Why the focus must shift to Russian cyber capture
Zondo commission should probe Putin’s hand in local propaganda, write Willie Currie and Melody Emmett
Propagandist cyber-tactics employed during the Zupta era must be uprooted so that South Africans can assert that factual accuracy and truth matter. Over the past few years the battle over what constitutes the truth has intensified throughout the world. There has even been talk of a "post-truth world". The comedian Stephen Colbert coined the word "truthiness" in 2005, saying it was an appeal to emotion or "gut feeling" rather than evidence. Colbert was referring to President George Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. After the invasion no such weapons were found. Russia’s cyberwar against Europe and the US has taken the attack on truth to new heights. The historian Timothy Snyder in his book The Road to Unfreedom identifies a Russian strategy in its information war as "implausible deniability", best illustrated by President Vladimir Putin’s blunt denial that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. Putin said: "We...
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