The FBI people announcing that Russian disinformation is going to involve Hunter Biden's laptop, not mentioning that there is a legitimate story too, and then Jim Baker who was the general counsel at the FBI reinforcing it internally, isn't even the least bit worrying?

If the FBI is going to be saying, "Hey, this totally fake info-ops stuff," they should also be saying, "Uh, and this one isn't," using their same back-channels.

What would you write as a textbook case of unwarranted interference that was manipulative and undesirable while still not being blatant, if not for that?

I mean, Twitter has primary culpability, as they pulled the trigger, but if someone--whose advice they need to heed--is whispering in their ear, "Hey, that's a real, real bad man over there, and he's got a gun shaped like a smartphone...real, real bad man...." and then they shoot that guy when he pulls out a smartphone, do we really think the whispering had nothing to do with it (or the relationship with the whisperer)?

If you're going to catch unwarranted government influence before it becomes really problematic, how much later do you have to wait?

Don't forget that a primary goal of info-ops is to make it so your adversaries can't trust what's true and what's false. In this case, the FBI was doing their work for them!

I don't think there needs to be a "separation wall", but I think both sides need to keep it at an arm's length. By presaging the actual event with very specific ideas about what was going to happen, they reduced that distance dramatically.