Nor has the problem been limited to elections. Perhaps the most worrisome example occurred on Christmas Eve 2016, when Pakistani defense minister Khawaja Asif read a false online report that Israel was threatening to attack his country if it intervened in Syria. “We will destroy them with a nuclear attack,” the report had quoted a retired Israeli defense minister as saying. Asif responded with a real threat of his own, tweeting about Pakistan’s willingness to retaliate with nuclear weapons against Israel. Fortunately, Christmas was saved when the original report was debunked before the crisis
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