Interview: The FSB’s (totally inept) war on Telegram

Listen to the short interview I did for Kevin Rothrock’s The Russia Guy podcast about Russia’s war on Telegram.

As I point out, Russia’s crude (and so far ineffective) block of Telegram shows how truly weak and lazy its intel services are. Remember, these are the same forces that supposedly so expertly hacked America’s democracy and zombified US voters with cyber influence and voodoo. But they can’t even block a chat app without bringing down huge chunks of Russia’s internet along with it. Dumb.

If the FSB was a true whiz and mastermind, it wouldn’t shut down Telegram. It would hack it.

—Yasha Levine

Want to know more? Check out my Baffler magazine piece on the shady world of crypto apps and my covert meeting with Telegram founder Pavel Durov.