New Whistleblowers Highlight How Russia's Information War On U.S. Was Larger Than Initially Reported

from the pouring-gasoline-on-a-bonfire dept

A few years ago, Russian whistleblowers like Lyudmila Savchuk began to reveal that Vladimir Putin had built a massive new internet propaganda machine. At the heart of this machine sat the "Internet Research Agency," a Russian government front company tasked with operating warehouses filled with employees paid 40,000 to 50,000 rubles ($800 to $1,000) a month to create proxied, viable fake personas -- specifically tasked with pumping the internet full of toxic disinformation 24 hours a day. Initial reports on these efforts were often playful, suggesting little more than shitposting and memes.

Subsequent reports by folks like Adrian Chen at the New York Times highlighted in great detail how deep this particular rabbit hole went. Chen detailed how these efforts often went well beyond routine online trolling, and frequently extended into the real world (like the time online trolls urged American citizens to visit a Russian-operated Chelsea art gallery solely to try and distort and downplay the country's annexation of Crimea). By the summer of 2016, reports began to emerge that these same employees were also posing as Trump supporters to help stoke already raw political divisions in the States.

Fast forward to this week, when Russian newspaper RBC issued a fairly massive and comprehensive report (in Russian, the Guardian has an alternative take here) showing that these efforts went even further than most initial reports indicated. From the creation of popular Texas secessionist Facebook groups to the hiring of more than 100 U.S. activists who had no idea they were working for Russia -- all tasked with stoking division inside the United States:

Perhaps the most alarming element of the article was the claim that employees of the troll factory had contacted about 100 real US-based activists to help with the organisation of protests and events. RBC claimed the activists were contacted by Facebook group administrators hiding their Russian origin and were offered financial help to pay for transport or printing costs. About $80,000 was spent during a two-year period, according to the report.

And while some on both sides of the political spectrum have tried to downplay Russia's propaganda and disinformation efforts as amateurish, unimportant and ineffective, the collective scope of the IRA's work revealed by whistleblowers continues to indicate otherwise:

Today, business site RBC revealed the numbers that allegedly made the company work. It reports that over two years the agency spent $2.3 million on its US operations. Most of that was spent on Russian staff—around 90 employees were working on the US at the height of the trolling campaign in 2016—but it also paid for 100 US activists to travel around America, organizing 40 rallies in US cities, and spent $120,000 spreading their message on Facebook. (The Silicon Valley giant has admitted that thousands of ads were bought under Russian IP addresses during the campaign.) The 100 activists didn’t suspect any Russian involvement in the funding, RBC reports.

In addition to the RBC report, Russian journalists at Dozhd interviewed a new whistleblower named "Maxim" who worked at the Internet Research Agency. According to Maxim, the organization included a "Russian desk," a "foreign desk," a "Facebook desk," and a "Department of Provocations." Whereas the Russian desk operated the country's now infamous Twitter bots and online trolls, the foreign desk was notably more sophisticated in its information assaults, trained in the more nuanced aspects of U.S. politics in order to "set Americans against their own government," and "provoke unrest and discontent."

Meanwhile, the Russian government's Facebook desk was tasked with battling Facebook administrators who would try to delete fake accounts and groups -- and who would often buckle to opposition from Russian trolls who raised First Amendment concerns when challenged:

"The troll farm also had its own "Facebook desk," whose function was to relentlessly push back against the platform's administrators who deleted fake accounts as they began gaining traction. When Internet Research Agency employees argued against having their accounts deleted, Max said, Facebook staffers would write back, "You are trolls." The trolls would in turn invoke the First Amendment right to free speech — occasionally, they won the arguments.

By the latter half of 2016, up to a third of the Internet Research Agency was tasked with stoking existing tensions ahead of the U.S. election, according to yet another report by Russian media outlet Meduza. Another whistleblower claims that the IRA's goal wasn't always specificlly to aid Trump, but to help encourage American infighting, contributing to partisan gridlock in the States (though the IRA's disinformation work is just one prong in Russia's efforts, and the Mueller investigation may obviously have more to say on this subject in time).

The RBC report notes that Chen's 2015 bombshell story in particular forced the Russian government to notably revamp its disinformation efforts, so what it looks like now is far from certain. What is certain is that Russia's online disinformation efforts -- a response to years of equally brazen efforts by the United States -- are just the latest in a multi-generational cold war that perpetually seeks to take horrible ideas to new and obnoxious levels. The biggest concern now isn't just how a country immeasurably susceptible to bullshit combats this kind of attack, but just how ham-fisted and harmful the United States' inevitable response will be.

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Filed Under: elections, influence, russia, russian trolls, trolls