TRUMPUTIN:

They wanted to reinforce existing biases, not change minds. They were not interested in appealing to voters to consider alternatives. As information warfare expert Molly McKew explained in a February, 2018 article in "Wired," following the Mueller indictment of the Internet Research Agency (often called the "troll factory"),

the indictment mentions that the Russian accounts were meant to embed with and emulate 'radical' groups. The content was not designed to persuade people to change their views, but to harden those views...The intention of these campaigns was to activate--or suppress--target groups. Not to change their views, but to change their behavior.

This strategy is outlined in Christopher Wylie's book "Mindf*ck" about his time as an employee at Cambridge Analytica, the data analysis firm that provided advice to the Trump campaign and "used data improperly obtained from Facebook to build voter profiles." The firm - where Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon served on the board - utilized massive data sets to target specific Americans with tailored content. As Wylie described it, Cambridge Analytica was not focused on traditional political advertising, but involved in a form of psychological warfare - "we were creating a machine to contaminate American with hate and cultish paranoia."

In service of Trump winning the election, Cambridge Analytica and Russian intelligence were operating on the same strategy: not hoping to merely change the opinion of swing voters, but seeking to find and animate new voters - specifically, expand the electorate with voters who were fed up and had stopped engaging in politics, if they ever had in the first place. According to Wylie, "...the firm identified and targeted people with neurotic or conspiratorial dispositions, then disseminated propaganda to deepen and accentuate those traits." By seeking people who felt oppressed by political correctness and who resented perceived changes in their societal status, Cambridge Analytica was looking to for a group of potential new voters, animated by the opportunity to punish immigrant groups and urban liberals, and put them in a punitive mindset. The strategy identified new voters in 2016, but it also led to the reinforcement of the alt-right, and the eventual creation Marjorie Taylor-Greene's America First Caucus and a right-wing governing philosophy defined by a performative attitude of "owning the libs."

At the same time, both Russian intelligence and Trump strategists were also committed to a strategy of voter suppression on the left, seeking particularly to confuse and disempower minority communities. Memes and Facebook posts aimed directly at communities of color sold the theme that both establishment political parties were equally racist, and it was better to opt out altogether than participate in the corrupt process.

While both Bannon's Cambridge Analytica and Russian intelligence were following the same playbook and had detailed data on and access to tens of millions of Americans (thanks to Facebook), they needed to know where to focus their attack. Which key states and counties could swing the election in the electoral college?

This is where Manafort and Kilimnik come in.

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