At a glance.
- Chinese influence campaign targets US elections.
- The (so-far) unrealized potential of deepfakes.
- Russia pursues ministerial-level diplomacy.
- What does it take to get fired from RT?
- Denazification becomes desatanization.
Chinese influence campaign targets US elections.
Mandiant this Wednesday described what it characterizes as a "pro-PRC influence campaign" actively directed against the US midterm elections. The themes of the campaign (Mandiant calls it "DRAGONBRIDGE") are familiar and unconvincing stuff. The researchers outline three:
- "Claims that the China-nexus threat group APT41 is instead a U.S. government-backed actor.
- "Aggressive attempts to discredit the U.S. democratic process, including attempts to discourage Americans from voting in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections.
- "Allegations that the U.S. was responsible for the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions."
Taken individually, it's sad stuff, and, as the Wall Street Journal observes, has had little effect. The opportunistic, scattershot quality of the narratives, however, coupled with new sophistication in impersonation, plagiarism and alteration of sources, and the use of inauthentic personae to amplify messaging suggest that the objective may be the more attainable one of confusion than the heretofore more common Chinese aim of persuasion. The tactics observed are interesting, in addition to amplifying particularly disruptive themes (like "civil war") DRAGONBRIDGE was observed by Mandiant to employ:
- "Nuanced Impersonation of Cyber Actors: The campaign was found impersonating Intrusion Truth, a group known to target China-nexus cyber threat actors, to leverage the outlet’s reputation to promote DRAGONBRIDGE’s own cyber-related narratives.
- "Plagiarism and Alteration of News Articles: DRAGONBRIDGE altering news articles to create fabricated content that falsely attributed APT41 as a U.S. government-backed actor, then subsequently promoting that content across social media, forums, and blogs, demonstrates a more sophisticated adaptation of the campaign’s earlier use of simple plagiarism.
- "Personas Posing as Members of Target Audience: The campaign also expanded its use of personas posing as Americans by using first-person pronouns, which we observed previously in its targeting of commercial companies, to promote politically themed content."
Earlier this week Althea Group identified "at least 165" inauthentic Twitter accounts spreading "politically polarizing content related to the 2022 U.S. midterm elections." The accounts represented themselves as belonging to Americans of various political commitments. "The accounts exhibited characteristics resembling Spamouflage Dragon, the well-known pro-China influence campaign that is also referred to as DRAGONBRIDGE." Althea declined to offer a definitive attribution, but said in its report, "We do not attribute the Twitter activity to China at this time, but instead note that it bears certain resemblances to previous influence activity that has been attributed to China. If linked to China, it would represent a new evolution in China's social media influence activity." It does indeed: it represents a shift to a style of disinformation that works primarily to increase the adversary's friction.
The (so-far) unrealized potential of deepfakes.
Deepfakes, the realistic and thoroughly convincing fabrication of imagery, video, and audio that fakes the identity of some person in ways that are difficult to detect, have aroused concern recently. They seem to open the prospect of extraordinarily effective disinformation and social engineering campaigns. They're not there yet, but they've already made their appearance in advertising, and nation-state influence operations are just marketing in battledress.
The Wall Street Journal reports that some campaigns have begun to feature celebrities, or rather their deepfaked personae. “None of these celebrities ever spent a moment filming these campaigns. In the cases of Messrs. Musk, Cruise and DiCaprio, they never even agreed to endorse the companies in question.”
The potential for deepfake abuse in advertising is accompanied by a comparable potential for disinformation. The Wall Street Journal quotes Ari Lightman, professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, who says, “We’re having a hard enough time with fake information. Now we have deepfakes, which look ever more convincing.”
So far, however, the feared, industrial-scale use of deepfakes in influence campaigns has yet to fully materialize. The Register reports that the familiar tools of the con artist are still by far the norm: “Panic over the risk of deepfake scams is completely overblown, according to a senior security adviser for UK-based infosec company Sophos. 'The thing with deepfakes is that we aren't seeing a lot of it,' Sophos researcher John Shier told El Reg last week.
Russia pursues ministerial-level diplomacy to spread "dirty bomb" disinformation.
Over the last past week Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu spoke directly and separately with his US and British counterparts, respectively Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace.
The US Defense Department offered a terse announcement that the call had taken place on Friday. Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder said, "On October 21, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke by phone with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu. Secretary Austin emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication amid the ongoing war against Ukraine." Radio Free Europe | Radio Liberty reported that Secretary Austin initiated the call. Austin also spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart, Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov. General Ryder's readout of the call on October 24th said that Secretary Austin "strongly condemned Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure and reiterated that the United States rejects the public and false allegations by Russia about Ukraine and any attempt to use them as a pretext for further Russian escalation of its unlawful and unjustified war against Ukraine."
The British MoD gave a longer account of Sunday's conversation between Secretary Wallace and Minister Shoigu. "At the request of the Russian Ministry of Defence, the Secretary of State for Defence spoke with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, this afternoon. Minister Shoigu alleged that Ukraine was planning actions facilitated by Western countries, including the UK, to escalate the conflict in Ukraine.
"The Defence Secretary refuted these claims and cautioned that such allegations should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation.
"The Defence Secretary also reiterated UK and wider international support for Ukraine and desire to de-escalate this conflict. It is for Ukraine and Russia to seek resolution to the war, and the UK stands ready to assist.
"The Defence Secretary observed that both Ministers were respectful and professional on the call."
Specifically, according to Reuters, Mr. Shoigu warned that Ukraine was preparing a "dirty bomb," that is, a radiological weapon designed to kill primarily by radioactive contamination as opposed to blast or thermal energy. He also made this (very implausible) claim in conversations with French and Turkish officials, but the claim is widely regarded as disinformation. From the Russian side, RT gave a similar account of the Shoigu-Wallace call, and cites the Russian Ministry of Defense as having expressed concern about a Ukrainian dirty bomb. Many observers see the dirty-bomb talk as laying the groundwork for a Russian false-flag provocation involving radiological weapons (or deliberately induced nuclear accidents), but it may equally well be simply intended to confuse and discredit. Moscow made similar claims about Ukrainian biological weapons early in the war, and no provocation has yet developed from those. The foreign ministers of the UK, France, and the US released a joint statement Sunday in response to Mr. Shoigu's allegations:
"We, the Foreign Ministers of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, reiterate our steadfast support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression. We remain committed to continue supporting Ukraine’s efforts to defend its territory for as long as it takes.
"Earlier today, the defense ministers of each of our countries spoke to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu at his request. Our countries made clear that we all reject Russia’s transparently false allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory. The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation. We further reject any pretext for escalation by Russia.
"The Foreign Ministers also discussed their shared determination to continue supporting Ukraine and the Ukrainian people with security, economic, and humanitarian assistance in the face of President Putin’s brutal war of aggression."
The dirty bomb story has gained little traction, but official sources in Russia, including President Putin, continue to push it. The Foreign Ministry's Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that Russia had evidence that Ukraine was preparing a dirty bomb for use in terror attacks, and that Russia intended to take vigorous steps to defend itself. TASS quoted Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova today: ""We call on the West to influence its Ukrainian proteges to abandon this highly dangerous risky undertaking. And not only this one, but all those steps, activities and actions that involve nuclear blackmail, since all this leads to irreversible consequences and possible mass deaths of innocent civilians."
What does it take to get fired from RT?
The news service's Director of Broadcasting was suspended over the weekend for an on-air exchange with a science-fiction writer. Evidently his willingness to express a desire for genocide went over the line, although it's difficult to see how it exceeded in brutality over things regularly heard on Russian state television. Here's the exchange.
Science-fiction writer Sergei Lukyanenko said, "To me, it feels like public opinion had entered into a self-sustaining cycle of hysteria. Yes, there is hysteria for any reason. All of it reached an insane level of lies, a level of sick fantasies. Just remember all of those stories about Viagra, packs of which are being handed out to our soldiers." "Yes, being handed out to our soldiers," added Anton Krasovsky, RT's Director of Broadcasting, "for them to rape Ukrainian grannies. Gawd, those grannies would spend their burial savings to get raped by Russian soldiers. I thought [slang derogatory expression for Ukrainians] always hated Russians, rather, those people who identified as [slur] and not as Russians. A large number of Russians were forced to believe that they were [slur for Ukrainians]."
Lukyanenko resumed, "I went to Ukraine for the first time in 1980 as a child. Over there, Ukrainian children would tell me that Ukraine is occupied by Moskals, that, if not for the Moskals, they would live like France. and that they're suffering under occupation. Those were not Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainian children. Those were also around, and they were normal. They were Russian speakers, with Russian surnames. One of those boys' fathers was in the military. They were Russian and Russian-speaking...."
At this point Krasovsky interrupted angrily, "They should have been drowned in the Tysyna [river], right there, where the duckling swims. Just drown those children, drown them right in the Tysyna. That's not your method, because you sci-fi writers are intelligent people, but it is our method. Whoever says that 'Moskals' occupied them, you throw them in the river with a strong undercurrent." Lukyanenko offered a qualifying bit of history. "Traditionally, among the Rus, they used the rod for that. That worked better than the river." Krasovsky then offered an excursus on the vileness to be found in the Carpathians (a traditional locus of Russian military failure, running from western Ukraine into eastern Slovakia, southern Poland, and northern Romania). "Over there," he said, "every piece of sh*t little house, there are masses of awful, monstrous, little houses, they shit all over the Carpathian Mountains. The Carpathian Mountains are disgusting. Every hut over there is called 'smerokova khata' [spruce house]. Shove them right into those huts and burn them all up," he concluded, laughing.
"The Soviet Union was seriously ill," Lukyanenko continued. "Ukraine was one of its most affected parts." "That's because," Krasovsky said," it [that is, Ukraine] is not supposed to exist at all. Should Ukraine remain on the map of the world?" "Yes," replied Lukyanenko, "because I wouldn't want to live in the same country with many of the same people who will remain there." "So," concluded Krasovsky, "we will shoot them."
RT announced the suspension Sunday on its website. "RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan has condemned comments from Russian-language broadcast host Anton Krasovsky that suggested Ukrainian children need to be 'drowned', and suspended his contract." "Raping grannies" wasn't specifically called out for repudiation, although perhaps that was just an oversight. Ms Simonyan explained her decision in her Telegram channel. RT quotes her: "'Perhaps Anton will explain what temporary insanity caused it and how it came out of his mouth. It is hard to believe that Krasovsky sincerely believed that children should be drowned,' she wrote. Simonyan clarified that she is suspending his contract with the broadcaster, 'because neither I nor the rest of the RT team can allow even the thought that one of us is capable of sharing such nonsense. For the children of Ukraine, as well as the children of Donbass, and all other children, I wish that all this ends as soon as possible, and they can live and study in peace again – in the language they consider native.'”
It must be the children, because Ms Simonyan has hardly been moderate in her comments about the war against Ukraine. Newsweek in July carried a representative selection of her remarks advocating the extinction of Ukraine as a nation. More recently, she advocated famine as a means to the end of relieving sanctions against Russia. "All our hope is on a famine. Now the famine will start, and they will come to reason, cancel the sanctions, and become our friends again." The US State Department has published a useful account of Ms Simonyan's career as a propagandist. Given her record, it's difficult to see why she came down as hard as she did on Mr. Krasovsky, unless focus groups have led the Kremlin to assess that cheering the imagined mass murder of children isn't testing well internationally.
RT did observe, at the close of its announcement, that Mr. Krasovsky had criticized President Putin several years ago, and that, moreover, Mr. Krasovsky is not only gay, but HIV positive, and has written for some Anglo-Saxon media outlets. "Krasovsky first came to international prominence, in the early 2010s, as a LGBT rights activist. During a TV show in 2013, he ‘came out’ live on air, while expressing opposition to Russia’s so-called ‘gay propaganda’ law. He blasted both President Vladimir Putin and his predecessor Dmitry Medvedev and was lauded by Western media. That led to the journalist writing for The Guardian and featuring in other American and British outlets."
Denazification becomes desatanization.
TASS is authorized to disclose that Ukraine is full of cults, mostly Satanic in nature, and that a principal aim of Russia's special military operation is to purge Ukraine of Satanic influence. The report calls out the Church of Satan as particularly large and influential. The report of Satanic control of Ukraine has been up-and-down in TASS's feeds, and seems to have disappeared from the state news outlet's English-language service, but Vice has a report that preserves the essentials. It would appear that the line about His Infernal Majesty being the god of Ukraine is mostly for domestic Russian consumption. Very few, least of all anyone who's actually been to Ukraine, is likely to think that the country is a vast coven of devil-worshipers.