“We have certainly seen in the past a variety of foreign adversaries who seek to amplify the controversy in this country and use state media, use social media, some of that is through propaganda, some of that is through disinformation , which is only through false information, “Wray said in an interview with Fox News.
“And we are carefully looking at the possibility of foreign influence or foreign interference in all the protest activities (that) occurred in the past few weeks,” he said.
“The violence that occurred during the protest in recent weeks is fueled by a variety of different motivations and ideologies, it is not all the work of any single ideological movement or group,” said Wray. “We certainly have a number of ongoing active investigations into violent anarchist extremists.”
National security adviser Robert O’Brien has pointed out that Chinese messages on social media gloat over the chaos. In an interview with ABC last month, he also recognized some Russian activists and mentioned Zimbabwe and Iran.
But the role and effectiveness of foreign actors is difficult to measure: some suggest that their role is additive, does not initiate any discomfort.
.
