Criminal conspiracy is in vogue!!! Join me for coffee and Russian snacks as I present a goofy—yet condensed and informational—presentation on the wild story behind the influence operations conducted by the Russian government against the U.S. Presidential Election in 2016. We’ll breeze through the history of influence operations, define “Active Measures” (активные мероприятия), read historically significant legal documents, review the tactics of the IRA and look at genuine IRA-made memes, unpack the GRU’s intrusions into the DNC and DCCC and empirically analyze the success of their slow, methodical leaks to WikiLeaks and the U.S. media, bounce around the wacky anecdotes within the Special Counsel Report, and end on a solemn note about the precarious future of liberal democracy both domestically and abroad. Led by Christopher Barclay.