That same year [2016] the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence’s official journal StratCom, published a paper entitled ‘It’s Time to Embrace Memetic Warfare’.

The paper proposed methods by which to undermine ISIS: “systematically lure and entrap” recruiters; subvert its messaging via “fake ‘sockpuppet’ accounts” – online personas manufactured to simulate grassroots support or opposition – and “expose and harass people” within its funding network, “including their family members”.

To the editors of the NATO journal, these may have appeared as novel strategic prescriptions. In fact, they had already appeared – in a different context entirely.

Those tactics had been developed and deployed over years by a loose network of far-right organisations – funded, in part, by figures directly connected to Thiel.

And they resemble too much mechanics used by Russian propaganda throughout Europe and beyond.