WHAT’S THE STORY?
BOTS, and whether or not Russia could use them to influence the outcome of the next independence referendum in Scotland.
The question arose after a former Government foreign policy adviser turned international affairs analyst, David Clark, claimed Vladimir Putin’s stance had shifted because of the SNP’s success in forging closer links with the European Union and Nato. He said Russia had backed Scottish independence in 2014 given its agenda of destabilising the West. His thinking was that iScotland would be leaving the UK and at least initially Nato and the EU, but this would leave question marks over how quickly the country would be able to rejoin.
There would be implications for defence, especially the nuclear deterrent at Faslane, but iScotland would hope to rapidly rejoin the EU and seek membership of Nato, which Clark said had changed Putin’s mind on Scottish independence.
WHAT ARE OTHERS SAYING?
IT appears that Clark’s view is not widely shared. Professor Peter Jackson, who holds the Chair in Global Security at the University of Glasgow, said he was suspicious of the report.
“I don’t see why Putin would not welcome an independent Scotland, mainly for the reasons you mentioned such as the nuclear deterrent at Faslane and its potential future being put in question in the short, medium or long-term,” he said.
READ MORE: Putin sees SNP as threat and will oppose independence, says international analyst
“Secondly because the whole carefully constructed network of the North Sea-Arctic defence, which Nato is very central to, would also at least have something of a question over it.
“And those two things would only be good for Russia, and this is why we know that Russia was enthusiastic about Scottish independence in 2014.”
However, he said that for Putin, the EU was a rival, major power conglomeration with which Russia has had “adversarial relations” at various times in the past.
Its weakening would be beneficial for Russia, although he said that didn’t outweigh “the whole business of Scottish independence placing UK defence in an uncertain position”.
WHAT ABOUT THE US?
RUSSIA has always been the American bogey man and that’s unlikely to change, but Jackson said they had expressed concerns ahead of the 2014 indyref.
“The American government at the time, especially the US security establishment, was very worried about what they called the hole in the fence – the North Sea and the Arctic – the worry that their security network would be compromised should Scotland become independent,” said Jackson, adding: “Particularly because there are some elements in the SNP who are enthusiastic about nuclear disarmament, not just leaving Nato, and that’s why I’m a bit sceptical of these reports. On the other hand it’s in Russia’s interest to create a kind of atmosphere of uncertainty all around and we could hear rumours in the next month or so stating the opposite – anything that’s destabilising for Russia’s rivals has been something that Putin has historically been likely to support. I don’t think there’s any love lost between Russian interests and any Western European power at the minute. It’s very clear – even though the report has been suppressed – that Russia intervened, interfered in the independence referendum, to what extent nobody knows.”
AND THE BOTS?
WELL, these web robots are software applications running automated tasks over the internet at a much faster speed than humans can – and they have been used in previous political campaigns.
They are frequently used alongside forms of social engineering, such as social media influencing, but people are generally more aware after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when it was revealed they had harvested personal data from millions of Facebook profiles without people’s consent and used it for political advertising.
Influencing public opinion also comes in the form of day-to-day news and Jackson is convinced that Sputnik News, which was expelled from Edinburgh, was a front for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR.
He said it all came back to Russia’s main agenda: “For them destabilising, creating uncertainty and unhappiness in democratic procedures and principles and structures, is something we can expect Russia to pursue in the foreseeable future.
“Part of that is online, part of it is this army of bots and hackers who operate, if not in Russia, certainly for Russia.”
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