If the rise of despots around the world seems bewildering, especially given unprecedented access to information in 2019 — therein may lie the very problem. A new kind of propaganda has taken hold — one that relies on too much information, instead of too little. In Part III of our mini-series on Russian disinformation from The World’s partners at the podcast “Raw Data,” we take a look at how Vladimir Putin, leveraging 21st-century technology, engineered a media climate rife with conflict and conspiracies at home, and then took the strategy global. Putin not only took the disinformation strategy to US shores, but also to places around the world — with deadly results. We talk with journalist Peter Pomerantsev about his early warnings around Russia’s new menace, how it plays to the advantage of authoritarians — and how we now see their techniques put to use by politicians in the United States.

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