Sources and Methods

Warren P. Strobel at WP:

The Trump administration pushed to unveil a highly classified document on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election after an intense behind-the-scenes struggle over secrecy, which ended in late July when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a minimally redacted version of the report, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

Gabbard, with the blessing of President Donald Trump, overrode arguments from the CIA and other intelligence agencies that more of the document should remain classified to obscure U.S. spy agencies’ sources and methods, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others interviewed for this report, because of the matter’s sensitivity.

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The document that Gabbard ordered released on July 23 is a 46-page report stemming from a review begun in 2017 by majority Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. It takes issue with U.S. intelligence agencies’ finding earlier that year that Russian President Vladimir Putin developed a preference for Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton and aspired to help him win the election.

Multiple independent reviews, including an exhaustive bipartisan probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee, have found that Putin intervened in part to help Trump. Two former CIA officials who led the intelligence agencies’ assessment told The Washington Post they stood by their sourcing and analysis.

The House report is the most sensitive document the Trump administration has yet released, and details of how its publication occurred have not been previously reported.

The document contains multiple references to CIA human sources reporting on Putin’s plans. Such sources are among the agency’s most closely guarded secrets. After the report was completed in 2020, it was considered so sensitive that it remained in storage at the CIA rather than on Capitol Hill.

Democratic lawmakers and former U.S. intelligence officials have objected to how the Trump administration released the report, saying it could imperil future intelligence-gathering on threats against the United States.

“I almost felt like I was going to get in trouble for having read that document,” Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior CIA and White House official, told the podcast “SpyTalk.” “Sources and methods could be easily inferred in almost every instance. … I don’t know if I’ve seen a document of that sensitivity so lightly redacted.”

DNI Makes False Claims About Russian Interference

 Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are prominent influencers.

BYRON TAU and ERIC TUCKER at AP:

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard this month declassified material she claimed proved a “treasonous conspiracy” by the Obama administration in 2016 to politicize U.S. intelligence in service of casting doubt on the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.

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CLAIM: “The intelligence community had one assessment: that Russia did not have the intent and capability to try to impact the outcome of the U.S. election leading up to Election Day. The same assessment was made after the election.” — Gabbard to Fox News on Tuesday.

The documents Gabbard released do not support her claim. She cites a handful of emails from 2016 in which officials conclude Russia had no intention of manipulating the U.S. vote count through cyberattacks on voting systems.

President Barack Obama’s administration never alleged voting infrastructure was tampered with. Rather, officials have said, Russian operatives hacked emails of prominent Democrats that were subsequently released through WikiLeaks and launched a covert social media campaign to sow discord and inflame U.S. public opinion. More than two dozen Russians were indicted in 2018 in connection with those efforts.

Republican-led investigations in Congress have affirmed that conclusion, and the emails that Gabbard released do not contradict that finding.

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CLAIM: “There was a shift, a 180-degree shift, from the intelligence community’s assessment leading up to the election to the one that President Obama directed be produced after Donald Trump won the election that completely contradicted those assessments that had come previously.” — Gabbard to Fox News on Tuesday.

There was no shift.

The emails Gabbard released show that a Department of Homeland Security official in August 2016 told then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper there was “no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count.”

The public assessment the Obama administration made public in January 2017 reached the same conclusion: “DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.”

ODNI Misleads About Russian Influence Operations

 Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are  prominent influencers.

Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday issued the latest in a series of reports from the Trump administration attempting to undermine the eight-year-old assessment that Russia favored the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016.

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said the information she was releasing showed a “treasonous conspiracy in 2016” by top Obama administration officials to harm Mr. Trump.

Democrats denounced the effort as politically motivated, error-ridden and in contradiction with previous reviews of the assessment.

Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called Ms. Gabbard’s accusation of treason “baseless.”

Intelligence agencies and Senate investigators spent years reviewing the work, and concluded that during the 2016 election, the Russians conducted probing operations of election systems to see if they could change vote outcomes. While they extracted voter registration data in Illinois and Arizona, and probed in other states, there was no evidence that Moscow’s hackers attempted to actually change votes.

The Obama administration assessment never contended that Russian hackers manipulated votes. 

Russia also conducted influence operations to change public opinion. That included using fake social media posts to sow division among Americans and leaking documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee to denigrate Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Multiple reviews, including a Republican-led Senate report, backed the findings of American spy agencies in late 2016 that Russia was trying to influence the election by damaging Ms. Clinton’s campaign and bolstering Mr. Trump.

Among the Republican senators on the Intelligence Committee that produced the various reports on Russian influence operations was Marco Rubio of Florida, now the secretary of state.

The new report by Ms. Gabbard’s staff conflates those two activities by the Russians and tries to suggest that the Obama administration forced the intelligence community to alter its conclusions.

Trading Places on National Security

In the 1980s, the Republicans wanted a hard line against the Kremlin, the Democrats less so.

They have traded places.

Moira Fagan, Jacob Poushter, and Sneha Gubbala at Pew:

More than three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Americans remain divided along partisan lines in their views of the conflict, as well as in their attitudes toward NATO and perceptions of Russia.  

Americans continue to see NATO in a mostly favorable light, and views among the public overall have changed little over the past year. As has long been the case, Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to have a positive opinion of the military alliance. pic.twitter.com/8Fo9gDcqMs

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) April 18, 2025

Republicans have become less likely over the past year to say Russia is an enemy of the United States – and more likely to call it a partner or competitor. pic.twitter.com/5Phur7oujY

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) April 17, 2025

Siding with Russia

 Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are  prominent influencers.

Mike Allen at Axios:

• At the UN General Assembly on Monday, the U.S. voted against a resolution condemning Russia for invading Ukraine on the third anniversary of the war.
• It was the first time since 1945 that the U.S. sided with Russia — and against Europe — on a resolution related to European security, according to the BBC's James Lansdale.
• Nearly all other Western leaders see Russia as a rogue state and an aggressor. Trump sees a potential partner.

He goes so far as to say - falsely - Russia’s interference in the 2016 election had “nothing to do with Russia”:

“That was a rigged deal and had nothing to do with Russia. It was a rigged deal with inside the country. And they had to put up with that, too. They put up with a…

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) February 27, 2025

Ukraine Fact and Fiction

 Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.

Lori Robertson and Robert Farley at FactCheck.org:

After U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, President Donald Trump made several false and misleading statements about the conflict and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

• Trump falsely claimed that Ukraine had “started” the war with Russia, saying the country could have made a “deal.” Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

• He inflated the amount of U.S. aid for Ukraine and wrongly said the U.S. gave “$200 billion more than Europe.” Aid from Europe is higher than that from the U.S.

• Trump distorted comments Zelenskyy made to claim that the Ukrainian president “admits that half of the money that we sent them is missing.” A Trump administration official has said the U.S. tracks the money.

• Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator” and misleadingly said that he “refuses” to have elections. Because of the war, the country is under martial law and can’t have an election, according to Ukrainian law.

The talks between the U.S. and Russia in Saudi Arabia, led by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, were held Feb. 18. Ukraine wasn’t included in the meeting. Trump made his claims about Ukraine late in the afternoon on Feb. 18 and reiterated them the following day in a post on Truth Social and remarks at a summit in Miami.

From the Institute for the Study of War:

Russian Influence, Fall 2024

 Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are  prominent influencers.

ALAN SUDERMAN and GARANCE BURKE at AP:

The Kremlin could not have asked for better publicity at a better time when Ben Swann, a self-described independent journalist who promotes conspiracy theories, released a 12-part video series he promised would reveal dark truths about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Swann’s flashy documentary-style videos were filled with innuendo, attacks on Zelenskyy’s character and commentary from guests sympathetic to Russia in its two-year war with Ukraine.

The series, titled “Zelenskyy Unmasked,” launched in April as Congress was debating increasing military assistance to Ukraine, and it quickly caught the attention of conservative social media influencers who hyped the project to their millions of followers.

Among those who promoted the series was Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son.

“Curious about the billions of dollars and weapons Congress sent Ukraine?” Trump Jr. posted on X, Truth Social and Threads. “You need to watch the first episode of the explosive 12-part series.”

Unlike other conservative media personalities who last month expressed shock upon learning they may have been secretly financed by the Kremlin, Swann has no such qualms. He’s worked for Russia’s state-owned media empire for years, with one of his companies earning millions of dollars for producing Kremlin-friendly shows.

The creation of “Zelenskyy Unmasked” and its viral spread reveal how widely Russia-backed talking points are traveling on social media — a trend that concerns current and former U.S. intelligence officials and disinformation experts.

An investigation by The Associated Press also provides insights into the shadowy and profitable world of political influencers who are not required to disclose who is paying them, raising transparency concerns about their political endorsements in the largely unregulated realm of social media

Alia Shoaib at Newsweek:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said under oath that Tucker Carlson is funded by a Russian state-owned media outlet, without providing evidence for the claim.

Trudeau made the allegation about Carlson and fellow conservative media personality Jordan Peterson while testifying at a public inquiry into foreign interference on Wednesday.

The Canadian prime minister was addressing alleged Russian influence in spreading anti-vaccine messaging in the media and on social media during the "Freedom Convoy," a protest against COVID-19 vaccines and restrictions in Canada in early 2022.

"We have seen that anti-vax messages during the convoy, during the pandemic, were amplified by Russian propaganda, especially in the media of the right," Trudeau said, per a translation from French by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

He added that after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, several of these channels began spreading "pro-Putin propaganda."

"We've recently seen that RT is currently funding bloggers and other YouTube personalities of the right, such as Jordan Peterson. Other names that are well known, Tucker Carlson as well, in order to amplify messages that are destabilizing democracies," Trudeau said, naming the Russian state-controlled network.

More Russian Disinformation

 Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are  prominent influencers.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken:

In addition to imposing sanctions, visa restrictions, and other measures, the State Department also designated the Russian state-funded and directed media company Rossiya Segodnya and five of its subsidiaries, including RT, under the Foreign Missions Act. As a result, these actors are now required to notify the State Department of all personnel working in the United States as well as their property.

We took these steps based on our conclusion that Rossiya Segodnya and these five subsidiaries are no longer merely firehoses of Russian Government propaganda and disinformation; they are engaged in covert influence activities aimed at undermining American elections and democracies, functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus.

Today, we’re announcing that these Kremlin-backed media outlets are not only playing this covert influence role to undermine democracy in the United States, but also to meddle in the sovereign affairs of countries around the world. Thanks to new information – much of which originates from RT employees – we know that RT possess cyber capabilities and engaged in covert information and influence operations and military procurement. As part of RT’s expanded capabilities, the Russian Government embedded within RT a unit with cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence. RT’s leadership had direct, witting knowledge of this enterprise.

Russian Government actors incorporated the cyber capabilities of this unit within RT in the spring of 2023, which is focused primarily on covert influence operations around the world. Under the cover of RT, information produced through this unit flows to Russian intelligence services, Russian media outlets, Russian mercenary groups, and other state and proxy arms of the Russian Government. One of its projects is a large, online crowdfunding program in Russia, operating within RT and through social media channels, to provide support and military equipment – supplies, weaponry – to Russian military units in Ukraine. This includes sniper rifles, suppressors, body armor, night vision equipment, drones, radio equipment, personal weapon sites, diesel generators.

While the crowdfunding campaign is out in the open, what’s hidden is that this program is administered by the leaders of RT. Last week, our government revealed how RT launders information operations through unwitting Americans to covertly disseminate Kremlin-produced content and messaging to the American public. Today, we’re exposing how Russia deploys similar tactics around the world.I

Matt Bernardini at The Guardian:

Amid the recent crackdown on Russian influence in American media, a group of former Trump advisers and operatives have quietly helped build a pro-Russian website that frequently spreads debunked conspiracy theories about the war in Ukraine, election fraud and vaccines.

Working alongside contributors for Kremlin state media, the former Donald Trump policy aide George Papadopoulos, his wife, Simona Mangiante, and others have become editorial board members of the website Intelligencer, which is increasingly becoming a source of news for those in the rightwing ecosystem.

The growth of the website, which has not been reported on before, comes at a time when the US is seeking to crack down on Russian influence ahead of the 2024 election. Recently, the justice department charged two members of RT (formerly known as Russia Today) with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act and money laundering for payments they allegedly made to “recruit unwitting American influencers”. It also placed sanctions on RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, and nine other employees.

Axis of Disinformation

 Justin Green at Axios:

An axis of disinformation — ranging from hackers to fake websites to a dose of AI — has emerged ahead of November, with the U.S. government stepping up its warnings on foreign election interference.

Why it matters: Three of America's most potent adversaries — Russia, China and Iran — make the list.

1) Russia paid nearly $10 million to hire U.S. influencers — some with millions of followers — to "amplify divisions in the United States," the Justice Department said in an indictment today.The Justice Department seized 32 domains, some including "cybersquatted" sites publishing disinformation meant to resemble legitimate news outlets, like the Washington Post and Fox News, reports Axios' Avery Lotz.

2) China is leveraging a campaign called "Spamouflage" — using fake or hacked accounts posing as American citizens — to spread anti-Western sentiment ahead of the election, according to a report out yesterday by intelligence company Graphika.Some of the most recent political content was "almost certainly AI-generated," per the report.
China is more focused on influencing U.S. policy on Taiwan and undermining confidence in U.S. democracy than on helping any particular candidates, analysts told AP.

3) Iran has emerged as a player in its own right in the disinformation universe.

• It has already hacked individuals associated with the Trump campaign and attempted similar attacks on the Biden and Harris campaigns.
• Iran's government and Revolutionary Guards Corps are pushing the disinformation effort, the N.Y. Times reported today.
• Iranian operatives also posed as students and gave financial help during the U.S. protests this year against the Israel-Gaza war, the Times reports, citing U.S. intelligence assessments.

Russian Interference 2024

 Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are  prominent influencers.

Influence Operation Relied on Influencers, AI-Generated Content, Paid Social Media Advertisements, and Social Media Accounts to Drive Internet Traffic to Cybersquatted and Other Domains

Note: View the affidavit here.

The Justice Department today announced the ongoing seizure of 32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as “Doppelganger,” in violation of U.S. money laundering and criminal trademark laws. As alleged in an unsealed affidavit, the Russian companies Social Design Agency (SDA), Structura National Technology (Structura), and ANO Dialog, operating under the direction and control of the Russian Presidential Administration, and in particular First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko, used these domains, among others, to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections, including the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election.

In conjunction with the domain seizures, the U.S. Treasury Department announced the designation of 10 individuals and two entities as part of a coordinated response to Russia’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election. This announcement follows the designation of actors involved in Doppelganger announced by the Treasury Department in March.

Russian Influence Operations

Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are  prominent influencers.

From DOJ

The Justice Department today announced the seizure of two domain names and the search of 968 social media accounts used by Russian actors to create an AI-enhanced social media bot farm that spread disinformation in the United States and abroad. The social media bot farm used elements of AI to create fictitious social media profiles — often purporting to belong to individuals in the United States — which the operators then used to promote messages in support of Russian government objectives, according to affidavits unsealed today.

In conjunction with the domain seizures and search warrant announced today, the FBI and the Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF), in partnership with Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), Netherlands Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD), and Netherlands Police released a joint cybersecurity advisory detailing the technology behind the social media bot farm, including details regarding how the bot farm’s creators leveraged their bespoke AI system in furtherance of the scheme. The advisory will allow social media platforms and researchers to identify and prevent the Russian government’s further use of the technology. In addition, X Corp. (formerly, Twitter) voluntarily suspended the remaining bot accounts identified in the court documents for terms of service violations.

“With these actions, the Justice Department has disrupted a Russian-government backed, AI-enabled propaganda campaign to use a bot farm to spread disinformation in the United States and abroad,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “As the Russian government continues to wage its brutal war in Ukraine and threatens democracies around the world, the Justice Department will continue to deploy all of our legal authorities to counter Russian aggression and protect the American people.”

“Today’s action demonstrates that the Justice Department and our partners will not tolerate Russian government actors and their agents deploying AI to sow disinformation and fuel division among Americans,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. “As malign actors accelerate their criminal misuse of AI, the Justice Department will respond and we will prioritize disruptive actions with our international partners and the private sector. We will not hesitate to shut down bot farms, seize illegally obtained internet domains, and take the fight to our adversaries.”

“Today’s actions represent a first in disrupting a Russian-sponsored Generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Russia intended to use this bot farm to disseminate AI-generated foreign disinformation, scaling their work with the assistance of AI to undermine our partners in Ukraine and influence geopolitical narratives favorable to the Russian government. The FBI is committed to working with our partners and deploying joint, sequenced operations to strategically disrupt our most dangerous adversaries and their use of cutting-edge technology for nefarious purposes.”

“We support all civic engagement, civil dialogue, and a robust exchange of ideas,” said U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino for the District of Arizona. “But those ideas should be generated by Americans, for Americans. The disruption announced today protects us from those who use unlawful means to seek to mislead our citizens and our communities.”

“The disruption announced today is the result of a combined response with our international partners to a serious and unique threat,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Morris Pasqual for the Northern District of Illinois. “Multiple U.S. and foreign governmental components worked closely and efficiently to address the threat and develop and execute a mitigation strategy. Through vigorous enforcement efforts and collaborative international partnerships, the Justice Department works tirelessly to disrupt criminal cyber activity.”

Overview

According to court documents, a bot farm is an enhanced software package which allows for the creation of false personas on social media platforms. Bot farms are enhanced by integrating components which contain artificial intelligence, such as image production or text generation.

As described in the affidavits filed in support of the warrants, development of the social media bot farm was organized by an individual identified in Russia (Individual A). In early 2022, Individual A worked as the deputy editor-in-chief at RT, a state-run Russian news organization based in Moscow. Since at least 2022, RT leadership sought the development of alternative means for distributing information beyond RT’s standard television news broadcasts. In response, Individual A led the development of software that was able to create and to operate a social media bot farm. As planned, the social media bot farm would create fictitious online personas for social media accounts, through which RT, or any operator of the bot farm, could distribute information on a wide-scale basis. The development was executed by Individual B and others, who hid their identities and location (Russia) while beginning to purchase infrastructure for the social media bot farm in April 2022.

In early 2023, with the approval and financial support of the Presidential Administration of Russia (aka the Kremlin), a Russian FSB officer (FSB Officer 1) created and led a private intelligence organization (P.I.O.), as explained in the affidavits. The P.I.O.’s membership was comprised of, among others, employees at RT, including Individual A. The true purpose of the P.I.O. was to advance the mission of the FSB and the Russian government, including by spreading disinformation through the social media accounts created by the bot farm.

According to the affidavits, FSB Officer 1, Individual A, and other members of the PIO had access to the social media bot farm. The following are examples of Russian-government narratives that the bot farm posted on X in October and November 2023:A purported U.S. constituent replied to a candidate for federal office’s social media posts regarding the conflict in Ukraine with a video of President Putin justifying Russia’s actions in Ukraine;
A purported resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota, posted a video of President Putin discussing his belief that certain geographic areas of Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania were “gifts” to those countries from the Russian forces that liberated them from Nazi control during World War II;
A purported U.S. resident of a city identified only as “Gresham,” posted a video claiming that the number of foreign fighters embedded with Ukrainian forces was significantly lower than public estimates;

The same purported individual posted a video of President Putin claiming that the war in Ukraine is not a territorial conflict or a matter of geopolitical balance, but rather the “principles on which the New World Order will be based.”


To register the fictitious social media accounts, the social media bot farm relied on private email servers, which in turn relied on the two domain names seized by the FBI. An individual who controls an internet domain can create email accounts using the domain. For example, an individual controlling the domain name www.example.com can create email accounts using @example.com (e.g., EmailAddress@example.com). Here, the actors obtained and controlled the domain names “mlrtr.com” and “otanmail.com” from a U.S.-based provider. They then used those domains to create the email servers that ultimately allowed them to create fictitious social media accounts using the bot farm software.

The FSB’s use of U.S.-based domain names, which the software used to register the bots, violates the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. In addition, the accompanying payments for that infrastructure violate federal money laundering laws.

The Justice Department commends members of the private sector who coordinated with law enforcement efforts on this disruption, including X for its voluntary efforts to suspend the identified bot accounts from its platform. Prior to the government’s action, X identified and suspended a significant number of the bot accounts.

The Justice Department’s investigation is ongoing.

The National Security Division’s National Security Cyber Section, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois are prosecuting the case, with valuable assistance from the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.
Updated July 9, 2024

Russian Disinformation: Operation Overload

Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy.  The Russians target other Western countries, too.

James Thomas at Yahoo:

Pro-Russian actors are purposefully barraging journalists with fake news in an effort to spread verification resources thin and amplify the reach of disinformation, according to a new study.

Dubbed “Operation Overload” by Finnish software and methodologies company Check First, which published the report, the ongoing scheme involves anonymous pro-Russian actors who contact journalists in a coordinated campaign to have them verify suspected fake news.

The ploy relies on the simple principle that “all publicity is good publicity”.

The verification requests usually target Ukraine, France and Germany and take the form of emails and social media mentions.

Operation Overload has targeted more than 800 news organisations in Europe and beyond so far, hitting them with around 2,400 tweets and more than 200 emails.

Telegram has also played a significant role, with most of the links sent to journalists taking them to the messaging app.

Check First found that more than 250 fact-checks mentioning the false narratives created for Operation Overload have been published in the past few months.

For example, the sender of one email cited in the report poses as a concerned citizen who has supposedly seen suspicious claims in Russian media and asks journalists to take a look.

In another, the author makes it clear they want any fact-checks to be shared widely so they can be seen by as many people as possible.

This proves Operation Overload’s goal to reach wider audiences, whether the story is debunked or not, according to Check First.

The Terrorist Threat

 Graham Allison and Michael Morrell at Foreign Affairs:

Testifying in December to members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, [FBI Director Christopher] Wray said, “When I sat here last year, I walked through how we were already in a heightened threat environment.” Yet after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, “we’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole nother level,” he added. In speaking about those threats, Wray has repeatedly drawn attention to security gaps at the United States’ southern border, where thousands of people each week enter the country undetected.

Wray is not the only senior official issuing warnings. Since he became commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM) in 2022, General Erik Kurilla has been pointing out the worrying capabilities of the terrorist groups his forces are fighting in the Middle East and South Asia. These include al Qaeda, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), and especially Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), the ISIS affiliate that operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Christine Abizaid, the outgoing director of the National Counterterrorism Center, described “an elevated global threat environment” while speaking at a conference in Doha last month. And in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee just last week, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaking about the possibility of a terrorist attack on the United States, said that the “threat level . . . has gone up enormously.”

...

Observable trends add weight to these officials’ concerns. Most important is the growing number of both successful and foiled attacks. According to the Global Terrorism Index, deaths from terrorism increased by 22 percent from 2022 to 2023. This year has already seen the two large ISIS-K attacks in Iran and Russia. And were it not for the outstanding work of German intelligence and police, the list of successful acts of terrorism in the past few months would have been longer. German authorities arrested foreign nationals who were allegedly planning attacks on the Cologne Cathedral late last year and the Swedish parliament building in Stockholm in March.

Foiled plots inside the United States should be the ultimate wake-up call. In April 2022, the Justice Department charged an Iranian government official based in Tehran with attempting to hire a hit man to assassinate former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton. The following month, the FBI reported that it had thwarted the plans of an Iraqi national living in Ohio to smuggle four people across the southern border to assassinate former President George W. Bush. Most recently, the FBI—as part of the Biden administration’s effort to convince Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—shared declassified intelligence with Politico showing that the agency had stopped a plot to attack critical infrastructure in the United States last fall. According to the FBI, the organizer inside the United States was in regular contact with a foreign terrorist group, had identified specific targets, and had made sufficient preparations to put the plan into motion.

Russian Influence Operations in the US

Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are  prominent influencers.

Alex Finley. former CIA officer, writes at TNR:

Last year, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project revealed that politicians in Germany, Italy, and Cyprus were paid by Russian operatives to introduce legislation literally written by Russian intelligence officers. The OCCRP also uncovered examples of parliamentary staff members, party activists, and members of think tanks publishing articles in European press outlets under their name, while the articles were actually written by Russian handlers. One activist from Austria even complained to his handler about the quality of one article that had been coordinated with the Kremlin. “I am not a robot,” he said. Nevertheless, he published the article under his name in a Swiss media outlet.

It is naïve to think the same pattern does not exist in the United States, given the ample evidence of coordinated pro-Russian talking points from several Republican politicians. Just this week, Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke to Steve Bannon about Ukraine’s persecution of Christians, which is a Kremlin talking point aimed at boosting the pro-Moscow wing of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church. The U.S. should be spending money on the border with Mexico, not on Ukraine aid? That’s a Kremlin talking point. Russia invaded Ukraine to defend itself against an expanding NATO? That’s a Kremlin talking point. Call for a cease-fire, and give Russia Crimea and eastern Ukraine? That’s a Kremlin talking point.

While we cannot say for sure if any Republican officials are on the Russian payroll in ways similar to their European counterparts, we can be sure that they’ve been approached. As the director of national intelligence wrote in 2021, Russian intelligence operatives and their proxies “sought to use prominent US persons and media conduits to launder their narratives to US officials and audiences. These Russian proxies met with and provided materials to Trump administration-linked US persons to advocate for formal investigations; hired a US firm to petition US officials; and attempted to make contact with several senior US officials. They also made contact with established US media figures.”

American Defector and Russian Disinformation

Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.

Brandy Zadrozny at NBC:

More than 150 fake local news websites pushing Russian propaganda to U.S. audiences are connected to John Mark Dougan, an American former law enforcement officer living in Moscow, according to a research report published Wednesday by NewsGuard, a firm that monitors misinformation.

The websites, with names like DC Weekly, New York News Daily and Boston Times, look similar to those of legitimate local news outlets and have already succeeded in spreading a number of false stories surrounding the war in Ukraine. Experts warn they could be used to launder disinformation about the 2024 election.

In an interview over WhatsApp, Dougan denied involvement with the websites. “Never heard of them,” he said.

Dougan, a former Marine and police officer, fled his home in Florida in 2016 to evade criminal charges related to a massive doxxing campaign he was accused of launching against public officials and was given asylum by the Russian government. Most recently, Dougan has posed as a journalist in Ukraine’s Donbas region, testifying at Russian public hearings and making frequent appearances on Russian state TV.

He’s now part of a small club of Western expats who have become purveyors of English-language propaganda for Russia. Researchers and cybersecurity companies had previously linked Dougan to the sites. The NewsGuard report published Wednesday is the latest to implicate him in the fake news ring.

Academic research from Clemson University linked Dougan to the network of fake news websites last year after one of them was found to share an IP address with other sites he ran, including his personal website.

In an interview, Darren Linvill, co-director of the Watt Family Innovation Center Media Forensics Hub at Clemson, called Dougan “a tool of the broader Russian disinformation machine” whose websites “are just one of several mechanisms by which these narratives are distributed.”

McKenzie Sadeghi at NewsGuard:

This is an inside, yet almost accidental, story about how an American fugitive who sought asylum in Moscow has become a key player in Russia’s global disinformation network. It starts with a NewsGuard analyst happening upon what appeared to be a fledgling Washington D.C.-based news site promoting Russian propaganda. Unbeknownst to her, this was six months after her boss and his family had been threatened in a YouTube video that included an aerial shot of his home and calls to his unlisted phone number by a Russian disinformation operative working from a studio in Moscow. It turns out that this D.C. website, those threats to NewsGuard’s co-CEO, and what NewsGuard discovered were dozens of similar hostile information operations — including a “documentary” that the Russians used as an excuse to invade Ukraine — were all orchestrated by the same man — John Mark Dougan, a former Florida deputy sheriff who fled to Moscow after being investigated for computer hacking and extortion.

As of this writing, NewsGuard has discovered 167 Russian disinformation websites that appear to be part of Dougan’s network of websites masquerading as independent local news publishers in the U.S. and 15 films on Dougan’s since-removed YouTube channel. Ranging from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky siphoning off money meant to aid the war against Russia so he could buy an estate in England owned by King Charles, to a non-existent U.S. bioweapons lab in Ukraine being the reason the Russians had to invade that country, these concocted stories have been amplified on social media accounts to reach a broad global audience of more than 37 million views—including 1,300,000 views of just the narrative about Zelensky buying the king’s estate.

What follows—including multiple conversations with the Russian operative and an excerpt from NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill’s upcoming book, “The Death of Truth,” recounting Brill’s harrowing experience with the same man—is the story of how NewsGuard connected the dots, shining light on a sophisticated multi-media global disinformation operation.

Moving to Russia

Peter Savodnik at The Free Press:

I spoke to twenty American expats, all men, who have moved to Russia over the past four years. They told me they moved to Moscow or St. Petersburg or the wild east—Siberia—because they no longer believed the one person they once thought could save America—Donald Trump—could still save it. America, they felt, was beyond saving now.

...

No one was bothered by Putin being a dictator or invading Ukraine. That was, they agreed, understandable, what with NATO having expanded east and the United States having spent the past two and a half decades “meddling” in Russia’s backyard. (That was how most of them described U.S. support for democratic activists in Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, and other post-Soviet states.)

Peter Frohwein, who, like most recent expats, had never been to the former Soviet Union until recently and had a tenuous grasp of the Russian language, said of the war, “When someone says it’s a Russian invasion, that’s not even true.” He thought the United States, not Russia, had instigated the war by installing a friendly regime in Kiev.

Russian Influence Operations Today

Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.

Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn at WP:

When President Biden proposed an additional $24 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine in August, Moscow spin doctors working for the Kremlin were ready to try to undermine public support for the bill, internal Kremlin documents show.
...

Many of the documents contain metadata showing they were written by members of a team working for Ilya Gambashidze, head of the Moscow PR firm Social Design Agency. The United States imposed sanctions on Gambashidze last month for his involvement in “a persistent foreign malign influence campaign” at the Kremlin’s direction, including the creation of websites designed to impersonate legitimate media outlets in Europe, part of a campaign that Western officials have called “Doppelganger.”

...

Plans by Gambashidze’s team refer to using “short-lived” social media accounts aimed at avoiding detection. Social media manipulators have established a technique of using accounts to send out links to material and then deleting their posts or accounts once others have reshared the content. The idea is to obscure the true origin of misleading information and keep the channel open for future influence operations, disinformation researchers said.

Propaganda operatives have used another technique to spread just a web address, rather than the words in a post, to frustrate searches for that material, according to the social media research company Alethea, which called the tactic “writing with invisible ink.” Other obfuscation tricks include redirecting viewers through a series of seemingly random websites until they arrive at a deceptive article.

...

Fake news articles alleging Zelensky’s corruption pushed out by Russian-linked websites during the congressional debates on assistance for Ukraine in the fall have resonated. One of the most successful claims was disseminated by DC Weekly — a respectable-seeming internet outlet, which disinformation researchers at Clemson University traced back to domains affiliated with a former American police officer, John Mark Dougan, who has reinvented himself as a pro-Russian journalist in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.


Through DC Weekly, a fake news story alleging that Zelensky had bought two yachts with American aid money went viral in November. The claim — patently false and denied by Zelensky’s government — was picked up by far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who linked to a story about the rumor on X.

Russia, Disinformation, and Secession

Mohar Chatterjee at Politico:

One of the strangest glimpses into the future of information warfare might be what’s happening in Jackson, Miss., where a man named Ramzu Yunus is trying to launch an independent nation for people of African descent on Facebook.

His secessionist movement — while very local and very fringe — already has the backing of an intricate, global cross-platform propaganda network called the Russophere.

Last year, Yunus tried to drum up support for a similar separatist movement in Detroit, and has touted support from Russia on his Facebook page. In Texas, a different Russian influence campaign is amplifying calls for a “Texas secession” and an imminent “civil war” over the border crisis.

What might seem from the outside like an eccentric group of grassroots campaigns is a new front for a global pro-Russia disinformation operation — one that extends to the developing world as well, according to a new report by UK-based AI intelligence group Logically

Secession?

 

Texas has the right to secede from the U.S. if its citizens decide to do so, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said in a radio interview — a controversial view that contradicts centuries of established history and precedent. https://t.co/nmG5Q7rACj pic.twitter.com/00melpTwyx

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) January 31, 2024

Wrong, wrong, wrong.  A state cannot secede on its own, period.

Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1868) settled the issue of unilateral secession:

When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.

Russia has encouraged secession movements in the United States. 

Zelensky and American Exceptionalism

 Volodymyr Zelensky at WSJ:

A decade ago the current boss of Russia wrote that “America is not exceptional.” What he did later shows what he really meant. Many tyrants in human history have claimed global influence, but none of them could inspire the rest of the world to strive for the best in human nature. That’s why today’s Russian tyrants, like all tyrants, are fundamentally weak and their regime will crumble over time. When any tyrant hates America and denies its exceptional role in the struggle for freedom, he recognizes his own inevitable defeat. To Russian tyranny I say the world needs more, not less, American exceptionalism.

In 2013, Trump sided with Putin:

And it really makes him look like a great leader, frankly. And when he criticizes the president [Obama]  for using the term "American exceptionalism," if you're in Russia, you don't want to hear that America is exceptional. And if you're in many other countries, whether it's Germany or other places, you don't want to hear about American exceptionalism because you think you're exceptional. So I can see that being very insulting to the world.

And that's basically what Putin was saying is that, you know, you use a term like "American exceptionalism," and frankly, the way our country is being treated right now by Russia and Syria and lots of other places and with all the mistakes we've made over the years, like Iraq and so many others, it's sort of a hard term to use.

 But other nations and other countries don't want hear about American exceptionalism. They're insulted by it. And that's what Putin was saying.