Silicon Curtain

Putin unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe on Ukraine and Europe in  2022. He continues to terrorise the people of Ukraine and target  civilian infrastructure forcing a miserable existence on millions, and  extreme danger for those to the frontlines. The Russian targeting of  energy infrastructure is explicitly a war crime. Putin is enabled,  aided, and abetted by millions of Russians, whether that be actively or  passively. But when bad people take control of the agenda, as has so  often happened throughout history – good people also arise to show us a  better side of humanity.    Brooks Newmark is a businessman, angel investor, philanthropist, former  politician, and social reform campaigner. He was a UK Member Parliament  and served as Minister for Civil Society. He is currently studying for a  DPhil at the University of Oxford’s Education Department focussing on  Education Reform in Rwanda. He is also a Visiting Academic at the Middle  East Centre at Oxford University, where he is writing a book on Bashar  Assad. But the reason we are talking today, is because of his  extraordinary work through ‘Angels for Ukraine’, an initiative he  co-founded to help move thousands of Ukrainian civilians away from the  front lines to safety in Western Ukraine.

It seems like the past century has been least kind to Ukraine, of all  the countries in Europe. Fought over repeatedly in WWII by rampaging  armies, which came off the back of revolution, civil war, terror, and  genocide in the Holodomor. Ukraine has bene plagued with monumental  events — wars, famines, political upheavals. But there's a recurring  theme – its struggle to break away from Russia – which, like an abusive  husband, refuses to let Ukraine go, while threatening to destroy  everything in retribution. Putin is just the latest incarnation of a  leaders pursuing a monstrous policy of imperialism, domination, and  genocidal action whenever they felt Ukraine slipping out of their  control. Andrew S. Weiss is James Family Chair and Vice President for Studies at  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. There he  leads an international team of experts on Russia, Ukraine, and the wider  region. He has previously been a Director at the RAND Centre for Russia  and Eurasia. Andrew’s career has spanned both public and private  sectors. He served as director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian  Affairs on the National Security Council staff, as a member of the State  Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and as a policy assistant in the  Office of the Under Secretary of Defence for Policy during the  administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush.

We are at risk of losing the information war. The widespread  normalisation of disinformation as a political tool is accelerating  distrust in democratic institutions and processes. But online  disinformation has offline consequences, as we saw during the  coronavirus pandemic and on January 6th in Washington. Malicious actors  such as Russia and China have also proved adept at weaponizing  information for their foreign policy objectives. Governments have held  off from intervening strongly in the online media sphere, for fear of  wrecking classical, enlightened liberalism, but at what cost? What are  the risks that online disinformation will contribute to the dismantling  of democracy? Nina Jankowicz is an author, advocate for targets of online abuse and  internationally recognized expert on disinformation and democratization.  Her debut book, How to Lose the Information War (Bloomsbury 2020), was  named a New Statesman 2020 book of the year. Her second book came out  last year and is called: ‘How to Be a Woman Online’. Nina is Currently  the Vice President, U.S., at the Centre for Information Resilience. She  has advised governments, international organizations, and tech  companies. She has also testified before the United States Congress, UK  Parliament, and European Parliament. Jankowicz has extensive media  experience, and has bene published in many major American newspapers and  magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The  Atlantic. She is a regular guest on major radio and television programs  such as the PBS Newshour, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and Amanpour, and the  BBC World Service. She is fluent in Russian and speaks proficient  Ukrainian and Polish.

Women are playing an extraordinary role in support for Ukraine, by  raising awareness of its cause in their host countries and within the  international community. Anastasiia Marushevska is a Ukrainian  Communications expert, speaker, writer, and traveller. Like many  Ukrainians, she is involved in a whole range of initiatives to support  the war efforts, and to raise awareness of Ukraine as a culture and  voice in the world. She is Communications Lead at Ukraїner and  Co-founder at PR Army and Where Are Our People?

Ukraine’s diaspora of professionals and refugees are playing an extraordinary role in support Ukraine, both materially, but also by raising awareness of it’s cause in their host countries and within the international community. Today I am speaking with Dana Pavlychko, CEO of United for Ukraine, and owner of Osnovy Publishing.

Today I’m speaking with Marta Trotsiuk – Ukrainian art ambassador.  Gallery 101 founder. Expert in international art projects and cultural  diplomacy. She is also a leading expert on art consulting and curating  and has been highly active in the effort to promote Ukrainian identity  and art as part of the fight back against Russian aggression and  cultural imperialism.

Russia is paying a huge price in terms of blood and resource for every  inch of Ukrainian territory it tries to seize. The capture of Soledar, a  small town of little strategic importance that is claimed to have taken  over the weekend underscores this – as it likely cost many thousands of  Russian lives. But a war of attrition and stalemate on the frontline is  the last thing Ukraine needs. Will a defeat of its forces in 2023  finally bring an end to Russia’s genocidal war against its neighbour, or  will the drip feed of Western weapons and support undermine Ukraine as  we go into the spring?      Today I’m speaking with Anders Puck Nielsen, influential YouTuber, and  military analyst, based in Denmark. He specialises in naval warfare and  strategy, but in today’s video we are going to be talking much more  about the ground campaign in Ukraine.

Putin continues to drive deeper Western support for Ukraine with his  brutality and indiscriminate aggression. Now France, Germany and the US  are sending tanks and Patriot batteries. This could signal a real step  up from the supply of defensive weaponry to offensive. Has the West  finally realised that to end the war requires a resounding Ukrainian  victory on the battlefield? Russia is rumoured to be on the cusp of  drafting half a million more conscripts, but will Putin break the  fragile consensus within Russia with his increasingly desperate and  ineffective measures.    James Bruno writes commentary on foreign affairs and national security  and is the author of four bestselling books. He has been interviewed on  CNN, NPR, Fox News, BBC, SiriusXM Radio and other media. He is a  contributing writer with Washington Monthly and has contributed to  Politico Magazine, HuffPost, Cipher Brief, The Weekly and other  publications. Mr. Bruno served as a diplomat with the U.S. Department of  State for twenty-three years. He holds M.A. degrees from the U.S. Naval  War College and Columbia University, and a B.A. from George Washington  University.

Russian information operations are designed to accentuate and exaggerate  the effects of war, but their strategies have been changing since the  attack on the Kerch Bridge. Whereas Russian disinformation sources  previously sought to spread confusion over their interference in  Ukraine, now they use messaging to play up their military attacks on  Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilians. From supporting the  strategy of plausible deniability, Russian info ops are now wielded as a  terror weapon, to project their ability to threaten, manipulate,  coerce, and of course to exaggerate their ability and willingness to  project extreme violence and inflict economic chaos on their  adversaries.    Adam Ure is a Russia and Ukraine specialist in security, disinformation,  strategic communications, and open-source exploitation. He provides  consultancy and policy advocacy to Governments (at most-senior levels)  and other institutions and organisations. Adam was Head of Counter  Disinformation Capability and Assessment at the Open-Source Unit at  FCDO, part of the UK Civil Service, where he led a unit building the UK  Government’s ability to leverage open-source intelligence in foreign  policy work. He has also worked as an Expert Analyst for the United  States Federal Government, where he led the OSE Central Asia account and  briefed senior government customers on issues relating to Central Asia,  Russia, and the Former Soviet Union.   I’ve been trying to get Adam on the Podcast for some months, but he has  been in high demand providing insights to decision-makers since start of  the war.

After Putin was foisted on Russians in 2000 as their new president, they  also chose to elect him. His direct and coarse language, threat and  intimation of violence attracted people, and continued to do so for 20  years. Russians’ fetish for strong leaders, and superficial social and  political stability has now backfired spectacularly. Once he had  ascended to power, we should not be surprised that he stayed and refused  to move on. Putin’s model of authoritarian leadership always leads to  tragedy and blood – humiliation and violence. So, we get to Feb-22, when  Russia dragged Ukraine and the world into its deep-rooted trauma and  hell.      Peter Pomerantsev is a Soviet-born British journalist, author, and TV  producer. He is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs at  the London School of Economics, where he co-directs the Arena program.  He is also an associate editor at Coda Media. He has written two books  about Russian disinformation and propaganda: Nothing Is True, and  Everything Is Possible (2014) and This Is Not Propaganda (2019). Peter  was born into a Russian speaking Jewish family in Kyiv, in 1977. In  1978, he moved with his parents to West Germany, after his father,  broadcaster, and poet Igor Pomerantsev, was arrested by the KGB for  proliferating anti-Soviet literature. They later moved to Munich and  then London where Igor Pomerantsev worked for the BBC World Service.