Ah. Misquoting a source is a serious breach of trust, hence please be more careful in future.
I read the article.
The researchers seem sincere in their concern. However, as written, the article fails to do two things for me: it doesn't quantify the extent of the problem in either absolute or (especially) relative terms, and it doesn't justify its conclusions about Russia's motivations based on the evidence it presents.
It succeeds as a primer. The case studies are a good way to expose readers to the kinds of psyops taking place. But it leaves critical questions unanswered. How many of these trolls are there? Five? Ten? A thousand? More importantly: What percentage of the Twittersphere do their activities comprise, and what can be said conclusively about the effectiveness of their trolling on changing public opinions?
Anybody with a keyboard can drum up a following on Twitter by telling people what they want to hear. I assume that's basically what "subscription" is used for on Twitter: a reader telling a writer "I want to hear what you have to say." Changing people's social opinions involves persuading them to believe things they don't want to hear. No doubt this can be accomplished to some extent with sufficient subtlety and patience, but for "some extent" to be of serious concern here, we'd have to be facing down legions of trolls (tens or hundreds of thousands), each one a hundredfold as persuasive as run-of-the-mill born-in-America partisans.
Where the article really loses me is the researchers' assertion that the end goal is to "further widen existing divisions in the American public and decrease our faith and trust in institutions that help maintain a strong democracy". Based on what, exactly?
First of all, none of the case studies they provide does anything I can see that would "decrease our faith and trust in institutions". Even if they did, how do we know this is Russia's goal? It doesn't even make sense as a motivation.
Here's an alternative theory: The IRA gets some money from Moscow. "We want to know the extent to which trolling social media can be used to change people's opinions on: Pres. Putin, Hillary Clinton, cats, gambling, and Russian vodka. You're the research agency. Get it done." So one team of ten guys plugs Pres. Putin for a decade, one team plugs vodka, one team bashes cats, etc. They report back: "We got x followers here and y followers there." Moscow turns the data into an assessment of whether trolling is worth a fart in a windstorm as a weapon of information warfare, as a vector of attack against Russia, etc.
Meanwhile, the CIA, FBI, and a dozen other US agencies with a combined budget of billions, desperate to justify their existence, sees some of the campaigns and throws up the alarm "Sweet snowy leopards, we're under attack by the Reds! Damn the battle stations! Man the torpedoes!", instantly drumming up Red Scare 2.0.
This theory is just as valid based on what little the article provides, and it strikes me as more plausible than the Russians "widen[ing] existing divisions in the American public" for no discernible reason. The reaction also makes me wonder: to what extent are the IRA's activities reciprocated? Are the US agencies so alarmed because they're witnessing their own warfare tactics being employed against them in earnest for the first time?
I'll summarize thusly: based on what little the article provides, one could argue that debatepolitics.com, with its many partisans and day-to-day bickering, is as big a threat to the unity and stability of America as Russian trolls. Personally, I don't think all the bickering and bellyaching we do here, even with all the countless millions of views DP gets in a given year, has any meaningful effect on changing social attitudes in America. YMMV.