Long Before Facebook, The KGB Spread Fake News About AIDS
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union and allies participated in a widespread disinformation campaign: disseminating the theory that HIV, which causes AIDS, had been manufactured by the United States.
A few years ago, historian Douglas Selvage discovered the blueprint for a fake news campaign. It was a 1985 cable from the Stasi, the former East German police, outlining how the Soviet Union and its allies were working to promote the idea that AIDS was an American biological weapon. "We are carrying a complex of active measures, in connection with the appearance in recent years, of a new, dangerous disease in the United
