Michael Hastings Quotes

We had a general awareness, for example, of Russian use of social media - Facebook ads, use of Twitter, fake news implants - we had a general understanding of that. But now, as time has elapsed and time has gone on, I've certainly learned a lot more about the depth and breadth of what the Russians were about.

A $200 million contract just got awarded to develop software to provide the Department of Defense with all these sock puppets who have fake Twitter and Facebook accounts. Why not create ten fake Libyan Twitter users and then get one journalist to follow them. But the problem is, of course, it corrupts the entire process. One of the caveats is that anything they write is going to be in a foreign language so it won't affect Americans. But that doesn't make any sense because: A) it can be translated pretty easily, and B) Americans also speak other languages.

Russia has a long history of propaganda and trying to influence various nation's cultures and elections. It's happening. They seem to have stepped up their game.

The Russians know that well executed disinformation, when exercised tactically, can quickly metastasize.

Russia is an aggressive revisionist power. And they are working - there's evidence they're working to interfere not just in our electoral process, but the electoral processes of Europeans with the same toolkit - money, fake news, propaganda, and what those Soviets used to call aktivniye meropriyatiya, active measures. This is serious.

There may be evidence the Russians are trying to tamper with elections. The Russians are trying to infiltrate everything we do, and they've succeeded. They've infiltrated Hollywood, they've infiltrated our universities, probably try to infiltrate elections by who knows what. But the idea that there is evidence that Putin was actively trying to elect Trump, there isn't a morsel of evidence for that, yet it shows up. The truth of the matter is that Putin doesn't care who runs the United States. It doesn't matter to him.

According to The New York Times, more than half of President Obama's Twitter followers are fake. They don't even exist. Which is actually a good thing because if they did exist there wouldn't be any jobs for them.

One might almost say, to adapt von Clausewitz, that modern warfare is PR by other means. And war-winning strategies mean that modern armies most stop treating their communications operations as secondary assignments or (as still too often happens) dumping grounds for officers who have failed at everything else - but as missions absolutely essential to success.

Words matter when you run for president. And they really matter when you are president.

Jesse ain't running nothin' but his mouth.

In the long run, the quality of your work is all that matters. That is your only resumé. Be professional. Make sure your editor or publisher can always reach you. Do what's asked of you if your conscience can bear it.

If you cannot - in the long run - tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless.

Say it before you run out of time. Say it before it's too late. Say what you're feeling. Waiting is a mistake.

Donald Trump is talking about running for president. He hasn't made an announcement, but I want to tell you something. The fake suspense is killing me.

There is thus little or no ability for an internet user to know when they are being covertly propagandized by their government, which is precisely what makes it so appealing to intelligence agencies, so powerful, and so dangerous.

An information operations team was sent to Afghanistan to conduct various psychological operations on the Afghans and Taliban. The team was then asked not to focus on the Taliban but on manipulating senators into giving more funds and troops [to the war].

Despite the Internet 's origin in the late 1960s as a government sponsored means of communication between the Department of Defense, private industry, and academia, it has been at its best and generated the greatest economic, social, and technological benefits since it was 'liberated' by the hordes of 'geeks' who were originally hired to run it by employers who were not themselves conversant with computers, and couldn't tell when their employees were exchanging official traffic or trading dirty jokes and recipes for marijuana brownies.

The [CIA] Agency has owned outright more than 240 Media operations around the world, including newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, radio and television stations, and wire services, and has partially controlled many more.

We're no longer dealing in the world of the real in a truthful way. We're interacting with each other in shiny homepages. I don't think that makes for honest communication.

It's hard to plan and plot attacks against America if you're on the run, and that's exactly what our brave professionals are doing.

All communication is like art. It may fairly be said, therefore, that any social arrangement that remains vitally social, or vitally shared, is educative to those who participate in it. Only when it becomes cast in a mold and runs in a routine way does it lose its educative power.

You have to take the good with the bad. Some players only talk to the press when they are doing good. When you're doing bad you shouldn't shy away from them and when doing good, don't run up to them.

For a few days I tweeted with a certain Pippa Middleton, and I really thought it was the Pippa Middleton. Then I discovered it was a fake. But the person who had thought up the concept was nice. It was kind of genius in its own way.

Do you want me to answer that?