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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   311 thread views

Transnational Thursday for June 25, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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I think this relates to other projects we talk about here like the role of foreign botnets in agenda setting in U.S. politics.

Foreign influence ops are a thing, but when it comes to lackluster public support for US military activity abroad, you don't need to be looking at foreign influence. You need to be looking at the way the USG has handled building support for military intervention. It mostly hasn't, and the last big effort to do so (Iraq) turned out to be predicated on a great big lie.

American adversaries have figured out that Americans have very limited patience or pain tolerance; their response has been to dig in and try to make dealing with them as painful as possible.

it has felt to me in the last few months most people have forgotten those are two different things

Nobody has forgotten. They have been correctly pointing out that it really does not matter what you are theoretically capable of if you lack the will to do it, while there's been a cadre of people coping for military failure by saying "yeah, but we could fuck them up if we really wanted to, we're just too nice."

Foreign influence ops are a thing,

These things are likely happening at the same time, I would like to learn more about how much, projected efficacy and so on.

Consider other conspiracy theories - I met a Soros lawyer a few weeks ago (now doing other work). She's wildly far to the left and I believe she didn't need any specific instructions, but she spent years being placed where her impulses could fight the propaganda war.

Nobody has forgotten.

I believe you haven't, but I've seen too many posts here (and this is a high information, skepticism, and intellect environment) that have.

It's important to remember that just because you didn't buy the misinformation doesn't mean it's not working on others.

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