The authors of The Red Web examine the shifting role of Russian expatriates throughout history, and their complicated, unbreakable relationship with the mother country---be it antagonistic or far too chummy.
With important new revelations into the Russian hacking of the 2016 Presidential campaigns "[Andrei Soldatov is] the single most prominent critic of Russia's surveillance apparatus." -Edward Snowden After the Moscow protests in 2011-2012, Vladimir Putin became terrified of the internet as a dangerous means for political mobilization and uncensored public debate. Only four years later, the Kremlin used that same platform to disrupt the 2016 presidential election in the United States. How did this transformation happen? The Red Web is a groundbreaking history of the Kremlin's massive online-surveillance state that exposes just how easily the internet can become the means for repression, control, and geopolitical warfare. In this bold, updated edition, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan offer a perspective from Moscow with new and previously unreported details of the 2016 hacking operation, telling the story of how Russia came to embrace the disruptive potential of the web and interfere with democracy around the world.
From Soviet-era research laboratories to the present, traces the history of Russian intelligence and surveillance systems, and looks at technology's potential for both good and evil under Vladimir Putin's regime.
A penetrating investigation into how the KGB rose from the ashes of the Soviet Union and reinvented itself at the heart of the Russian state during Vladimir Putin's rule