Charlie Kirk was murdered. It was tragic. He should not have been murdered. Within minutes, his death was mercilessly blasted across social media, so it didn’t take long before it got weird… fast.

The part that surprised me most following his awful death was not even the tone-policing, but rather the demands for tribute.

Within hours, though, before any suspect was even identified, calls for violence were ricocheting online. Whereas the prominent figures and politicians on the left were by and large condemning the violence, the prominent figures on the right were… not as keen.

In his post All the Sad Young Terminally Online Men, Derek Thompson notes how the suspect fits the usual “salad bar” of incoherent beliefs exhibited by these kind of assassins. Yet that didn’t stop right-wing politicians from immediately throwing gasoline on the fire.

This shouldn’t be surprising coming from the same politicians who made a mockery of when Nancy Pelosi’s husband was nearly murdered.

Yes, plenty of real people made abhorrent content and posted online, but don’t be fooled: millions of comments, replies, and likes also poured in from outside the U.S. from foreign actors, who jump on moments like this.

America’s social media is their playground, even though we may not be aware of it.

This foreign influence is everywhere, and it never waits around for evidence.

Foreign influence operations aren't always what Hollywood taught you, like dead drops in parks. That’s not what this post is about.

Instead, we’ll be delving into a few surprising, more subtle cases of foreign covert operations. What looks like random crime, lobbying, or trolling is often quietly steered by state actors.

These are often:

For example, bots don’t always create the divisive narratives that go viral; they only have to amplify and recycle what real people already coordinate and post:

And it’s not just annoying content flooding your TL. These foreign operations scale to body counts and elections.

If you're Maduro’s Venezuelan regime, why compete with American military might when you can just poison your enemy instead?

Drum roll please: this is what the Venezuelan “Cartel of the Suns” has been doing. Until now, you probably didn’t even know they operated their own cartel!

Unlike Colombian or Mexican cartels, evidence (defectors and captured traffickers) suggests that Venezuela’s government itself coordinates this cartel’s operations.

Think Russia’s Wagner Group — official, but “wink-wink not official.”

In this case, the Maduro regime is flooding America with fentanyl as deliberate state policy.

This month, the U.S. escalated: the government “ordered the Pentagon to start using lethal force against the drug cartels. This is a gigantic change because up until now the US military has only been authorized to creep on the cartel using surveillance flights.”

Boats with alleged drug traffickers are already getting murked, as Trump amps up the concentration of military assets in the Caribbean.

Admiral Hulsey, commanding U.S. forces in Latin America, says the real threat isn't even the cartels - it's Russian and Chinese operations using Latin America as a launchpad.

Is this legally messy? Absolutely. The Trump admin is just smoking boats in the Caribbean that they deem to have drug traffickers.

Hezbollah may be cooked in the present-day, but back in the 2000s, they ran one of the most lucrative cash-laundering schemes ever.

In 2011, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York filed a civil money laundering and forfeiture suit against entities linked to Hezbollah, seeking nearly half a billion dollars!!

Here's how Hezbollah’s operation worked:

The bigger point: America isn’t always just a target but a medium. Our markets, banks, and businesses are used as laundromats for hostile actors. Hezbollah used our own markets to fund operations that killed Americans elsewhere.

ICYMI: a recent NYT investigation exposed how a Chinese ex-gangster became a NYC political kingmaker.

T. Greer best sums up how this ex-gangster pulled it off:

>Be a gangster who smuggles Chinese people into the United States in shipping containers
> Rat out your mafia boss in plea deal
> Say you have reformed, create a nonprofit to "raise the profile of Asian Americans in politics"
> Get Hillary Clinton to ask for your endorsement
> Act as power broker in NYC politics with the ability to direct votes and donations across Queens
> Use that ability to unseat politicians who aren't nice to the People's Republic of China
> Take part in central leadership meetings of the Communist Party of China

Believe it or not, but this is not even that unusual for the Chinese government!

Economist Noah Smith explains: “If you want to learn about how China is wielding “sharp power” around the globe, a good place to start is Bethany Allen’s book Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World…It covers China’s attempts to influence foreign politics through massive clandestine social media campaigns. It explains China’s illegal overseas “police stations”. And it also discusses how the Chinese government bullies U.S. companies and NGOs into toeing the CCP line on various political matters, usually by threatening to revoke access to China’s huge domestic market…

The sheer diversity of ways that China is trying to control, influence, and subvert actors in democratic countries is staggering — it’s a true multi-modal, full-spectrum effort. Individually, these things could be viewed as innovative extensions of traditional spycraft, propaganda, and information operations. Taken together, they represent a new kind of digital, global totalitarianism.”

Now, after you chew on that for a minute, remember the whole TikTok ban debate?

Well, it’s back in the news, and for good reason - it’s not looking to good for us!

Sam Harris explains best (emphasis my own):

“The fact that some of the most deranging and divisive content is being created (or amplified) by foreign adversaries—and that we have literally built and monetized their capacity to do this—beggars belief. We are poisoning ourselves and inviting others to poison us.”

In other words, we’re encouraging adversaries to poison us and paying them for the privilege.

The U.S. is basically a piñata of opportunity for our adversaries, as we’re one of the largest developed democracies (for now, lol) in the world:

Legal: The First Amendment protects even foreign propaganda. Try running anti-CCP content in China and see what happens.

Financial: Our open markets allow for buying influence.

Enforcement: No single agency owns this problem. FBI does domestic, CIA does foreign, and they don’t always talk to each other!

Political: Every incoming administration reshuffles priorities. Adversaries like China can play decades-long games while we play four-year cycles.

Even when these states’ ops don’t fully “succeed,” they still manage to erode trust, and that’s the point. Just make people shrug and go “who knows what’s true anymore?”

And now, with AI getting better and cheap botnets, it’s only getting cheaper and nastier on this end.

Foreign rivals seem to be ever emboldened, as consequences are minimal and payoffs are high.

Historian Sarah Paine is fond of saying “The enemy has a choice.”

And the U.S.’s rivals are making theirs: not to just outbuild us, like China, but to unravel us from within. Tanks and missiles are obvious, of course, but fentanyl pipelines, money laundering schemes, and fake cultural centers are cheaper and harder to detect.

You could argue this is the real threat from within. This isn’t the civil war your uncle on Facebook keeps ranting about. It may be something worse - a war we're already losing because we refuse to admit we're fighting it.

Thanks for taking the Pack,

Zach

_{The vibe-killer disclaimer: The opinions in this post and all other posts only represent myself and do not represent the opinions of my employer or any groups I am a member of.
This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice}