https://www.ted.com/talks/laura_galante_how_to_exploit_democracy?language=en

Galante posited that the simplest way to take down a democracy is to turn its most powerful asset, the open minds of citizens, into a vulnerability.

"You need to get people in democracies to start questioning the system, to make it occur to them that their institutions are failing them, that the country they knew is in freefall," she said. "To do that, you need to infiltrate the information spheres of these democracies."

Galante noted that for a long time, the general public was more focused on the content of the hacked DNC emails than the news that the hacks came from a known Russian intelligence unit called APT 28 (also known as Pawn Storm or Fancy Bear).

https://www.businessinsider.de/cybersecurity-expert-reflexive-control-2016-election-2017-4?r=US&IR=T