GSR’s Bruen for CNN: The Russians fooled us once, but we don’t have to let them fool us twice
This is different.
That was my first thought when I, then director of global engagement, sat in the White House Situation Room in the winter of 2014, tracking Russian forces spilling into Ukraine. It wasn’t their “little green men” or even use of massive missiles that suggested to me the situation was unprecedented.
The arsenal of bots, propagandists and intelligence agents they deployed was equivalent to that assembled for the allies’ invasion of Normandy. The speed, scale and sophistication of Russia’s asymmetric attacks were unlike anything I had seen before.