This underlying idea that the US state is “just the same” as Russia, China, etc. (and that as such they will function in the same way) is imho one the biggest factors on the decline of the quality of western democracy today. I’m not American, have only been there once a couple of days, and have no special sympathy for the country, but the fact that so many people do not understand that the US democracy is fundamentally different than the Russian or Chinese regimes is such a sad, depressing thing.
They're "just the same" in the sense that they would surely both use similar tools in the information war. Just like they're "just the same" in having submarines, fighter jets, etc etc.
The content of the information war or different, but it's still a war, and the idea that the US would just cede all advantages to Russia because they're above using bots strikes me as faintly ridiculous.
In regards to things our secret government agencies do, we are the same though (and secret police/courts/governmental organizations are very much anti-democratic in principle, so it says a lot that we have them in our "fundamentally different" US democracy)? Covertly manipulating opinions in foreign countries is very much spy agency territory IMO. Seems like they should be running bot farms as well if they are effective.
So the claim is USA has bot farms but they are much, much better then the Ruzzian ones since we never seen them, and no USA hired criminal publicly got medals and rewards for running them.
But is a very typical Ruzzian stuff happening in response to my original comments
1 denial, "are the Ruzzians bots in the room with us" , trying to imply I am mad and there is no such thing as Ruzzian bot farms funded by Kremlin
2 Ruzzia has bot farm but what about USA