Threats to Democracy Round Up - Selected Topics, Late May, 2023

Influence of Hostile Foreign Powers

We have previously posted lots of words about the anechoic effect: the lack of echoes produced by seemingly important stories about health care dysfunction.  It seemed as if such stories were taboo, presumably because even discussing them was seen as a threat to the rich and powerful who increasingly run health care.  Those involved in the leadership and governance of health care organizations and their cronies also have considerable power to damp down any public discussion that might cause them displeasure. In particular, we have seen how those who attempt to blow the whistle on what really causes health care dysfunction may be persecuted.   

 But as we discussed here, the major issues we discussed prior to 2015 gave way to a new normal with the advent of Trump as a presidential candidate and the MAGA movement as a major force in US politics.  In that 2020 discussion, we noted how the Trump administration acted to squelch discussion of scientific topics that did not fit in with its ideology, despite constitutional guarantees of speech and press free from government control (look here).

Now it appears that the most striking example of the anechoic effect involves discussion of the underlying causes of the anti-democratic turn in the US that threatens the system that permits public discussion, and the possibility of reforming health care dysfunction among other issues.  We continue to see bits of evidence made public about how democracy is threatened by the influence of hostile foreign powers, especially Russia, on US politics, especially elections.  Yet the evidence produces few echoes.

Here are some of the more striking bits of evidence that appeared in just the last two weeks about Russia's malign influence on US democracy.

Russia's Malign Strategy and Tactics

-The April 2023 Indictment for Russian Election Interference and Threats to U.S. Democracy "The Kremlin’s Strategy: Exploiting far left and far right fringes; Exploiting the racial divide; Going local"
https://www.justsecurity.org/86424/the-april-2023-indictment-for-russian-election-interference-and-threats-to-u-s-democracy/

Racism as a National Security Threat "the one big thru-line from the Cold War to today in terms of the  most exploitable vulnerability Russia can weaponize against us:  America’s racial divisions"
https://open.substack.com/pub/asharangappa/p/class-15-racism-as-a-national-security

Evidence of widespread Russian election meddling in other countries: "Kemal Kilicdaroglu, main challenger of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan,  said ... his party has concrete evidence of Russia's  responsibility for the release of 'deep fake' online content"
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/erdogan-rival-says-has-evidence-russias-online-campaign-ahead-turkey-vote-2023-05-12/

Linkages of Trump and Supporters to Russia

 US Trumpists are increasingly part of a new global fascist axis: "far-right populism of Hungary’s prime minister is helping to inspire  U.S. Republicans' agenda for 2024, a game plan that targets  immigration, LGBTQ rights and... the war in Ukraine"
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/08/gop-hungary-connection-shaping-2024-campaign

Reminder that Trump "is Putin's puppet": He was "repeatedly asked by CNN host Kaitlan Collins if he backed Ukraine in its 15-month conflict with Vladimir Putin’s forces, and repeatedly dodged the question"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/putin-ukraine-war-trump-cnn-b2336935.html

Follow the money: Trump Media got financing from Paxum Bank, which "promoted itself...as a way for video streamers of adult content  to coordinate financial transactions across international borders" and is owned by a sketchy Russian businessman
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/13/trump-truth-social-loan-questions/

[Another Trump-Russia connection?] FBI agents raid condo unit owned by Russians at Trump Towers in Sunny Isles
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article275358451.html

The FBI raided a condo in Trump Tower III in Sunny Isles Beach, FL because its "owner was being arrested... on  charges of illegally selling airplane parts to Russian airline  companies"  
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/days-mysterious-fbi-raid-russians-225454222.html

Putting another Russian asset in the WH: In call to ReAwaken America rally, Trump said he would give Michael Flynn a WH position.  Flynn "entered, then withdrew, a guilty plea of making false statements to the F.B.I" and hung out with Putin in Russia
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-call-in-to-michael-flynns-far-right-roadshow-is-red-meat-for-christian-nationalists

Reminder: "next to Putin at the head table, in the seat of honor, was an American.  Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who would later become Donald Trump's  national security adviser"
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/guess-who-came-dinner-flynn-putin-n742696

Trump and Supporters' Techniques to Downplay their Connections to Russia: The Durham Investigation 

It was supposed to show how the investigation of Trump/Russia was a witch hunt.  It didn't

Not with a bang.... Trump fans hyped the Durham investigation. Trump fans will likely keep spinning it, but it "delivered underwhelming results... securing a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee [and] ...losing ...2 criminal cases"
https://apnews.com/article/durham-trump-russia-probe-7e84f94ca9cf7905cbc5eddc108575b3

"Durham’s...report revealed little substantial new information  about the inquiry...failed to  produce the kinds of blockbuster revelations... that...Trump  and his allies suggested Mr. Durham would uncover"
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/trump-russia-investigation-durham.html

"Durham...scolded the F.B.I. but failed to... uncover a politically motivated 'deep state' conspiracy.... charged no  high-level F.B.I. or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged...Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did  nothing prosecutable"
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/us/politics/durham-report-trump-russia.html

Despite the failure of the Durham investigation to find any important misconduct much less "deep state" politicization of the Trump-Russia investigation, to Trump fans it  "was Watergate times 10, or 100"
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/politics/durham-report-conservative-reaction.html

Russia, Trump and the 2016 election "Russia tried to swing the 2016 election to Trump; FBI had reason to investigate a tip suggesting Trump campaign involvement; Trump campaign welcomed help from Russia:  ‘Steele dossier’ proved to be a red herring"  
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/17/truth-about-russia-trump-2016-election/

Russian Propaganda and Disinformation

"hate crimes in America are often influenced by online chatter that's  increasingly linked to Russian sites or pro-Russian narratives on more  obscure parts of the internet. The Kremlin doesn't seem to mind"  
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/09/american-extremists-russian-sites-shootings

Conflicts of Interest, Corruption, Crime

Since 2015, we have asked (here) how the US (and the world) can possibly reduce health care corruption, a major cause of global health care dysfunction, under a thoroughly conflicted and corrupt Trump administration.  Since the end of that administration, Trump has campaigned to be president again.  Meanwhile, the evidence of his and his supporters' conflicts of interest, corruption, and criminality continue to grow.  Recent examples include:

Trump's Conflicts, Crimes, and Corruption

Jury finds Trump liable for sexual abuse, awards accuser $5M [When real, reasonable people get to review Trump's conduct while free of his intimidation and bluster they may tend to do so harshly]
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/jury-to-start-deliberations-in-suit-accusing-18087335.php

"Trump admitted more directly than before on Wednesday that he knowingly  removed government records from the White House and claimed that he was  allowed to take anything he wanted with him as personal records" Confessing to a crime?  
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/11/us/politics/trump-documents-white-house.html

He just can't help himself: in his CNN Town Hall appearance, Trump appeared to defame E Jean Carroll again, just days after she won a lawsuit against him for his previous defamation
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/11/nyregion/e-jean-carroll-trump-defamation.html

[Even more accusations of sexual misconduct by Trump, even involving his own White House staff] Top aides reveal Trump’s alleged inappropriate conduct towards female staffers
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-white-house-aides-abuse-b2337881.html

Attacking the rule of law, eve obstruction of justice? - Trump fan politicians go after prosecutors who are investigating or otherwise legally pursuing Trump, including Manhattan DA Bragg, Special Counsel Smith, Fulton County GA DA Willis
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/17/donald-trump-republican-allies-prosecutors-investigations

There is apparently evidence that Trump knew he was committing a crime by walking off with classified presidential records despite his later claims that doing so was legal
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-mar-a-lago-classified-documents-evidence-b2342010.html

The Conflicts, Crimes and Corruption of Trumpist and/or Far Right Politicians

[Noticing this glaring conflict of interest] Judge to order Wisconsin Elections Commission to reconsider fake elector complaint without the commissioner who joined the scheme
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2023/05/08/wisconsin-elections-commission-must-reconsider-fake-elector-case/70195092007/

Are they all sleazy or criminal? Republican "Rep. Bryan Slaton resigned from the Texas House on Monday after an investigation determined that he had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a 19-year-old woman on his staff"  
https://www.chron.com/politics/article/bryan-slaton-pressure-resign-texas-house-18086307.php

TX rep Slaton "proposed banning children from attending drag shows to supposedly shield them from being groomed... resigned after he was found to have engaged in inappopriate sexual  conduct with a 19-year-old intern" Fake morality of the culture warriors
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/09/republican-drag-shows-danger-for-kids-resigns-misconduct-intern

[Again, are they all crooks?] Rep Santos [(R-NY) is accused of using illicit campaign contributions for personal expenses "indictment accusing him of wire fraud, money laundering,  stealing public funds and lying in federal disclosure forms"
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/05/10/nyregion/george-santos-charges-news/santos-had-been-under-investigation-for-his-campaign-finances-and-other-activities

Rep George Santos confesses to theft in Brazil to avoid prosecution
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/11/george-santos-brazil-case-theft/

Follow the money: "conservative operatives using sophisticated robocalls raised  millions of dollars from donors using pro-police and pro-veteran  messages....  nearly all the  money went to pay the firms making the calls and the operatives  themselves"
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/14/us/politics/scam-robocalls-donations-policing-veterans.html

[And now reports of sexual misconduct by Trump's lawyer Giuliani] Rudy Giuliani accused of sexual harassment by ex-employee
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65606131

[Are they all thugs, if not crooks?- Louisiana] GOP Rep Clay Higgins filmed shoving activist who questioned Lauren Boebert’s divorce
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/clay-higgins-shoved-activist-laren-boebert-b2341682.html

Propaganda, Disinformation, Deception

We used to write about propaganda and disinformation used to promote health care goods and services (stealth marketing campaigns), and advocate for policies favorable to private health care organizations (stealth health policy advocacy and stealth lobbying).  Some stealth marketing, lobbying and policy advocacy campaigns encompass not just propaganda, but disinformation.  For example, consider the health insurance company campaign to derail the Clinton administration's attempt at health reform as described by Wendell Potter in Deadly Spin (look here).  The tactics employed in that campaign included: use of front groups and third parties (useful idiots?); use of spies; distractions to make important issues anechoic; message discipline; and entrapment (double-think).

But back in the day, the notion of propaganda and disinformation as a real threat to health care, much less our democratic process and society as a whole, was pretty radical.  That was then.  By 2019 we were writing about a  a new (ab)normal that includes propaganda and disinformation in the service of hostile authoritarian foreign states meant to disrupt more democratic governments, whatever the cost in human health and lives.

 It is important to better understand the techniques of the propagandists and disinformationists, so:

Propagandists' and Disinformationists' Toolbox

Reflexive control "Using the name scholars have given to this area of research to  frame the debate baits Rufo’s opponents into arguing about what CRT is and isn’t, which... keeps the exact three words he wants (and  their attendant connotations) in circulation"  
https://open.substack.com/pub/asharangappa/p/erasing-memory

"How can we really engage in these conversations, when the tension is  there before you even pick up the book and open the topic?" [It's hard to  have a rational argument when fanatics are screaming at you]
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/04/us-history-test-results-civics-covid

The Flood the Zone with BS Technique:
[The old-time fast talking snake oil salesman in the internet age] Donald Trump steamrolls CNN’s town hall [It's easier to lie than to rebut a lie.  If someone lies very quickly, you can't respond in real time]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/10/cnn-trump-town-hall-lies/

'"You can’t keep saying that all night long'....[so one]  can rebut him, correct him, interrupt him and otherwise battle with him  over every point, but that’s no match for ceaseless mendacity....'We don’t have time to fact-check every lie'"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/10/cnn-trump-town-hall-lies/

It's the old Steve Bannon (and Russian) tactic: flood the zone with BS. "CNN hasn’t figured this thing out, and it’s a good bet its competitors have no better ideas" It's clear society needs a better solution to the flood the zone tactic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/10/cnn-trump-town-hall-lies/

"fear is weaponized even more than hate by leaders who seek to spark violence. Hate is often part of the equation...but fear is  almost always the key ingredient when people feel they must lash out to  defend themselves.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/06/opinion/fear-speech-social-media.html

Ways to Combat Propaganda and Disinformation

Ending false equivalence in choice of editorial voices: "will the  newspaper raise the bar for those local or syndicated [supposedly conservative] voices — i.e.,  requiring the commentary to actually engage in a truthful semblance of a  given issue?
https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2023/05/08/commentary-will-we-see-honest/

How the media can cover Trump better this time "Focus on 'the stakes' of the 2024 election, not 'the odds'; Explain Trump’s probable agenda;  Don’t make getting access to Republican politicians or projecting 'neutrality and 'objectivity' a main goal"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/09/trump-2024-cnn-town-hall-media-coverage/

Christian Nationalism Threatens Health Care Professionals, Medicine, Health Care, and Public Health

Much of the "culture war" is about attacking particular patient groups (eg, transgender patients, women seeking abortions, needing birth control or care for such conditions as ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage) and the health care professionals who care for them, or about attacking public health professionals (eg, those involved in pandemic policy) or creating phony public health problems, eg, pornography.

Furthermore, while these attacks are often framed in a biomedical, health care or public health context, the motivation behind them seems to come from extreme sectarianism, particularly Christian nationalism.

Leaked data on right-wing physicians group shows its support of extreme sectarian religious beliefs, recruiting "doctors and medical school students seen as holding Christian views," returning US to a time when "evangelical Christian beliefs" were favored
https://www.wired.com/story/american-college-pediatricians-google-drive-leak/

The state's near-total abortion ban is forcing providers to leave the state "she had to tell a patient that her  pregnancy had a significant fetal abnormality.... her hands were tied. She  couldn’t offer any more care- they had to go elsewhere"
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/idaho-abortion-ban-crisis_n_6446c837e4b011a819c2f792

[Attempting intimidation for taking care of patients] Texas AG Ken Paxton probing Austin children’s hospital [but] "It’s not clear what law Paxton believes Dell Children’s has broken;  Texas does not currently have age limits on gender-affirming care"
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/05/ken-paxton-trans-care-investigation-dell-childrens/

Fearing legal repercussions, doctors in Texas say they are risking grave patient harm to comply with new abortion restrictions [abortion bans'  adverse effects:  Extreme sectarian based medicine hurts patients]  
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/in-the-post-roe-era-letting-pregnant-patients-get-sicker-by-design

Reminder that movement against abortion imposes extreme sectarian religious beliefs on those of other faiths: "Jewish law dating back to the Torah has established that abortion is not murder."
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article275261916.html

Confluence of far-right politics and health care nonsense: After DeSantis' coup, New College will host Dr Scott Atlas as commencement speaker. He was a  member of the Trump administration who promoted herd immunity as solution to COVID
https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2023/05/09/new-college-picks-trump-covid-adviser-scott-atlas-commencement-speaker/

[How sectarianism and superstition creeps into public health] Ladapo's wife who "studied traditional naturopathy, plant and herbal medicine, and shamanism" convinced Ladapo to go to  counseling that that caused him to believe he was following "God’s plan"  
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/05/13/joseph-ladapo-says-anti-vaccine-crusade-was-gods-plan-it-cost-him-his-peers-trust-2/

[More threats to health care] Abortion Clinics Are Dealing with More Arson, Stalking, and Anthrax Threats Now-  Abortion providers feared they’d see an increase in harassment and threats if Roe v Wade was overturned. They were right.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7bday/rise-in-abortion-clinic-harassment-after-roe

[Turning sexual hangups into policy? Theocrats go after porn as a public health threat, and...] There’s ‘nothing more timid’ than a man watching porn, Josh Hawley says "There is no risk involved, no exposure to hardship or danger in the least" Promoting sex and relationships that are risky, difficult, dangerous?
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article275458201.html

KS Republican county chair says LGBTQ friendly pastors "signed a contract with Satan," plans to "make it hostile to that group of people...small sliver of society...have them move elsewhere, that does a huge amount to shut this  down,”
https://themercury.com/news/republicans-revel-in-divine-plan-to-turn-kansas-into-conservative-sanctuary/article_4a9bbd54-a6fd-5d05-b06f-41785cf4eff6.html

Apparently afraid of prosecution under anti-abortion laws, doctors told patient threatened with a miscarriage "at high risk of life-threatening complications" they could do nothing.  Violating law requiring hospitals to treat patients in emergencies?
So anti-abortion laws make doctors damned if they do (abort pregnancy for patient facing high risk of severe complications) and damned if they don't (by failing to provide emergent care).
https://www.propublica.org/article/two-hospitals-denied-abortion-miscarrying-patient-breaking-federal-law

[More physicians driven away by bans on caring for patients demonized by sectarian extremists] Austin doctors who treated trans kids leaving Dell Children’s clinic after AG Paxton announces investigation
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/talk-investigation-forces-tx-doctors-treat-trans-18098101.php

After quacky COVID herd immunity proponent and former Trump administration staffer Dr Scott Atlas invited to speak at DeSantis transformed New College commencement, students raise money to support alternative event
https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/education/2023-05-10/with-former-trump-appointee-speaking-at-their-graduation-new-college-students-plan-alternative-commencement

Doctors forced out by laws restricting treatment of patients with pregnancy complications pushed by extreme sectarians: "Doctors... fleeing the state due to new abortion restrictions....[fearing] 'Being tried as a felon simply for saving someone’s life'"  
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/13/us/idaho-abortion-doctors-drain

[Reminder: laws based on extreme sectarian religious views impose them on those of other faiths, and harm doctors and patients] Texas doctors depart as attorney general investigates hospital’s gender-affirming care
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/18/texas-hospital-inquiry-doctor-exodus

Follow the Money: Who Funds Attacks on Democracy

It's not just Russia and hostile foreign powers who threaten democracy behind the scenes.  Domestic greed is still a factor. 

Another example of how big national right-wing dark money came to small town to finance local school board candidates who wanted to ban books. We need to figure out who is paying for this, and what's in it for them  
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/06/nation/how-school-board-race-blue-state-illinois-became-nationally-funded-cage-match/

"Republicans...play this...game of supporting the  wealthy and big business behind the scenes... but making it appear...that they're on the side of the little person....going after the wokeness is a good way to do it...that's not  a bread and butter issue"
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65428204

[One big corporation refuses to bow down to DeSantis' anti-woke threats.  Will others realize pumping money into extremists' political coffers is bad for business?] Disney Pulls Plug on $1 Billion Development in Florida
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/business/disney-ron-desantis-florida.html

 

 

The Ultimate Conflict of Interest: Trump Organization Revenue vs Lives Lost to Coronavirus

Introduction: Conflicts of Interest and the Trump Administration

We have been discussing the pervasiveness of conflicts of interest in health care for years.  Recently,  we have worried how conflicts of interest and corruption in health care could be combated under an administration with such severe conflicts of interest and corruption at the highest levels, most recently here.

President Trump and his family's conflicts of interest and alleged corruption centered on their ownership of the Trump Organization, a multi-national privately held hospitality and real estate business.  Since the inauguration, Trump personally has benefited from the Trump Organization's dealings with foreign, US federal and US state governments, grossly violating two clauses of the US Constitution.

These dealings raised major constitutional and ethical questions, and concerns about whether Trump administration policies were distorted to benefit his businesses, and hence his own fortune. However, our biggest concern was about how the conflicted and corrupt aura of his administration made it difficult to address conflicts of interest and corruption in health care.

Now, in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, it appears that Trump's conflicts of interest may be dangerously affecting his administration's public health policies and its ability to suppress the virus and save lives.


Social Distancing and Other Measures to Combat Coronavirus Damaging Trump Organization Finances

In the Washington Post on March 23, 2020, David Farenthold reported on the likely severe financial losses being incurred by the Trump Organization, whose biggest owner is President Trump

President Trump’s private business has shut down six of its top seven revenue-producing clubs and hotels because of restrictions meant to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, potentially depriving Trump’s company of millions of dollars in revenue.

In particular,

he is also heavily invested in the hotel business, with 11 hotels around the world.

That business needs new people walking in the door every day, to eat and stay. And by keeping people away, the coronavirus has brought that industry its worst downturn in recent history.

'The data is bad. And we haven’t seen the worst of it yet,' said Jan Freitag, a senior vice president with the firm STR, which analyzes hotel industry data. He noted that the damage to the industry is being caused by the lockdowns and the fear of the virus. 'What we’re seeing here is a rapid descent that’s going to last. So it’s going to be a little bit of a worst-case combination of post-9/11 and [the financial crisis of] 2009.'

So far, the Trump Organization has closed hotels in Las Vegas; Doral, Fla.; Ireland; and Turnberry, Scotland — as well as the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida and a golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Many of the clubs closed because they had to, under local orders. Others closed on their own, following strong guidance or recommendations from local officials.

Those are six of Trump’s top seven revenue-producing clubs and hotels, bringing in about $174 million total per year, according to Trump’s most recent financial disclosures. That works out to $478,000 per day — revenue that is likely to be sharply reduced with the clubs shuttered. The disclosures provide self-reported revenue figures but not profits.

Trump's personal financial concerns are compounded due to financing issues.

Three of Trump’s hotels — in Doral, Chicago and Washington — have outstanding loans from Deutsche Bank that originally totaled more than $300 million. Even before the coronavirus outbreak, all three reported lagging behind their peers in occupancy and revenue, struggles that the company’s representatives blamed, in one way or another, on Trump’s political rise.

[Trump Tower Chicago, which houses the Trump Hotel]

 While the latter two hotels are still open, they are not doing well.  For example, an article by Mr Farenthold and colleagues on March 20, 2020, noted that the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC now has an occupancy of only 5%.  So the resulting sharp revenue drop raises the risk that the Trump Organization would default on its loans.

[Interior, Trump International Hotel, Washington, DC]



Hotel Closures Create Other Personal Problems for Trump

These financial threats to Trump may be compounded by threats to other benefits the Trump Organization properties have afforded him.  Some of these properties have been loci of political power.  In particular, the Trump International in Washington DC has been the place for Trump supporters to congregate, and for various interests, including corporate leadership and foreign governments to seek to influence Trump (see the voluminous "Tracking Corruption and Conflicts in the Trump Administration" report section of the Global Anti-Corruption blog for details.)

It is also very likely that the Trump Organization is also financed by shady Russian money.  As reported in Foreign Affairs in 2018,

according to several sources with knowledge of Trump’s business, foreign money played a large role in reviving his fortunes, in particular investment by wealthy people from Russia and the former Soviet republics. This conclusion is buttressed by a growing body of evidence amassed by news organizations, as well as what is reportedly being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Southern District of New York. It is a conclusion that even Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has appeared to confirm, saying in 2008—after the Trump Organization was prospering again—that 'Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.'

Trump’s former longtime architect, Alan Lapidus, echoed this view in an interview with FP this month. Lapidus said that based on what he knew from the internal workings of the organization, in the aftermath of Trump’s earlier financial troubles 'he could not get anybody in the United States to lend him anything. It was all coming out of Russia. His involvement with Russia was deeper than he’s acknowledged.'

So,

By the time he ran for president, Trump had been enmeshed in this mysterious overseas flow of capital—which various investigators believe could have included money launderers from Russia and former Soviet republics who bought up dozens of his condos—for a decade and a half. And Felix Sater was pitching Cohen on a Moscow deal as recently as mid-2016—as Trump was clinching the Republican nomination, according to a sentencing memo recently unveiled by the Mueller probe.

Furthermore, as Craig Unger wrote in the Washington Post in 2019,

for more than three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the Russian Mafia held the deeds to, lived in or ran criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties. I mean that many of them used Trump-branded real estate to launder vast amounts of money by buying multimillion-dollar condos through anonymous shell companies. I mean that the Bayrock Group, a real estate development company that was based in Trump Tower and had ties to the Kremlin, came up with a new business model to franchise Trump condos after he lost billions of dollars in his Atlantic City casino developments, and helped make him rich again.

Yet Trump’s relationship with the Russian underworld, a de facto state actor, has barely surfaced in the uproar surrounding Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign.

Shady Russian operators, money launderers, the Russian mafia, and those tied to the Putin regime may not have much sympathy for those indebted to them who payment difficulties. Whatever the form of his Russian support, it might be that his waning financial fortunes have led to some quiet but severe pressure from overseas on the Trump Organization and Trump himself, further increasing his impetus to open up his hospitality properties, regardless of the costs and risks to others


The Conflict of Interest Illustrated and Some Dire Conclusions

As Farenthold wrote,

As he is trying to manage the pandemic from the White House, limiting its casualties as well as the economic fallout, his company is also navigating a major threat to the hospitality industry.

That threatens to pull Trump in opposite directions, because the strategies that many scientists believe will help lessen the public emergency — like strict, long-lasting restrictions on movement — could deepen the short-term problems of Trump’s private business, by keeping doors shut and customers away.

As he also wrote, at the same time that Trump is under personal financial and who knows what other pressure due to the closure of his hospitality properties,

Trump is considering easing restrictions on movement sooner than federal public health experts recommend, in the name of reducing the virus’s economic damage.

In a tweet late Sunday, Trump said the measures could be lifted as soon as March 30. 'WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,' he wrote on Twitter.

Trump did not specify for whom the cure might be worse than the disease.  The obvious suspicion is that he is talking about the "cure's" effect on ... Donald Trump and his family.

This raises the strong and extremely worrisome concern that he is thinking of taking measures that may risk the lives of thousands or millions of people to preserve his wealth and personal power.  (Maybe he also is trying to save himself from some Russian retribution?)

That may be the most severe and dangerous health care conflict of interest we have ever seen in the US.

I, for one, do not trust Donald Trump to put the country's interests, and the lives of its citizens, ahead of his own personal and financial well-being.  As long as this horrendously conflicted man is running the country, we will be in doubt, and at grave risk.  

Rising Tide of Disinformation about Coronavirus: the Roles of Ideologues, Quacks, Russians, and US Politicians

Introduction: Propaganda and Disinformation in Health Care

We used to write about propaganda and disinformation used to promote health care goods and services (stealth marketing campaigns), and advocate for policies favorable to private health care organizations (stealth health policy advocacy and stealth lobbying).  Some stealth marketing, lobbying and policy advocacy campaigns encompass not just propaganda, but disinformation.  For example, consider the health insurance company campaign to derail the Clinton administration's attempt at health reform as described by Wendell Potter in Deadly Spin (look here).  The tactics employed in that campaign included: use of front groups and third parties (useful idiots?); use of spies; distractions to make important issues anechoic; message discipline; and entrapment (double-think).

In fact, towards the end of its existence, the USSR sponsored a disinformation campaign which spread the notion that HIV was a bio-weapon invented by a US laboratory (look here).  Although false ideas associated with that campaign persisted for years, the risk that health care disinformation would be used by hostile state actors seemed to die off as the cold war ended.

But now we have a new (ab)normal that includes propaganda and disinformation in the service of hostile authoritarian foreign states meant to disrupt more democratic governments, whatever the cost in human health and lives.  For an example look here at  how starting around 2015 Russia was spreading disinformation about measles and measles vaccination over the internet, using new technology like bots.

Now they seem to be doing it again, this time about coronavirus.

Disinformation About Coronavirus

On January 29, 2020, the Washington Post reported on a new disinformation campaign:

As China attempts to contain the spread of a new coronavirus that has left more than 100 people dead, rumors and disinformation have spread amid the scramble for answers.

Some of the speculation has centered on a virology institute in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak began. One fringe theory holds that the disaster could be the accidental result of biological weapons research.

The story started circulating in right-wing media:

The British newspaper Daily Mail was among the first to suggest the possibility of a link between the newly spreading virus and the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, reporting last week that the lab, which opened in 2014 and is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, had been the subject of safety concerns in the past.

A separate article published by the Washington Times, a conservative newspaper in Washington, took the theories a step further, suggesting in a headline that the 'Coronavirus may have originated in lab linked to China’s biowarfare program' and pointing to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

So,

Despite little public evidence, the theory has spread widely on social media, to conspiracy theory websites and in some international news outlets.

Yet there was no good evidence to support this theory.

'Based on the virus genome and properties there is no indication whatsoever that it was an engineered virus,' said Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University.

Also,

Milton Leitenberg, an expert on chemical weapons at the University of Maryland, said he and other analysts around the world had discussed the possibility that weapons development at the Wuhan lab could have led to the coronavirus outbreak in a private email chain but that no one had found convincing evidence to support the theory.

Then the bioweapon theory started appearing on more extreme sites.  BuzzFeed reported on January 31, 2020:

A popular pro-Trump website has released the personal information of a scientist from Wuhan, China, falsely accusing them of creating the coronavirus as a bioweapon, in a plot it said is the real-life version of the video game Resident Evil.

On Wednesday, far-right news site Zero Hedge claimed without evidence that a scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology created the strain of the virus that has led the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency.

Note that

Zero Hedge, which describes itself as a financial blog, has more than 50,000 followers on Facebook and more than 670,000 followers on Twitter and is run by Daniel Ivandjiiski, a Bulgarian-born, US-based, former investment banker, who writes the majority of the posts published by the pseudonym Tyler Durden. The site regularly amplifies conspiracy theories from anonymous message board 4chan and writes frequently about the deep state, doomsday prep, bitcoin speculation, and New Age pseudoscience.

Furthermore,

The new focus on the scientist is the culmination of several conspiracy theories that have gained traction since the beginning of the outbreak early in January. One version of the hoax began in Facebook Groups run by supporters of the pro-Trump QAnon movement and the anti-vax community, where users claimed the outbreak was a population control plot by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

The Zero Hedge take has been propagated widely:

The Zero Hedge article has been posted on Twitter over 10,000 times and shared close 2,000 times on Facebook in the last 24 hours.

And,

The rumors and lies are also being spread across 4chan. A user linked to the Zero Hedge article in a 4chan thread titled, 'All hail [the scientist], creator of Corona-Chan.' In another 4chan thread, users claimed the scientist had created a mutant superbug.

The hoaxes surrounding the coronavirus have become so prevalent that 'uncensored' subreddits about the outbreak are being created for users on Reddit who want to share the theories.

In summary, an unsubstantiated theory about the coronavirus, one that could both increase public anxiety, if not panic, and stir up hostility between China and the US, started circulating in right-wing, including extremist, web-sites and media, and soon bled into the larger social media. But why?  Cui bono? Who could benefit from this?

Using Disinformation and Extreme Ideology to Sell Dubious Products

One answer appear to be people selling quack products.

A New York Times article on February 6, 2020 focused on World Health Organization (WHO) efforts to fight disinformation about coronavirus (see below). It included the opinions of "Andrew Pattison, manager of digital solutions at the W.H.O."  He suggested:

Medical misinformation on the virus has been driven by ideologues who distrust science and proven measures like vaccines, and by profiteers who scare up internet traffic with zany tales and try to capitalize on that traffic by selling 'cures' or other health and wellness products.

'There are self-appointed experts, people working from anecdote, or making up wild claims to get traffic or notoriety,' said Mr. Pattison of the W.H.O.

Furthermore,

Sarah E. Kreps, a professor of government at Cornell University, considers the people deliberately spreading distortions to be practitioners of 'algorithmic capitalism,' in which people scare up traffic and sell against it.

Examples abound. Infowars, the far right website that purveys conspiracy theories and fake news, and others are now banned on several leading social media sites but are still advertising pseudoscientific remedies directly through their own shops. An early distortion of the coronavirus news appeared in an Infowars video on Jan. 22 — claiming that the virus could be part of some man-made plot to thin the population.

'The globalists and the deep state have declared war on humanity,' a host on the video said. 'They hate human life. This is why they kill babies.'

Next to the box in which the video appears is an advertisement for an immune gargle product that, the ad claims, 'is designed to support your immune system like no other,' and that is 'scientifically proven.'

However, the Mayo Clinic reports that the ingredient mentioned in the product, colloidal silver, has not been proved safe or effective in treating disease. And even the Infowars shop where the product is listed reads at the bottom: 'This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.' 

Whether these disinformationists are primarily cynical businesspeople hiding behind extreme ideology, or extreme ideologists who found a way to profit from these beliefs, or both is not clear.
 
The Russian Connection

 Furthermore, it appears that once again the Russians are involved, demonstrating their updated disinformation techniques that take advantage of the internet and social media.

On February 14, 2020, an article in Foreign Policy discussed Russian involvement in disinformation about coronavirus:

The overarching theme of the stories that appear across the Russian media, from fringe websites to prime-time television, is that the virus is the product of U.S. labs, intended to kneecap China’s economic development. Some articles have flirted with the idea that Bill Gates or Kremlin nemesis George Soros might have had a hand in the outbreak.

Note that:

Right now, the main audience is largely domestic, with a sprinkling of conspiratorial reports across the different language services of Sputnik, the more tabloid of Russia’s international broadcasters. The conspiracy theories haven’t featured prominently on English-language Russian government-backed international broadcasters such as RT and Sputnik, however, according to Bret Schafer, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy who studies disinformation. While these channels have historically played around the edges of conspiracy theories, 'they still want that veneer of being a legit international broadcaster,' Schafer said. 

The Russian disinformation did not appear to be focused on the escaped Chinese bio-weapon theory, but that particular theory might not be the point. 

The Russian messaging fits a now well-established pattern in that it doesn’t look to persuade audiences of a single alternative truth. That would take effort, planning, and persuasion. Modern-day Russian propaganda has instead been described by the Rand Corp. as a 'firehose of falsehood,' a steady stream of underdeveloped, sometimes contradictory conspiracy theories intended to exhaust and confuse viewers, making them question the very notion of objective truth itself.

On February 22, 2020, the Guardian provided considerably more detail, and now it is coming from official US State Department sources:

State department officials tasked with combatting Russian disinformation told the AFP false personas were being used on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to advance Russian talking points in multiple languages.

'Russia’s intent is to sow discord and undermine US institutions and alliances from within, including through covert and coercive malign influence campaigns,' said Philip Reeker, acting assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.

'By spreading disinformation about coronavirus, Russian malign actors are once again choosing to threaten public safety by distracting from the global health response,' he said.

Some accounts have falsely claimed the US is waging “economic war on China” and that the virus is a biological weapon manufactured by the CIA.

Furthermore,

Several thousand online accounts – previously identified for airing Russian-backed messages on major events such as the war in Syria, the Yellow Vest protests in France and Chile’s mass demonstrations – are posting “near identical” messages about the coronavirus, according to a report prepared for the state department’s Global Engagement Center and seen by the AFP.

The accounts are run by humans, not bots, and post at similar times in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French. They can be linked back to Russian proxies, or carry messages similar to Russian-backed outlets such as RT and Sputnik, the report said.

'In this case, we were able to see their full disinformation ecosystem in effect, including state TV, proxy websites and thousands of false social media personas all pushing the same themes, said Lea Gabrielle, head of the Global Engagement Center, which is tasked with tracking and exposing propaganda and disinformation.

This is now looking like a big-time Russian disinformation effort aimed at further destabilizing the west,

A state official said Russian operatives appeared to have been given 'carte blanche' to attack the US.

'Whether or not a particular theme is being directed at the highest levels doesn’t matter,' the official said. 'It’s the fact that they have freelance ability to operate in this space to do whatever damage they can, which could have seismic implications.'

All from the same folks who are trying to meddle in the upcoming election, in favor of their preferred candidate, President Trump (look here).

A Prominent US Senator Helps Propagate Disinformation


During the early phases of the measles disinformation campaign, we noted that in February, 2015, the New York Times discussed the strange inability of some then Republican candidates for the presidency to discuss the issue clearly.

Now a Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) is adding to the confusion about coronavirus.  The New York Times reported on February 17, 2020 (updated February 18):

Speaking on Fox News, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, raised the possibility that the virus had originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak.

'We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there,' the senator said, 'but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all.'

Note that he raised doubts while suggesting the plausibility of the escaped Chinese bio-weapon theory, but did not dwell on the evidence.  Instead, the Times noted he seemed to complain about the lack of relevant evidence:

Speaking to the Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo, Mr. Cotton suggested that a dearth of information about the coronavirus’s origins was raising more questions than answers.

'We don’t know where it originated, and we have to get to the bottom of that,' he said on the program 'Sunday Morning Futures.'

But there is nothing to suggest that he used his position as a US Senator to learn more about what facts are currently known, and what public health experts currently think.  Surely organizations like the CDC and WHO could have helped him with that before he jumped into the discussion.  It would also have been possible for him to access the US State Department's information about the Russian  coronavirus disinformation campaign and about the possible malign effects of further spreading disinformation about this new disease.  But no, Sen Cotton appeared to be attending to other sources, like these mentioned in the Times article:

Last month, Mr. [Steve] Bannon [former Trump campaign manager in his 2016 campaign, former owner of Breitbart News]  invited Bill Gertz, a Washington Times reporter, to be a guest on the inaugural episode of his radio show 'War Room: Pandemic,' a spinoff of his 'War Room: Impeachment,' which defended Mr. Trump during the Senate impeachment trial.

'Bill Gertz had an amazing piece in The Washington Times about the biological labs that happen to be in Wuhan,' Mr. Bannon said on his Jan. 25 show. Mr. Gertz appeared on another show several days later to continue putting forward the bioweapons theory.

Fox News has also dabbled in the theory, in one article drawing a connection between a 1980s thriller by Dean Koontz that 'predicted coronavirus.' The book is about a Chinese military lab that creates a biological weapon.

In addition, although the NYT article suggested that Sen Cotton then attempted to "walk back" his original statements, on January 19, 2020, Fox News reported he had reiterated it:

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. stood by his earlier suggestion that the deadly coronavirus may have originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan, China, telling 'The Story' Tuesday that we 'need to be open to all possibilities' in exploring the origins of the outbreak that has sickened more than 75,000 people around the world.

When host Martha MacCallum pressed the Senator on his startling and unverified claim, Cotton cited a study published by Chinese scientists in The Lancet, which he called a 'respected international science journal.'

'I'm suggesting we need to be open to all possibilities and we need to demand that China open up and be transparent so a team of international experts can figure out exactly where this virus originated,' Cotton said.

He also brought up the 'questions' surrounding the biosafety level 4 'super laboratory' in Wuhan, the city where the virus is believed to have originated.

In epidemiology, it may be wise not to dismiss even theories that appear far-fetched, at least in the initial phases of an investigation, but there should be some effort to assess the plausibility of the competing hypotheses.  Again, notice that a US Senator with no obvious public health or epidemiological expertise was continuing to talk off-the-cuff about a major public health issue, sans any reference to the sorts of expertise and evidence he could easily access.


Discussion

The problem of disinformation about medicine, health care, and public health only seems to be getting worse. It appears to be fueled in part by the good old fashioned profit motive, but often focused on the profits from useless, possibly harmful pseudo-remedies.  It may be justified, or actually generated by extreme ideologies, all of which so far seem to be on the far-right end of the political spectrum.   Particularly disquieting is the proclivity, at least in the US, for politicians of a certain stripe to not merely downplay it, but aid in its dissemination, meanwhile ignoring all the possible resources available to them that could supply some evidence and rational assessment of same.

One small cause for hope are the growing efforts to combat it.  For example, as discussed in the New York Times, the WHO is now actively trying to combat the "infodemic" of coronavirus disinformation.

Clearly, health care professionals should be doing their part in fighting disinformation and active measures that seek to distort medicine, health care and public health.  National and local health departments, and agencies such as the CDC and FDA in the US all should be joining the WHO and the US State Department in fighting current disinformation campaigns, and preparing for future ones.  Needless to say, politicians regardless of political philosophy should be supporting these efforts, should base their remarks on evidence and logic, and certainly should not be helping the spread of disinformation.

Yet, as Chris Cilllizza wrote for CNN re Sen Cotton's dissemination of coronavirus disinformation, we are living

in a sort of post-truth world, one if not created, then pushed by President Donald Trump. Trump's candidacy was born in a conspiracy theory (former President Barack Obama wasn't actually born in the United States) and he has embraced any number of conspiracy theories in his days as President. (Millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election, Obama ordered the phones at Trump Tower wiretapped, etc.)

Trump has mainstreamed conspiracy theories and convinced lots and lots of people they are true with much the same tactic Cotton used on Sunday, which amounts to this: I am not saying this is true, I am just saying people are talking about it and we owe it to ourselves to ask the question. But simply because Trump has made this sort of stuff commonplace doesn't mean it's OK. It isn't. After all, there's a difference between a random post on some Reddit message board and a US senator spinning conspiracy theories on national TV. Or at least, there should be.

However Trump, and maybe Cotton too, seem to benefit from the barrage of disinformation and active measures emanating from Russia. We just heard that the US intelligence community says Russia is once again using active measures to influence the upcoming US election - on behalf of Trump (look here). It is also hard to ignore that Sen Cotton is a big fan of US President Donald Trump (look  here) as is Trump of him.

So, it may be too much to expect them to change their ways. Instead, we may need to change our political leadership, and charge our political operating system to make it less vulnerable to hacking by hostile foreign nations, like Russia.

The HIV Epidemic, and Now the Measles Outbreak: The Russian Connection

I am old enough to remember having measles as a child, a thoroughly unpleasant experience.  Some children had much unhappier results of measles than I did.  So as a parent, I was happy to see that a reasonably effective measles vaccine had practically eliminated the disease from the US and most developed countries.

However, we currently are in the midst of a measles outbreak in the US.  The current number of reported cases for the first three months of 2019 is greater than all cases reported in 2018.  (See this CDC update.)  Other so-called developed countries are also seeing more cases of measles.  Why has measles returned?  A likely cause is the number of parents with negative opinions about the vaccine is rising, and their clamor to exempt their own children is getting louder (look here for just the latest example.)

The negative opinions seem not to come from reasoned arguments based on logic and facts, but from disinformation campaigns.


Prelude: the 1980s Soviet Disinformation Campaign About HIV

How disinformation can disrupt public health is a story which seemed to have been largely forgotten until 2016.  That year, how the campaign to control HIV in the 1980s was impeded by disinformation  was brought up again after so many years by the Washington Post.  The article opened

On July 17, 1983, a small pro-Soviet Indian newspaper called the Patriot published a front-page article titled 'AIDS may invade India: Mystery disease caused by US experiments.' The story cited a letter from an anonymous but 'well-known American scientist and anthropologist' that suggested AIDS, then still a mysterious and deadly new disease, had been created by the Pentagon in a bid to develop new biological weapons.

'Now that these menacing experiments seem to have gone out of control, plans are being hatched to hastily transfer them from the U.S. to other countries, primarily developing nations where governments are pliable to Washington's pressure and persuasion,' the article read.

The Patriot's article was subsequently used as a source for an October 1985 story in the Literaturnaya Gazeta, a Soviet weekly with considerable influence at the time. The next year, it ran on the front page of a British tabloid. After that, it was picked up by an international news wire. By April 1987, it was suggested that the story had appeared in the major newspapers of more than 50 countries.

The problem? The story was patently false. 

It was a product of a deliberate Soviet disinformation campaign.  A New York Times article from 2017 amplified the specifics:

Called Operation Infektion by the East German foreign intelligence service, the 1980s disinformation campaign seeded a conspiracy theory that the virus that causes AIDS was the product of biological weapons experiments conducted by the United States. The disease disproportionately impacts gay men, and the Reagan administration’s slow response had escalated into suspicions in the gay community that the United States government was responsible for its origins.

'The K.G.B. picked up on that, and added a new twist with a specific location: Fort Detrick, Md.,' where military scientists conducted biological weapons experiments in the 1950s and 1960s, said Douglas Selvage, the project director at the Office of the Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records in Berlin.

The K.G.B. campaign began with an anonymous letter in Patriot, a small newspaper published in New Delhi that was later revealed to have received Soviet funding. It ran in July 1983, under the headline 'AIDS May Invade India: Mystery Disease Caused by U.S. Experiments' and pinned the origin of the disease to Fort Detrick.

The choice of Patriot was deliberate, said Thomas Boghardt, a military and intelligence historian who traced how the campaign unfolded. 'It had no explicit links to the Soviets and was an English-language newspaper easily accessible to a global audience.'

'The Soviets intuitively understood how the human psyche works,' Dr. Boghardt said. He said the playbook was simple but effective: Identify internal strife, point to inconsistencies and ambiguities in the news, fill them with meaning and 'repeat, repeat, repeat.'

A September 1985 memo to Bulgarian intelligence from the East German secret police served as a conduit. The disinformation campaign aimed, according to the Stasi, 'to generate, for us, a beneficial view by other countries that this disease is the result of out-of-control secret experiments by U.S. intelligence agencies and the Pentagon involving new types of biological weapons.'

A month later, the Soviet journal Literaturnaya Gazeta published a paper titled 'Panic in the West or What Is Hiding Behind the Sensation Surrounding AIDS.' It included accurate information about the disease and Fort Detrick but cited the Patriot letter to connect the dots.

The paper received international attention and its allegations were repeated around the world including in Kuwait, Finland and Peru. CBS News, black newspapers, the gay press, niche publications critical of the C.I.A. and the right-wing presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche all promoted the conspiracy theory. (Mr. LaRouche flipped the claim on its head, accusing the Soviets of using AIDS as a weapon.)

Background on Soviet Disinformation

An earlier 2017 article in the Guardian expanded the background about Soviet use of disinformation:

Unlike misinformation, disinformation is constructed to be deliberately false, with the intention of sowing discord in enemy ranks. While there are undoubtedly historical examples, the industrialisation of disinformation emerged with the modernisation of media and mass communication. This is reflected in the etymology of the word itself, which by the advent of second world war had arisen independently in both Russian and English to characterise the spread of propaganda across Europe. Russia quickly recognised its enormous potential, and as early as 1923 the GPU (forerunner to the KGB) had established an office dedicated to it.

Disinformation fast became an integral part of Soviet intelligence, and by the birth of the KGB in the 1950s, it had become an essential component in the doctrine of 'active measures', the art of political warfare. Active measures included media manipulation, the use of front groups, counterfeiting of documents, and even assassinations when required. It was the very heart of Soviet intelligence, described by KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin as:

'... not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the west, to drive wedges in the western community alliances of all sorts, particularly Nato, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs.'

Throughout the cold war, the Soviets were virtuosos in creating tensions between allies. In particular, they excelled at the use of 'black propaganda': crafting damaging material which purported to be from the other side. These attempts were nebulous and prolonged, and included Operation Neptune, a 1964 attempt to use forged documents with the intention of implying western politicians had supported the Nazis. While this was quickly exposed as a counterfeit, other ruses were more successful. Whilst dezinformatsiya was targeted chiefly at the US, it was largely ignored there until 1980, when a Soviet forgery of a presidential document claimed that the administration was supportive of apartheid. This got some traction in US media, and so appalled president Jimmy Carter that he demanded a CIA inquiry.

In fact, by the 1980s, Soviet disinformation was an old story.

Ladislav Bittman wrote in The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: an Insider's View, published in 1985 that disinformation is part of what the Soviets called

'active measures' directed by the KGB ... designed for internal demoralization and erosion of power in targe countries [p 2]

He later wrote [p 48]

Disinformation is a carefully constructed false message leaked into an opponent's communication system to deceive the decision-making elite or the public.  Disinformation can be of political, economic, miliary or even scientific nature. To succeed, every disinformation message must at least partially correspond to reality or generally accepted views....

Then he noted that each message is crafted so that [p 56]

it dissuades leaders of the target country from critical analysis of the deceptive segments.  The overall purpose is not only to deceive but to cause damage to the target.  The victim of disinformation  must be led to inflict harm upon himself, directly or indirectly - either by acting agains his own interests on the basis of spurious intformation or by remaining passive when action is needed.

These elements of disinformation now may seen as echoed in the Russian campaign to manipulate the 2016 and 2018 US elections to favor now President Donald Trump and his supporters, and in some of the UK campaign for Brexit. 


The 2015 Measles Epidemic

As the years passed, and the USSR fell, the notion of disinformation seemed to fall into the dustbbin of history.  Yet, in early 2015, before anyone thought of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate, there was a small US measles epidemic.  In February, 2015, the New York Times discussed the strange inability of some then Republican candidates for the presidency to discuss the issue clearly.

The politics of medicine, morality and free will have collided in an emotional debate over vaccines and the government’s place in requiring them, posing a challenge for Republicans who find themselves in the familiar but uncomfortable position of reconciling modern science with the skepticism of their core conservative voters.

As the latest measles outbreak raises alarm, and parents who have decided not to vaccinate their children face growing pressure to do so, the national debate is forcing the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential hopefuls to confront questions about whether it is in the public’s interest to allow parents to decide for themselves.

Gov. Chris Christie’s trade mission to London was suddenly overshadowed on Monday after he was quoted as saying that parents 'need to have some measure of choice' about vaccinating their children against measles. The New Jersey governor, who is trying to establish his credibility among conservatives as he weighs a run for the Republican nomination in 2016, later tried to temper his response.

Then,

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a physician, was less equivocal, telling the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Monday that parents should absolutely have a say in whether to vaccinate their children for measles.

'While I think it’s a good idea to take the vaccine, I think that’s a personal decision for individuals,' he said, recalling his irritation at doctors who tried to press him to vaccinate his own children. He eventually did, he said, but spaced out the vaccinations over a period of time.

The Times article speculated that

The vaccination controversy is a twist on an old problem for the Republican Party: how to approach matters that have largely been settled among scientists but are not widely accepted by conservatives.

In fact, Mr Christie had walked into a similar controversy earlier, about Ebola:

As concern spread about an Ebola outbreak in the United States, physicians criticized Republican lawmakers — including Mr. Christie — who called for strict quarantines of people who may have been exposed to the virus. In some cases, Republicans proposed banning people who had been to the hardest-hit West African countries from entering the United States, even though public health officials warned that would only make it more difficult to stop Ebola’s spread.

It all seemed odd.  After all, a lot of conservatives up to that time cultivated an image of hard-headed realism. Why would understanding of the favorable benefit/ harm profile of the measles vaccine, or of public health measures used to combat diseases like Ebola not be accepted by conservatives?

A 2018 Study of an Internet Based Disinformation Campaign About Vaccination

In 2018, a study of the role of twitter bots and Russian trolls in online vaccine discussions appeared (Broniatowski DA et al.Weaponoized health communication: Twitter bots and Russian trolls amplify the vaccine debate. Am J Pub Health 2018; 108: 1378-1384. Link here). It was an observational study designed to compare "'bots'—accounts that automate content promotion—and 'trolls'—individuals who misrepresent their identities with the intention of promoting discord."
 
To summarize its methods:

In our first analysis, we examined whether Twitter bots and trolls tweet about vaccines more frequently than do average Twitter users. In a second analysis, we examined the relative rates with which each type of account tweeted provaccine, antivaccine, and neutral messages. Finally, in a third analysis, we identified a hashtag uniquely used by Russian trolls and used qualitative methods to describe its content.

To summarize its results:

Compared with average users, Russian trolls (χ2(1) = 102.0; P < .001), sophisticated bots (χ2(1) = 28.6; P < .001), and “content polluters” (χ2(1) = 7.0; P < .001) tweeted about vaccination at higher rates. Whereas content polluters posted more antivaccine content (χ2(1) = 11.18; P < .001), Russian trolls amplified both sides. Unidentifiable accounts were more polarized (χ2(1) = 12.1; P < .001) and antivaccine (χ2(1) = 35.9; P < .001). Analysis of the Russian troll hashtag showed that its messages were more political and divisive.

The authors' discussion of results asserted:

Russian trolls and sophisticated Twitter bots post content about vaccination at significantly higher rates than does the average user. Content from these sources gives equal attention to pro- and antivaccination arguments. This is consistent with a strategy of promoting discord across a range of controversial topics—a known tactic employed by Russian troll accounts. Such strategies may undermine the public health: normalizing these debates may lead the public to question long-standing scientific consensus regarding vaccine efficacy. Indeed, several antivaccine arguments claim to represent both sides of the debate—like the tactics used by the trolls identified in this study—while simultaneously communicating a clear gist (i.e., a bottom-line meaning).

Note that they felt these results were applicable to the 2015 measles outbreak:

We recently found that this strategy was effective for propagating news articles through social media in the context of the 2015 Disneyland measles outbreak.

So here we have at least some evidence suggesting that the Russians were mounting a modern version of a disinformation campaign focused on scientific information meant to sow discord in the US and perhaps other developed countries, and to enable its victims to harm themselves or their children by dissuading them from measles and perhaps other generally beneficial vaccination.  Probably because disinformation had largely not been the subject of polite conversation since the fall of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the old KGB (or at least, its name), US public health authorities and politicians  had failed to critically analyze what was going on.


The 2018 study got a bit of attention, and several authors suggested some responses.  In StatNews Beier and Sullivan suggested lessons learned:

First, we’ve learned that the Russians operate from a playbook that links seemingly disparate events. In the case of both AIDS and vaccine safety, they exploited pre-existing cynicism among groups or individuals outside the mainstream, planting doubts without apparent Russian links. For vaccines, Russians exploited a controversial report in the Lancet (that was later retracted by the journal) to exacerbate skepticism of vaccine safety so more parents would decline to vaccinate their children. (To be sure, the article had already generated home-grown anti-vaccine sentiment in the U.S.)

Second, we need to pay closer attention to public health measures that generate fear among those they are intended to protect, like vaccinations for children or fluoridated water.

Third, we must pay special attention to areas in which the West is widely seen as 'winning' compared to Russia — in this case public health — making them targets for disinformation campaigns.

The authors then suggested what should be done:

The federal government must take the lead on alerting the media and the public to the risks of purposefully misleading disinformation attacks. Public officials, including President Trump, must show a greater dedication to truth and facts. Whenever a prominent public official espouses support for baseless science, it helps those trying to subvert democracy. By relying on a swamp of bogus science, Russia has exploited loving parents with false, misleading, and dangerous information.

The federal government needs to work with the tech community to develop programs and algorithms to detect threats to our vital health information infrastructure from harmful lies about public health. Once such attacks are detected, Americans must work together to erect cyberwalls to thwart them.

That seemed well-intentioned, albeit unrealistic.  In particular, why would you expect the Trump regime, which appeared to gain power with the help of Russian disinformation (look here), suddenly turn into a tough, clear-headed foe of such disinformation?

Junaid Nabi in Project Syndicate made some more global suggestions:

health officials and experts in both developed and developing countries need to understand how this online misinformation is eroding public trust in health programs. They also need to engage actively with global social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google, as well as major regional players including WeChat and Viber. This means working in tandem to create guidelines and protocols for how information of public interest can be disseminated safely.

In addition, social media companies can work with scientists to identify patterns and behaviors of spam accounts that try to disseminate false information on important public-health issues. Twitter, for example, has already started using machine-learning technology to limit activity from spam accounts, bots, and trolls.More rigorous verification of accounts, from the moment of signing up, will also be a powerful deterrent to the further expansion of automated accounts.

Again, this seems well-intentioned.  But why expect social media companies, which seemed to be making lots of money through the viral spread of both information and disinformation, to be so helpful?

Of course, none of that happened. Now we are in yet another measles outbreak, considerably bigger than the one in 2015, with no end in sight.

Discussion

Life used to be so simple.  We used to write about propaganda and disinformation used to market health care goods and services (stealth marketing campaigns), and advocate for policies favorable to private health care organizations, usually under the auspices of pharmaceutical/ biotechnology/ device companies, health insurance companies, and hospital systems  (stealth health policy advocacy and stealth lobbying).  The organization and complexity of stealth marketing, lobbying and policy advocacy campaigns have often been sufficient to characterize them as disinformation.  For example, we characterized the campaign by commercial health insurance companies to derail the Clinton administration's attempt at health reform in the 1990s, as described by Wendell Potter in his book, Deadly Spin, as just that (look here).  The tactics employed in that campaign included: use of front groups and third parties (useful idiots?); use of spies; distractions to make important issues anechoic; message discipline; and entrapment (double-think).


While these efforts were done to improve corporate bottom lines and thus enhance the income of top corporate management, at least these organizations had some interest in providing or facilitating health care.

Although I had heard about Soviet disinformation, and even thought that some of the modern techniques used by big corporations for marketing and advocacy were uncomfortably close to disinformation, I, like many others, was not particularly worried about disinformation again used as a powerful weapon by a hostile foreign power.  How naive I was.  

Now we see propaganda and disinformation in the service of hostile and authoritarian foreign states meant to disrupt more democratic governments, whatever the cost in human health and lives.  And we see at best indifference to this problem on the part of politicians who may benefit from such foreign largesse.  (The hope in the StatNews piece that President Trump would become more dedicated to truth and facts was already naive at the time of publication.)

So we may need much more energetic and muscular solutions to the propaganda and disinformation that is now rotting our already dysfunctional health care system.  We cannot complacently expect a conflicted and corrupt government executive to help us.  Health care professionals, and all people who care about health care and the public health are going to have to stop wringing our hands and actually do something.  Or measles outrbreaks will be the least of our problems. 

From Russia with Money - Harvard Medical School Accepts $200 Million from Russian Emigre with Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Putin, and Who Is Under Investigation for US Election Meddling

On Health Care Renewal we have frequently written about individual and institutional conflicts of interest.  The landmark but often ignored 2009 report by the Institute of Medicine on Conflicts of Interest in Medical Education, Research and Practice defined institutional conflicts of interest as arising when

an institution's own financial interests or those of its senior officials pose risks of undue influence on decisions involving the institution's primary interests.

We have written about institutional COIs affecting academic medical institutions, medical societies and patient advocacy organizations.  Typically, the COIs arise from industry (that is, usually pharmaceutical, biotechnology medical device, and sometimes health insurance corporate funding) that might be seen as influencing the institution's decisions about medical care, health care policy, teaching and/or research.  For example, most recently we wrote about systematic research on institutional conflicts of interests affecting patient advocacy organizations, and on organizations writing clinical practice guidelines. 

But now things are different.

We present a big case of what looks like an entirely new, and very troubling variation on an institutional conflict of interest.

A "Transformative" Gift to Harvard Medical School

On November 8, 2018, Felice Freyer, writing in the Boston Globe, documented a huge new gift to Harvard Medical School.

Harvard Medical School has received a $200 million donation — the largest in its history — to support research into fundamental questions about human illness and health.

The pledge, from the Blavatnik Family Foundation, will enable the school to hire researchers, add to its advanced technology, and a build an 'incubator' in the Longwood area to help bring research findings to market.

The gift is so large that Harvard will rename many of the school's components after Blavatnik.

Harvard Medical School is keeping its name for now. But a large portion of the school will be renamed. The 10 academic departments in science and social science — as distinguished from the affiliated hospitals where postgraduate training takes place — will be called the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School.

Per the Harvard's in-house publication, the Gazette,

Announcing the donation, Harvard President Larry Bacow described it as an 'unprecedented act of generosity and support,' and thanked Blavatnik for his faith that HMS — and the region’s broader life sciences community — can make dreams of dramatic progress in human health become reality.

'It’s one thing to dream for oneself, for one’s family and friends, even for one’s community. It’s another thing to dream for all people, to dream for a future in which more lives are improved and saved through the creation and application of knowledge through science,' Bacow said.

HMS Dean George Q. Daley called the donation 'a transformative opportunity' for the School and said it will enable a new generation of scholars and scientists to emulate those who made key discoveries in every area from organ transplants to polio vaccines to gene therapy.

The Gazette described the donor, Len Blavatnik, thus

The foundation is led by Blavatnik, who graduated from Harvard Business School (HBS) with an M.B.A. in 1989, founded Access Industries, and became one of Britain’s wealthiest men.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Russian Connection

Actually, while he may currently operate out of Britain, Blavatnik came from Russia.  Per the Globe,

Blavatnik made his fortune in aluminum, oil, and gas after the fall of the Soviet Union and in 2011 bought the Warner Music Group. His philanthropy has sometimes raised eyebrows because of his alleged connections to Russian oligarchs.

His connections to these (other) oligarchs should raise some eyebrows, and concerns. 

The Access-Alfa Renova Consortium, Alleged Russian Sponsored Harassment of BP, and FSB Active Measures

Blavatnik's recent generous donations to Oxford sparked protests, and provided documentation of some relevant issues. Per the Globe

When Oxford University in England named a school of government after Blavatnik in 2015, some 20 critics wrote to chide the school for 'selling its reputation and prestige to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s associates,'

Their letter, published in the Guardian in 2015, stated that Blavatnik belongs

to a consortium of Russian billionaires called Access-Alfa-Renova (AAR). The consortium has long been accused of being behind a campaign of state-sponsored harassment against BP. In 2008-09 dozens of British and other western managers were forced out of Russia. As part of this campaign, Vladimir Putin’s FSB intelligence agency fabricated a case against two Oxford graduates. According to evidence from its jailed owner Sergei Bobylyov, Alfa-Bank oligarchs also raided a retail company called Sunrise.

The spy case and the attack on Sunrise involved the participation of Russian officials who are listed as gross human rights violators by the US Treasury in line with the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012.

These corporate abuses took place in Russia with active official support. There was a backdrop of state-sponsored propaganda. Russian state media broadcast libellous assertions against western and Russian citizens. AAR went on to make billions from a highly controversial deal with Rosneft.

The letter writers asserted

Oxford University apparently failed to investigate these facts, AAR’s track record from the beginning, and its close ties with the Kremlin.

A 2015 Guardian article described the background of the letter's signatories, including

Pavel Litvinov, one of eight people who in 1968 protested on Red Square against Moscow’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was exiled for five years to Siberia. Another is Vladimir Bukovsky, jailed by the KGB. Bukovsky, who lives in Cambridge, exposed the Kremlin’s use of psychiatric treatment against dissidents.

Others include former Oxford academics and graduates, members of Russia’s democratic opposition and human rights activists. One is Vladimir Milov, a colleague and friend of Boris Nemtsov, the opposition leader shot dead in February outside the Kremlin. The letter was organised by Ilya Zaslavskiy, a TNK-BP employee and Oxford graduate who ran Moscow’s Oxford alumni association.

In 2008 Putin’s FSB spy agency arrested Zaslavskiy and his brother Alexander in Moscow and accused them of being 'western agents'. Russian state TV claimed the FSB had exposed a major spy ring. The case against them was 'fabricated', the letter says.

Despite their credentials suggesting that the letter writers knew whereof they spoke, Oxford apparently has not done any further investigation.   However, per the Globe again, 

Last year, after Blavatnik donated $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration committee, an Oxford professor quit in protest, the Guardian reported.

In fact, according to contemporaneous (2017) coverage in the Guardian, Professor Bo Rothstein

a specialist on corruption, called the donation 'incomprehensible and irresponsible' in his resignation letter.

The academic subsequently told the Guardian he had received hundreds of messages of support about his decision, adding: 'I’m not going to be the Blavatnik chair of government and public policy because I’m not going to give legitimacy and credibility to this person. $1m is a sizeable amount of money. In my book by donating to the inauguration of Donald Trump you are supporting Donald Trump.'

The 2017 Guardian article expanded on the allegations made by the 2015 letter writers

Access began making investments in Russia after the fall of communism as the energy and aluminium groups of the former Soviet Union were broken up. Eventually Blavatnik combined assets with Viktor Vekselberg and Mikhail Fridman to form AAR. Their partnership with BP ended in acrimony.

In 2008, Bob Dudley, then the chief executive of TNK-BP and now the boss of BP, left Moscow after what the British company described as an 'orchestrated campaign of harassment'. Armed police also raised TNK-BPs office and more than 100 BP managers had to leave Russia after the authorities refused to renew their visas.

US diplomats alleged that at least one individual in AAR, German Khan, was involved in a state-sponsored campaign against BP to try to force them out of Russia. However, AAR and lawyers for Blavatnik have denied any involvement, including that of Khan, in a plot against BP.

In the end, both BP and AAR were bought out of the venture by state-backed Russian energy company Rosneft. The $55bn (£42bn) deal in 2013 handed the oligarchs, including Blavatnik, $28bn. It was signed off at a meeting with Putin.

The cash from the sale of TNK-BP pushed him to the top spot of the Sunday Times rich list in 2015. By this stage Access had already diversified beyond Russia and the energy sector.

However, note that the 2017 Guardian article's addendum included

Sir Leonard Blavatnik’s lawyers have informed the Guardian that the term 'oligarch' in his view does not apply to him. [But] The Guardian editor-in-chief disagrees.

So to recap, Blavatnik made a lot of money from aluminum, gas and oil in Russia after the collapse of the USSR.  He banded together with other very rich Russians in a consortium, AAR, that was accused by multiple people of dirty tricks meant to drive the UK oil firm BP from the Russian market.  There were allegations that this trickery involved Russian state agencies, and was likely to have been condoned by Putin.  The people behind AAR eventually netted a lot of money from the resulting buyout of their firms and of BP, a deal that apparently did involve Putin. 

Blavatnik's Changing Pattern of Political Contributions Raise Question about Foreign Influence on the US Election

While giving a lot of money to various educational and cultural institutions, Blavatnik was giving modest amounts of money to politicians. 

However, his pattern of political giving apparently changed greatly upon Trump's advent on the scene.  A May, 2018, Dallas News op-ed article by Professor Ruth May of the University of Dallas on Russian oligarchs' affinity for Trump's campaign stated,

Data from the Federal Election Commission show that Blavatnik's campaign contributions dating back to 2009-10 were fairly balanced across party lines and relatively modest for a billionaire. During that season he contributed $53,400. His contributions increased to $135,552 in 2011-12 and to $273,600 in 2013-14, still bipartisan.

In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik's political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.

In 2017, donations continued, with $41,000 going to both Republican and Democrat candidates, along with $1 million to McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund.

A Vice News article April 2018, provided more detail,

according to the Wall Street Journal, Blavatnik gave $12,700 in April 2017 to a Republican National Committee fund that was used to help pay for the team of private attorneys representing Trump in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. He’d given the RNC legal fund $100,000 in 2016, the Journal said.

The problem is that, as stated by Represenative Adam Schiff (D-CA), likely now incoming chair of the House Intelligence Committee,

'Unless the contributions were directed by a foreigner, they would be legal, but could still be of interest to investigators examining allegations of Russian influence on the 2016 campaign. Obviously, if there were those that had associations with the Kremlin that were contributing, that would be of keen concern.'

Under federal law, foreigner nationals are barred from contributing directly or indirectly to political campaigns in local, state and federal elections.

Note that according to an April, 2018, Mother Jones article, the 

the question of possible illegal foreign donations from Russia is also under scrutiny by the FBI and the Federal Election Commission. 

Apparently because of these allegations that Blavatnik was helping to channel Russian money to influence the 2016 election, per the Globe

Although no wrongdoing has been alleged, ABC News reported in the spring that special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into Blavatnik’s donation to the inauguration as part of an inquiry into foreign financial support for Trump.

So to recap, Blavatnik became a dual UK-US citizen, and for quite a while made political donations in a style similar to that of many rich businesspeople at the time, giving amounts to both parties, presumably to enhance access whoever was in power.  However, when Trump became a presidential candidate, Blavatnik began making much bigger donations, and only to Republicans and Trump-related causes.  Then he gave a million dollars to Trump's inagural.  Given the known scheme  by Russia to meddle in the US election to benefit Trump (see the 2018 Senate committee report as discussed here), this raised suspicions that Blavatnik, was helping to also influence the election on Russia's behalf. 

Blavatnik's Sanctioned Associates

Moreover, perhaps Mueller is also interested in Blavatnik's ties to other Putin-linked oligarchs.  A profile in Forbes from October, 2018, stated

Blavatnik still retains a few Russian assets. He and Vekselberg, along with [Oleg] Deripaska, are key investors in Rusal, one of the world’s largest aluminum producers.

Note that

His former business partners are now facing U.S. sanctions. They include Viktor Vekselberg (net worth: $13.1 billion) and Oleg Deripaska (net worth: $3.3 billion), two of seven Russian oligarchs that the U.S. Treasury and State departments identified in the April sanctions. Allegations made against the sanctioned oligarchs include interference with the 2016 presidential elections and financially profiting from a Russian government that engages in 'destabilizing activities.'

To recap, Blavatnik has ongoing business relationships with other oligarchs who have been sanctioned for meddling in the 2016 US election.


Blavatnik's Former Lobbyists Spin Through the Revolving Door into the Trump Administration

Furthermore, the April, 2018, Vice News article documented apparent ongoing ties between Blavatnik operators and the Trump administration.

Two senior Trump administration officials were once registered as lobbyists for an investment company controlled by a Soviet-born industrialist who made billions doing business with newly sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

Makan Delrahim is now the assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division in the Department of Justice, after rising from his original appointment as deputy White House counsel and deputy assistant to the president. David Bernhardt is the No. 2 official in Trump’s Department of the Interior.

Both men registered as lobbyists in 2011 and 2012 for Access Industries, a holding company controlled by billionaire Leonard Blavatnik, according to public filings reviewed by VICE News. And though they are far from the only D.C. lobbyists to get plum jobs in the Trump administration, the connection to Blavatnik, long in business with billionaire associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, reveals yet another link between Russia and senior Trump officials.

The article noted,

As of the fourth quarter of 2017, the lobbying firm that Delrahim and Bernhardt worked for was still on Access Industries’ payroll, according to public records. Bernhardt told the Senate during his confirmation hearing that despite filing the paperwork, he never actually did any lobbying for Blavatnik’s firm.

Delrahim, may have been in a particularly fraught position,

Both wound up on the Trump transition team. One, Makan Delrahim is now the assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division in the Department of Justice, after rising from his original appointment as deputy White House counsel and deputy assistant to the president. David Bernhardt is the No. 2 official in Trump’s Department of the Interior.

The problem is while

Neither Delharim nor Bernhardt, who registered to lobby for Blavatnik and Access Industries in the past, currently has a job with direct oversight of issues related to the Russian economy or the Russia probe.... Delharim might have been involved when he was in the White House counsel's office, a position he left in September for the DOJ.

Richard Painter, former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said that in his view, Delrahim would have needed to recuse himself from any work at the White House involving the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election due to his previous work for Access Industries.

'I think that if I were in the White House Counsel’s Office, I’d say, ‘This guy needs to stay away from the entire Russia thing,'' Painter told VICE News.

To recap, former lobbyists for Blavatnik's firm served on the Trump transition team, and then were appointed to responsible federal offices, suggesting at the least, conflicts of interest.


Harvard Officials See No Evil

Nonetheless, Harvard officials had nothing but praise for Len Blavatnik, their generous donor.  Per the Globe,

[Lawrence S] Bacow, Harvard’s president, stood by the donor, calling him a 'distinguished alumnus' and 'somebody that we know very well.'

'We’re very comfortable with who Len is,' Bacow said. 'Len is well-known to the medical community here at Harvard and has been very supportive of science at Harvard and elsewhere. . . . He’s also somebody who is intensely curious, who believes in the power of science to improve the human condition, and he also believes in backing really talented young scientists.'

Were they totally unaware of all the accusations against, suspicions of, and likely investigations of their very wealthy donor?  Or did they just not want to look this very generous gift horse in the mouth? 

Not With a Bang,...

As noted above, there were vigorous protests of Blavatnik's much smaller gift to Oxford in 2015, and then in 2017 after Blavatnik's million dollar gift to the Trump inaugural was announced.  Yet so far, there has been little media discussion, and no protest of Blavatnik's "transformative" gift to Harvard, and the naming of a good chunk of the Harvard Medical School in his honor.

Blavatnik's story seems to be anechoic so far.  It has gotten little public coverage.  A Bloomberg article and a tiny AP story made no mention of Russia, oligarchs, Putin, etc.  Not surprisingly, coverage by Harvard's public relations did not bother either, (see the Harvard Gazette as above, and Harvard Magazine.) The only media coverage beyond the Boston Globe that said anything about the questionable aspects of Blavatnik's background was by the Harvard Crimson and WBUR.   


Summary and Discussion

Len Blavatnik  has been accused of acting in association with other Russian oligarchs, and with the Putin regime's FSB to use unethical means to push UK oil interests out of Russia.  Blavatnik has been accused of helping Russia to influence the 2016 US elections.  Some of Blavatnik's business associates have already been sanctioned by the US government for election meddling and profiting from "destabilizing activities."  And Special Counsel Mueller and other federal authorities are apparently in the midst of investigating Mr Blavatnik.


So Blavatnik's huge gift to Harvard Medical School seems likely to generate a new version of an institutional conflict of interest.  Consider a typical insitutional COI: a medical school getting a big donation from a pharmaceutical corporate foundation.  The concern in that case might be that the people running the school would be unduly inclined to support research that might boost the company's products, or support teaching that would again favor its products, or favor pharmaceutical therapy over other approaches.  Perhaps the students and professionals at that school might feel they are supposed to help hype the company's products, or avoid criticizing them.  All that would be highly concerning.

However, in the current case the issue is not how the school, its officials, its faculty, its health professionals and/or its students would favor Mr Blavatnik's corporate products and avoid criticizing them.  It is that they all are being pushed to cozy up to an oligarch, and thus might be pushed to favor the authoritarian government to which Mr Blavatnik appears tied, its anti-democratic practices, its corruption, and its apparent attempts to meddle in US elections, undermine US democracy, and support a particular candidate who may be beholden to it.

The protesters at Oxford in 2015 wrote

We insist that the university should stop selling its reputation and prestige to Putin’s associates.

Now Harvard University and its medical school appear to be "selling its reputation and prestige to Putin's associates."  This endangers Harvard, and the rest of us. Yet no on at Harvard appears to be protesting.  The silence is deafening.