Disinformation Nation: Kremlin operation in Britain tipped off US authorities

FBI and Homeland Security officials warned the nation in January that Russian actors would try to manipulate the 2024 election. In March, the Kremlin plot came into focus.

This is part two of a two-part series from WTOP’s National Security Correspondent JJ Green on the spread of disinformation in American politics.

When FBI and Homeland Security officials warned the nation in January that Russian actors would try to rig the 2024 election, they weren’t sure at the time how the Russians would do it. But strangely, a short time later, when news of an illness in the British royal family broke, the Kremlin plot came into focus and American intentions were exposed.

In March, when Kate, Princess of Wales, mysteriously disappeared from view, internet sites and social media exploded with wild speculation about the cause of her disappearance. She later revealed a cancer diagnosis.

But in the meantime, millions of messages, memes and theories spread online, showing patterns that disinformation experts immediately recognized.

“These behavioral patterns were consistent with a Russian intelligence operation known in the open source community as ‘Doppelganger’,” said Professor Martin Innes, director of the Security, Crime and Intelligence Innovation Institute at Cardiff University in Britain. .

“Doppelgänger,” said Innes, “jumped on the conspiracies about the Princess of Wales and amplified them and boosted their visibility.”

But the operators didn’t just amplify the social media noise: They changed the subject, which is the key mechanism that makes plans like Doppelganger work.

The vendors join popular online conversations, befriend and sympathize with those posting, and then begin pushing their own agenda.

“Instead of reacting and talking about the Princess of Wales, they were actually talking about the war in Ukraine, or the elections that had taken place in Russia,” Innes said.

He and other experts and organizations monitoring Russian disinformation operations soon discovered that Doppelganger was also on the rise in the US.

The sophisticated ruse began popping up online on sites that mimicked trusted American media sites.

According to Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, they were engaging in something called “money laundering propaganda.”

Doppelganger created fake news sites that were identical to real ones

Information launderers have the same problem as money launderers: finding a way to give the impression that their goods come from legitimate sources.

“It’s easy enough to come up with a story, but it’s hard to get that story into a credible outlet that your target audience actually watches and believes in,” Schafer said.

True to the meaning of the name ‘Doppelganger’, those running the US operation began creating fake news sites, many of which were almost identical to authentic US sites.

But they weren’t the only ones.

Clint Watts, general manager of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, said another Russian disinformation operation called “STORM 1516” caught the company’s attention almost immediately, especially when they began posting content to discredit President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign to take.

“We reported on it earlier this year by creating videos purportedly from major whistleblowers trying to spread information about the election. At the time, it was largely about President Biden,” Watts said.

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement authorities were engaged in both operations and responded on September 4 with a massive, multi-pronged effort to shut down the operations.

The Justice Department has seized 32 Internet domains used in connection with “Doppelganger,” in violation of U.S. money laundering and trademark laws.

According to the Justice Department, these domains covertly distribute Russian propaganda aimed at reducing international support for Ukraine, strengthening pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections, including the 2024 presidential election. .

The US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on ten individuals and two entities involved in the ‘Doppelganger campaign’.” The Treasury Department sanctions were part of a broader effort to curb foreign interference in the U.S. elections.

In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs applied the Foreign Missions Act to the state-funded news channel RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and its subsidiaries, which requires them to register as foreign entities in the US

A grand jury in Maryland also indicted six computer hackersall of whom were residents and nationals of the Russian Federation, with one count of conspiracy to commit computer burglary and one count of wire fraud conspiracy in September.

Even though the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns are focused on the 2024 presidential election, their significance could take weeks or months to be determined.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia told WTOP that progress has been made in the fight against disinformation, but challenges remain.

“There is a willingness among Americans to believe crazy theories just because they read them on the Internet. We even see presidential candidates proclaiming crazy theories that have no basis in fact. We have artificial intelligence tools that can be used as deepfakes and to manipulate images and voices,” Warner said.

He warned voters to be vigilant and check and recheck anything they hear or see regarding voting in their community to make sure it is not disinformation.

“I’m very concerned and I feel like public attention on this issue has kind of disappeared,” Warner said.

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