[throwaway-1124]

I don't think there's much to be afraid of, for one simple if nonobvious reason: Russia has already won. There's no point in fighting a war if you can turn the enemy into a satellite without firing a single shot.

They did so by deploying an incredible hybrid and cyber warfare machine, outsmarting what little defenses the West put up. They turned our democracies against us, weaponizing hundreds of millions of simpletons. In the 90s we dreamt that the Internet would galvanize democracy. It became an amazing weapon of subversion instead.

Russia leveraged kooky franchisees on the extremes of the political spectrum. Aware that they did not belong in politics otherwise, they were all too happy to cooperate.

In 2000 Trump sought the nomination of the Reform party and lost [1]. He was unable to leverage his money and Russian support into securing a primary win of a 2% party. Fifteen years and billions of rubles later, the Russian hype machine had been fully built out. He was guided to the 2016 Republican nomination with the precision of a hypersonic missile.

A similar story played itself out in virtually all other Western countries. Beware of the usual exceptionalist apologies - Trump, Orban, Le Pen, Farage are all cookie-cutter stories.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2000_presidential...