Comment by yorwba

That is tricky. I think some propaganda has no effect while some propaganda is so impactful that it is the sole cause of some major, major things. I know you said "generally" but I think that doesn't present the full picture.

The Russian state's hack and leak of Podesta's emails caused Pizzagate and QAnon. Russian propagandists also fanned the flames of both. It's not quite clear if this was a propaganda victory (it could be that it was propaganda from other sources commenting on the hacked emails which bears almost all responsibility for Pizzagate and what followed) or simply an offensive cybercapabilities victory, but this is an example of the complex chains of actions which can affect societal opinions and attitudes.

I am skeptical random LLM nonsense from Russian farms is shifting sentiment. But I think it's prudent to remain open to the possibility that the aggregate effect of all propaganda, intelligence, and interference efforts by the Russian state in the past decade could have created the impetus for several significant things which otherwise would likely not have occurred.

Another example: the old Russian KGB propaganda about America inventing AIDS as a bioweapon was extremely effective and damaging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Denver

More recent Russian propaganda about America running a bioweapon lab in Ukraine has been quite effective and is still believed by many.

> Again, propaganda generally has no or almost no effect.

This is a wild claim.

I read the early article, it claimed that most of the pro trump russian propaganda was consumed by republicans so it didn't change any viewpoints.

Ignoring the idea that it might have prevented a change, it's a pretty small sample size compared to, you know, all of human history.