scrutiny applies differently for cable networks, print media, podcasts, websites, etc
I didn’t ask to you “discuss” this with me. You jumped in to condescendingly shout and troll your incorrect and garbage right wing opinions. So please STFU and fuck off already with you bullshit interpretations of the law already. I’m not interested in talking to you at all. Take that as an attack, asshole.
Looks like you don’t know how comment sections work either.
I find it refreshing so many people in the US are now against imperialism. I’m sure that means they’ll be apologizing and paying considerable reparations to every country they’ve ever invaded, destabilized and overthrew rightfully elected leaders to, as well as to cease all ongoing human rights violations and unlawful aggressive actions. It can even start in my country, they’re still finding children stolen from the people who got disappeared by the US-backed junta in the 70s, children who many times were given to military or police officials.
I look forward to voting for someone who (I hope) will want to pay the Russians back with interest for fucking with the 2016 and 2020 elections. (I’m not talking about Biden per se, more Kamala Harris, because she seems like someone who would carry a grudge.) Regardless, if Putin knew that getting Dipshit elected would pay off like it has in dividing the country and creating the chaos that it has, then he may be a Bond villain.
Revenge is for the weak and powerless. But if we did “pay them back” do you mean like a proxy war in Libya to remove the Wagner Group from oil production? The EU would be appreciative after Russia ignored sanctions and used old ties to Qaddafi to slip into the country after they were denied business in Saudi Arabia.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/11/russia-wagner-group-methods-bouta-killing-report/https://www.vox.com/2020/3/9/21171406/coronavirus-saudi-arabia-russia-oil-war-explainedhttps://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-oil-grab-in-libya-fuels-u-s-kremlin-tensions-in-mideast-11595772000
since when is revenge only for the weak and powerless? Have you ever met or read anything at all about Trump? He is constantly being wronged and seeking vengeance; it’s what narcissists with lots of well-paid attorneys on retainer do. Or if “revenge” is too harsh for your palate, how about “remind them there will be consequences for their bullshit especially when it affects us or our allies”?
Damn LOL calm down! Then go ahead, get revenge, go start WWIII live on iodine pills and rats. Do you boo.
wow that got dark fast…I wasn’t talking about nuclear war, just harsh economic sanctions, target Russian organized crime in the US, freeze assets, maybe some of our own cyberwarfare…just enough to leave a bruise, not the literal “nuclear option”. Cripes.
You think ANY legitimate political action by us now won’t provoke an attack? The US has bought in. It’s like joining the mob and then saying “Nah, I’d like to cancel my membership.” Russia will say say, “This is not Jenny Craig.”
I don’t think you understand who Russia is and who Trump is. This isn’t some back door deal with The Gambinos;this is national, world level shit, that this wannabe mobster has gotten us into. We are already treading thin ice with Russia. If Biden wins, Russia’s response will be to start with proxy wars. Then they will pay more terrorists to attack us and then they will show their hand with bombing military bases. Right now we have to fix ourselves and quell the shit storm in our own borders. All ties to Russian companies funding militia groups and the GOP in the US and their assets must be cut off first; then we can talk shit to their government. Belarus is a prime example of what is to come when your leader willingly . We are in debt to the Prestupnaya.
as with the GOP and their constant hypocritical bullshit, America kinda needs to slap Russia back for this shit, because if they don’t they’ll just keep doing it, but more flagrantly. America has to either tell the world we’re Russia’s bitch or impose some consequences against them for their bullshit, I don’t see middle ground.
I guess I understand what you’re saying about revenge, the thing about revenge is, You can’t let it eat at YOU. But if you can manage to get revenge on someone and NOT screw yourself up doing it, I say “More power” to you, GET your revenge. Just get it and go, don’t try to gloat.
“Damn! Had we done something like this during the Soviet days, we could’ve won the Cold War!”-Putin
If there was internet and mobile devices back then, they most certainly would’ve.
You don’t need new fangled tech to spread misinformation. Just willing dummies around to swallow it. And there were plenty back then.
But it would’ve required a helluva lot more resources and effort.In the digital age, global interconnectivity and anonymity makes it infinitely easier and you don’t even need to be a highly trained Soviet spy to do it.
Sure, but not impossible. All you really need was a Manchurian Candidiate, pun intended.
Hate the government, love the people.
nothing funnier than seeing what was once the left propagate its own red scare. if a person can be judged by the quality of his or her enemies it is soooooo fitting that the current left’s enemies are trumpist goobers.
nothing funnier than seeing what was once the left propagate its own red scare.
Really, nothing? It’s a laugh a minute round your way, I’m sure.
…a person can be judged by the quality of his or her enemies…That’s one of those empty maxims that sounds good as long as you don’t actually think about it. It doesn’t bear a moment’s examination.
It bears at least a moment’s. Napoleon/Wellington. Patton/Rommel. Hacksaw Jim Duggan/Nikolai Volkoff. Alexander the Great/Darius III etc.
Yes I’m sure “Hacksaw Jim Duggan” was a wonderful person because he managed to angrily bellow at some other big dumdum in spandex. Quality stuff.
just to be clear, you thought the inclusion of hacksaw jim duggan with napoleon and alexander the great was me being serious
You know the names of at least two WWE wrestlers, so who knows how seriously to take anything you say?
you’re not too great at this back and forth thing, eh
conspiracy theory nonsense.
It’s okay, you can just say you don’t understand what they’re talking about. There’s nothing shameful about admitting how ignorant you are.
LOL nothing any country does makes any difference. Two billion in ads, three national debates and more speeches and TV coverage than any other event in America. You guys are hilarious in your denial that some troll farm in Yugoslavia somehow is more important than all of that.
You might want to take a look at that last sentence. I’m pretty sure it says the opposite of what you mean.
Hate to be a pain in the arse, but it’s Ukraine, not the Ukraine. I believe Ukrainians prefer the former – firstly because that’s the actual name of the country, but also that ‘the Ukraine’ has connotations of it being a province of another country (ie. Russia/USSR), rather than a nation in it’s own right.
this sounds like a wildly imaginative conspiracy theory..