Weaponized Professional Troll @KassandraSeven: Part III

Psychological warfare objectives

Why?

This is the question I get most about accounts like @KassandraSeven. What is the purpose of creating an account to deceptively LARP and harm people over many years?

This is Part III of an ongoing series on the dangerous account @KassandraSeven

Part I — Scale and Statistics

Part II — Tactics and Strategy

Part III: Psychological Warfare Objectives

Psychological warfare, cognitive warfare, hybrid warfare, irregular warfare and psyops are all related terms that describe the use of non-kinetic tactics designed to damage the enemy, or to prepare the battlefield for a kinetic war.

The 2016 election was stolen by psyops conducted by Mike Flynn, Erik Prince, Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel and Roger Stone with the help of an Israeli company called PsyGroup — which is composed of largely ex-Mossad and Unit 8200 agents. This is from a 2018 marketing presentation where PsyGroup takes credit for the theft of the 2016 election.

Specifically, it takes credit for reopening Hillary Clinton’s email case 11 days before the election. Mike Flynn paid former FBI agent Brian McCauley $28,000 to falsely support this operation.

Here PsyGroup describes the “Creation of fake news sites / avatars / content” from January to July 2016 which then went on to create “discrediting news / spreading uncertainty and fake content” along with “fake bots.”

Here are some job postings in 2016 for people to LARP on social media in order to “spread uncertainty and fake content.”

“Psy-Group is looking for a Social Media Content Writer with the following skills:

• Experience in hands on strategy and posts creation on social media sites

  such as Facebook, Twitter etc.

• Hands on experience in outreach and communications to potential partner

  groups and influencers.

• Ability to write great engaging web copy in a real time environment that can

  stimulate user interaction, discussion and engagement

• Respond and react to changes within social networks - changes in

  functionality, methods of engagement etc.

• Monitor and present relevant data, trends, successes, exceptions etc.”

“KassandraSeven”

The LARP known as @KassandraSeven on Twitter started its activities in 2013 when it set up its website “karmicreaction.com.” We will return to the reason for this later.

But it really swung into action starting in June 2016, on Tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest.

Immediately after the 2016 election the LARP shifted its strategy to Twitter exclusively where it infiltrated the “left” through tactics described in Part II. As you can see, it abandoned its Tumblr activities at the beginning of November 2016.

Right after the 2016 election, Erik Prince’s friend, Saudi agent and convicted pedophile George Nader, paid the CEO of PsyGroup, Joel Zamel, $2 million for social media influence campaigns.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html

The Long Game and Perpetual War

The “Gerasimov Doctrine” refers to a Russian military strategy of never declaring war on powerful enemies but instead constantly attacking them through “hybrid warfare.”

“Chaos” is the key word here. Professional trolls and “chaos agents” are one way this is accomplished in enemy nations. I wrote about some existing chaos agents, including @KassandraSeven here.

https://cepa.org/the-evolution-of-russian-hybrid-warfare-introduction/

Embedding chaos agents as journalists, social media influencers and politicians on the “left” are all par for the course of the Gerasimov Doctrine.

Mike Flynn’s plan to use psychological warfare to create a right-wing death cult in America that will execute chaos operations (e.g. attacking school boards) also is part of this strategy.

Here is what the Republican Senate report on Russian interference said:

The Committee sought to learn more about the extent to which foreign-based influence companies played a role in shaping the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, either directly or through work with American counterparts. Several companies engaged in this activity, including Cambridge Analytica, Psy Group, and Colt Ventures, exhibited some type of foreign ties.

All three companies either aspired to apply micro-targeted social media messaging techniques comparable to those employed by Russian information operatives with the Internet Research Agency, or actively engaged in the application of these techniques.

In particular, the Senate Report said this about PsyGroup:

Another set of Psy Group promotional materials advertised the company's '"Influence Campaign" capability and a suite of attendant services that included "[o]nline reputation management, [o]ffline campaigns, [o]nline campaigns, *[honey traps,' and dedicated activities.

In relation to employing "individualized avatars, fake accounts, influence operations," and "amplification" of messaging through automated social media accounts, Zamel asserted to the Committee that Psy Group had the ability to conduct these activities, but "didn't do anything like that in the U.S. or in the [2016] elections.

In relation to "honey traps," Zamel explained that this entailed "building a platform, a website, or online forum to encourage discussion about certain topics. To obtain information about a target saying certain things, or having a certain agenda. To capture some information. Maybe conducting an avatar operation on that platform that's controlled by the company.

Conclusion

Weaponized professional troll @KassandraSeven is part of a long game by foreign adversaries to cause chaos and target enemies on the left.

As we shall see in Part IV: Origins, the reason behind its project are both typical and shocking.

Part I — Scale and Statistics

Part II — Tactics and Strategy