"Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare"

While that description could have been ripped from any of the infinite number of op-eds and cable news panels on the U.S. elections and the corrosive impact of malignant state actors manipulating public opinion on social media, it is also the animating concept of a century's worth of operations that sometimes seemed as if they were ripped from Mad Magazine's classic "Spy vs. Headed by an ex-Wehrmacht U-boat commander, LC-Cassock, Inc. grew into a 35-person PR and publishing house that sought to infiltrate East Germany with women's magazines, celebrity gossip, dating services and astrology guides, along with perks - like bonuses, private offices, and lavish expense accounts - that ended up being its undoing. Memories of the great intelligence leaks of the late 1970's, the mobilization and manipulation of global public opinion on nuclear weapons, and the surprisingly effective campaign alleging that the CIA created AIDS may have gone into hibernation when the Cold War ended, but one can clearly see the roots of what now passes for populism, including the disdain of experts and hostility towards science, in their long tail (Indeed, another one of that era's greatest hits, the legend that children from Central America and Africa were being kidnapped and butchered so their organs could be transplanted to wealth Americans, is likely one of the progenitors of the QAnon cult.) "Active Measures" will be most noted for its informed analysis and tightly written depiction of the "hacker" era of disinformation in which we are living today.