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International

Why You Shouldn’t Fret Much Over Russian Election Interference

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9 minute read

From The Rattler

By J.D. Tuccille

Governments are always screwing with other countries politics. It’s often ineffective.

If you missed the news, Russians are interfering in American politics again. If you missed history, Russians are always interfering in other countries’ politics—and so is everybody else, including the U.S. Screwing around with foreign elections is a popular sport for the world’s regimes, though it’s not clear that websites, bogus social media accounts, and funds funneled to a political-commentary network will return more bang for Putin’s rubles than did past social media shenanigans.

Russia, Again

“The Justice Department today announced the ongoing seizure of 32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as ‘Doppelganger,’ in violation of U.S. money laundering and criminal trademark laws,” according to a September 4 government press release. “In conjunction with the domain seizures, the U.S. Treasury Department announced the designation of 10 individuals and two entities as part of a coordinated response to Russia’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election.”

The indictment specified “the defendants, have deployed nearly $10 million, laundered through a network of foreign shell entities, to covertly fund and direct U.S. Company-I [which] publishes English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube.”

“Many of the videos published by U.S. Company-I contain commentary on events and issues in the United States, such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related to domestic and foreign policy,” adds the indictment. “While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine.”

Based on details in the indictment, Company-1 has been identified as Tenet Media (since shuttered), which managed a stable of right-wing pundits including Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Taylor Hansen, Matt Christiansen, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson. The company promoted, the indictment says, “nearly 2,000 videos that have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone.”

Very nefarious, right? Well, maybe not. While Tenet founder Lauren Chen has gone quiet and lost her gig with Blaze TV and channels on YouTube, Tenet’s contributors seem baffled by the whole thing.

“The Culture War Podcast was licensed by Tenet Media, it existed well before any license agreement with Tenet and it will continue to exist after any such agreement expires,” insists Tim Pool. “Never at any point did anyone other than I have full editorial control of the show.”

Benny Johnson also says, “I am the only person who ever had editorial control of my program.”

Translated Russian documents outlining a “guerilla media campaign in the United States” caution their intended audience that “in the United States there are no pro-Russian and/or pro-Putin mainstream politicians or sufficiently large numbers of influencers and voters. There is no point of justifying Russia and no one to justify it to.” The campaign was meant to exploit “the high level of polarization of American society” by paying commentators to say things they were already saying.

It’s not clear they got a lot of mileage from that program.

Not a Lot of Bang for the Ruble

“Numbers like those might sound impressive,” independent journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote of the Tenet pundits drawing 16 million YouTube views after receiving $10 million. “But my Twitter analytics informs me that over the past year, my posts garnered 463 million views. So Russia’s dastardly scheme reached a small fraction of the people my dumbass posts do.”

That’s typical for foreign meddling in our already messy domestic politics.

“It would appear unlikely that the Russian foreign influence campaign on Twitter could have had much more than a relatively minor influence on individual-level attitudes and voting behavior,” concluded a 2023 analysis of Russian interference in the 2016 election published in the journal Nature Communications. The authors added, “we did not detect any meaningful relationships between exposure to posts from Russian foreign influence accounts and changes in respondents’ attitudes on the issues, political polarization, or voting behavior.”

In 2020, foreign influencers worked against each other, including supposed allies in the latest Axis of Evil. A 2021 report from the government’s National Intelligence Council, which reports to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), found “Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party” while “Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects.” Also meddling were forces including “Lebanese Hizballah, Cuba, and Venezuela.”

This sort of sounds like a cost-effective means of funding U.S. elections—just let foreign intelligence operations pay for them. But the ODNI report cautioned these schemes “undermine public confidence in the electoral process and US institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the US.” Which means getting us upset and pointing fingers about foreign interference is a goal of these schemes.

The same can almost certainly be said when U.S. agencies join the fun.

Election Interference Is a Game the U.S. Also Plays

“I was alarmed in 2016 by how policymakers and commentators frequently described Russian interference in our election as unprecedented,” according to the Wilson Center’s David Shimer, who wrote Rigged (2020) on the topic. “Many former CIA officers told me in interviews that they viewed the ’48 operation in Italy as the agency at its best. And in the aftermath of that operation, as the CIA’s chief internal historian put it to me, the agency and the KGB went toe to toe in elections all over the world.”

The National Endowment for Democracy, founded by Congress in 1983, is “dedicated to fostering the growth of a wide range of democratic institutions abroad, including political parties, trade unions, free markets and business organizations.” It does so through “grants to support the projects of non-governmental groups abroad.” I find the NED and its goals less troublesome than those of Russians funding U.S. political pundits, but I bet lots of people elsewhere disagree. Fundamentally, it’s all part of the same international contest to screw with the internal debates of allies and adversaries alike.

So, take reports of Russian interference in American elections with a grain of salt, knowing that Putin is paying Americans to say what they already believe, and the U.S. does the same in other countries. Importantly, none of that interference prevents you from making your own decisions.

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Daily Caller

‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Or $50 Oil — Trump Can’t Have Both

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

President Donald Trump has often made clear his goal of cutting prices for energy as part of his overall agenda to break the back of chronic inflation left behind by the Biden presidency. When talking about this goal, the president has placed special emphasis on lowering the price of crude oil, given its integral relationship to gas prices at the pump and transportation-related costs which go into the price of food, clothing and other consumer goods. 

“A very big thing that I’m very happy with is oil is down,” Trump said in remarks in the Oval Office on Wednesday. “We’re getting that down. When energy comes down, prices are going to be coming down with it. So, in a very short period of time, we’ve done a very good job.” 

White House advisor Peter Navarro has been quoted by The New York Times and other media outlets as saying that an average oil price of $50 per barrel would help tame inflation and set the stage for a return to a healthier economy. If that is indeed the goal, this week’s confluence of events, featuring a bigger-than-expected increase in oil production quotas from the OPEC+ oil cartel preceded less than 24 hours earlier by the president’s announced reciprocal tariffs on a wide array of countries went a long way to doing the trick. 

Just prior to Trump’s tariff announcement Wednesday afternoon, the price for West Texas Intermediate crude stood at $70/bbl. Less than 48 hours later, the price had fallen below $61, a drop of about 15%. It was the largest 2-day decline in crude prices since 2021. How much of the price decrease is due to the tariffs as opposed to the OPEC+ agreement to pour another 137,000 barrels per day onto the international market is hard to know, but there is no doubt both actions had an impact.  

As I’ve noted previously, this action to force lower prices for oil and natural gas lies directly at odds with the concurrent Trump “drill, baby, drill” objective which he sees as a key part of his American Energy Dominance agenda. The White House gave a nod to the oil refining segment in the Wednesday tariff announcement by exempting energy imports, another action at least in part aimed at lowering prices for gasoline and diesel fuel.  

But that nod to the downstream segment does little for upstream companies who have seen supply chain muck-ups and Biden-era inflation raise break-even prices above Friday’s levels. The Q1 2025 Energy Survey Report published March 26 by the Dallas Federal Reserve estimates that drillers in the Permian Basin require a $61 oil price just to break even on drilling new shale wells. The needed breakeven price rises higher in other, less prolific basins. CNN quoted independent oil analyst Andy Lipow as saying that many upstream companies require prices closer to Monday’s $71/bbl level for new shale wells. It almost goes without saying that operators will have little incentive to “drill, baby, drill” if they stand to lose money doing it. 

In an interview with Fox Business host Stu Varney on Tuesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, himself a former oil industry executive, said, “If your state has expensive energy, it’s because of choices made by politicians in those states to virtue signal somehow they’re on some global mission. They’re going to solve climate change by making your utility bills more expensive and your businesses want to relocate out of the states. That’s just nonsense.” He added that Trump was pursuing energy policies based on common sense, saying, “common sense will deliver more investment in our country and lower energy prices.” 

No doubt, few executives in the industry would agree that a pursuit of $50 oil prices has anything to do with common sense for their companies. If prices should drop that far and linger there for any length of time, layoffs and idled drilling rigs will become the prevailing topic of the day in oil and gas.  

So, while the White House might continue touting its “drill, baby, drill” slogan for the time being, we won’t hear it echoing through the barbecue and Tex-Mex joints in Midland, Texas, for the time being. 

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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International

Germany launches first permanent foreign troop deployment since WW2

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MXM logo  MxM News

Quick Hit:

Germany activated a 5,000-strong armored brigade in Lithuania — marking its first permanent foreign military deployment since World War II. The move strengthens NATO’s eastern flank amid Ukraine’s ongoing conflict with Russia.

Key Details:

  • The 45th Armored Brigade was formally launched outside Vilnius on Tuesday.
  • Germany plans for the brigade to be fully operational by 2027 in Rūdninkai, near the Belarus border.
  • The deployment marks a major policy shift for Berlin and a boost for NATO’s deterrence posture.

Diving Deeper:

Germany has officially entered a new era of military engagement, launching its first permanent foreign troop deployment since the end of World War II. The move, announced Tuesday, sees the activation of a 5,000-strong armored brigade in Lithuania as part of a broader NATO strategy to counter the perceived threat from Russia.

The newly formed 45th Armored Brigade was ceremonially inaugurated outside the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. German Brigadier General Christoph Huber assumed command, overseeing the establishment of a temporary headquarters and unveiling the unit’s crest. “We have a clear mission: to ensure the protection, freedom and security of our Lithuanian allies on NATO’s eastern flank,” Huber said, adding that the unit’s presence also directly contributes to the defense of Germany and NATO as a whole.

The deployment follows a pledge made by Berlin in 2023 — a decision that broke with decades of postwar defense policy rooted in military restraint. German officials had long avoided permanently stationing combat troops abroad. That posture has changed in response to Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, which has turned the Baltic region into one of NATO’s most vulnerable frontlines.

Germany’s commitment includes more than just fighting forces. The brigade will also feature key support elements, such as a medical center, communications specialists, and command support units dispersed across multiple Lithuanian locations. Troops will initially operate out of temporary facilities, with a permanent base under construction in Rūdninkai, located roughly 30 kilometers south of Vilnius.

Currently, 150 German soldiers are already on the ground in Lithuania. That figure is expected to rise to 500 by the end of the year as the new brigade scales up operations.

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