In November 2015, just days after terrorists killed 130 people in a coordinated attack in Paris and its suburbs, Texas governor Greg Abbott declared that he would oppose Obama administration efforts to resettle Syrian war refugees in Texas. “Neither you nor any federal official can guarantee that Syrian refugees will not be part of any terroristic activity,” Abbott wrote in a letter to President Obama. Less than a week after Abbott threw down the gauntlet to Obama, hundreds of people supporting the refugees held a rally in downtown Austin, chanting, “Let them in, Abbott, let them in.” More than 5,500 miles away—in a rather plain-looking office building at 55 Savushkina Street in the northwestern Primorsky District of St. Petersburg, Russia—the trolls took notice. The Internet Research Agency, a Russian company believed to be run by an ally of President Vladimir Putin, was humming around the clock in the building. Since 2013, more than a thousand Russians had been trained there in the use of social media to create disharmony and discord among Ukrainian and Russian citizens. Now the IRA—which would become known as the Russian troll factory—was turning its attention to the U.S. elections. The conflict between Abbott and the Obama administration was exactly the kind of wedge issue the Russian trolls were looking for to sow division in America. “They would read the news every day, and they would find the most sensational stories and grab them and they would put their own spin on them,” said Renee DiResta, the leader of a six-month investigation into the Internet Research Agency for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that was released this week. Syria, she told me, was an issue the Russians could play to different American groups for opposing effects. For African-Americans, memes would be pushed that babies were dying in Syria. For the South and Texas, the idea was pushed that if the U.S. would get out of Syria, then fewer refugees would be brought to the United States. For liberals, the Russians would pull the heartstrings of “why wasn’t something being done for the refugees?” But the time the controversy erupted in Texas, the troll factory had already created a false identity—“sock puppet”—Facebook page called Heart of Texas, featuring images of sunsets, fields of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush, and lounging longhorn cattle. The page was also filled with memes like a photo of Middle Eastern refugees and the headline: “Should Texas Accept Syrian Refugees?” The answer, in red: “NO!” Another meme called for an anti-refugee rally at the Texas Capitol. Other memes were more generic to the idea that Texas should secede. One transformed the Texas flag into a “Don’t Tread on Me” image in the white field, with the red field converted into a Confederate battle flag. “There also was an undercurrent of Second Amendment and anti-immigration memes,” according to a new study of Heart of Texas by DiResta’s team at Austin-based New Knowledge, a cybersecurity firm.

Courtesy of New Knowledge

In May 2016, the troll factory prompted opposing rallies in Houston by Heart of Texas readers and those of United Muslims of America, both “sock puppet” sites. Russian teams using the same Internet Protocol addresses were set up to play Americans on both sides of an issue. Before the Russian trolls were done, the Heart of Texas Facebook page had 5.4 million likes and had been shared 4.9 million times, according to a second study performed by the University of Oxford. United Muslims had 2.4 million likes and 1.2 million shares. Even before the 2016 presidential election, DiResta noted, the Russians had been testing disinformation in Texas by stirring up the controversy surrounding the Jade Helm military maneuver in the summer of 2015. Conspiracy theorists had created the idea that a joint military training exercise in Texas was cover for President Obama to declare martial law and seize Texas. The conspiracy theory gained traction when Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor the U.S. military. Earlier this year, a former head of the National Security Agency and the CIA—Air Force General Michael Hayden—said the Jade Helm disinformation campaign was pivotal to the Russians’ decision to try to influence the U.S. presidential campaign. “At that point, I’m figuring the Russians are saying, ‘We can go big-time.’ And at that point, I think they made the decision, ‘We’re going to play in the electoral process,’” Hayden said. The New Knowledge and Oxford studies give the greatest detail to date about the extent of the Russian propaganda campaign against America and attempts to influence the 2016 election. The studies also suggest that Texas was often at the heart of the campaign. The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence received the reports earlier this week as part of its ongoing investigation into Russian meddling through social media. While the reports show the Russians clearly were trying to tilt the election to Donald Trump, the Russian troll factory also keyed off of news events and societal disputes to fan the flames of American outrage in a broader effort to disrupt American unity. “The scale of their operation was unprecedented—they reached 126 million people on Facebook, at least 20 million users on Instagram, 1.4 million users on Twitter, and uploaded over 1,000 videos to YouTube,” says the New Knowledge report. The Russian troll factory had a budget that exceeded $25 million in U.S. dollars and continued functioning well into 2018. “The data provided to [the Senate committee] illustrates that for approximately five years, Russia has waged a propaganda war against American citizens, manipulating social media narratives to influence American culture and politics.” As the general election approached between Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the Russian trolls increased their operation to influence the election. “The goal appears to have been to generate extreme anger and engagement for those most likely to support then-candidate Donald Trump, and to create disillusionment and disengagement on the Left-leaning and Black communities,” the New Knowledge report says. Even before the general election, the Russians were trying to steer the Republican presidential nomination to Trump. There were memes attacking former Florida governor Jeb Bush as “Joke or stupidity,” and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida with the question, “Rubio is a traitor?” Rubio had won office as a tea party outsider, but then became an establishment candidate. When U.S. Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, criticized Trump, memes appeared on the Russian-controlled sites questioning his sanity. When the field of candidates was winnowed down to Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz as Trump’s main Republican opponent, the Russian efforts focused on knocking Cruz out of the Republican nominating contest. “There appeared to be a strong and consistent preference for then-candidate Donald Trump, beginning in the early primaries. There was unfavorable content about a wide range of Republican candidates and leaders, including Sens. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and then-candidate Dr. Ben Carson,” the New Knowledge report says.

Courtesy of New Knowledge