Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 449 - Russia's Terrifying Cyberwar Against the West

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

How much of what you read online has been planted there by Russian propagandists? How many times have you followed a social media account, or reposted information from an account, that's controlled by a Russian Troll Farm? How aware are you of Russia's ongoing (and shockingly successful) attempts to cripple and then topple America from within? This episode is a different, much more dystopian kind of scary. Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch.

From Cold War conspiracies to modern-day cyber warfare, Russian propaganda has shaped elections, fueled wars, and rewritten history, all without ever needing to fire a single shot. During the Soviet era, their propaganda efforts were called active measures, a mix of fake news, forged documents, and planted stories designed to destabilize the West. Today it takes the form of hacked emails, deep fake videos, and viral social media posts all engineered to manipulate what we believe. And Russia is currently manipulating what many of us believe. And most of those being manipulated probably have no idea it's even happening. In 2016, the Russian Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-backed propaganda

generator disguised as a private digital marketing firm, ran a covert interference campaign influencing 126 million Americans on Facebook alone. Their reach didn't stop there either. They also targeted millions more on Twitter and Instagram, using tens of thousands of fake accounts to spread disinformation at the speed of a click. At its peak, the IRA bought over $100,000 worth of ads and posted 80,000 pieces of content that pushed narratives to divide the US electorate and benefit one political candidate. The IRA's objective with all of this was not to put a candidate in power who would

be more sympathetic to Russian interests, but instead to sow overall discord in America, to undermine confidence in all U.S. democratic institutions, and ultimately, and this is so insidious, to manipulate Americans' perception of reality itself. Today we'll be going over the evolution of Russia's Internet Research Agency, one that morphed into Storm 1516, and explain the methods these groups have used to influence the minds of Americans as well as answer the questions, how did the Soviet information operational tactics, once refined in secret KGB offices, resurface in modern Russia to influence global

politics today? How did the same propaganda machine that once divided nations during the Cold War transform into a digital juggernaut capable of reshaping reality online? And why is Russia doing this? What's the end game? From the DNC hack to the spreading of false stories about Ukraine, this is the story of how Russian disinformation has become a very very dangerous weapon in the modern world All this and more in this professional trolling fake news spreading information

Warfaring cyber attacking never never trust Russia fuck Putin forever edition of time suck This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday and welcome or welcome back to the cult of the curious. I'm Dan Cummins, Calliope composer, law body generation specialist, wannabe Putin assassin, and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lusifena, praise be to good boy Bojangles and glory be to Triple M. Two quick things, and then we are off and running. I'll be performing Stand Up for the first and last time this year at the Nashville Comedy Festival this weekend at Zany's in Nashville Friday and Saturday night, April 11th and 12th.

I hope to see you there. I will always love stand up and I would tour more. I'm just too busy with podcast research and story creation over here on scared to death and time suck to have enough time, you know, to make stand up touring fun. Also, we have some cool new shirts, but I will have fun in Nashville. Also, we have some cool new shirts and baseball hats in the store at badmagicmerch.com to keep shit fresh over there. Oh, and I forgot also about the Nashville dates. I will be doing just free impromptu little meet and greets after each of the shows. And thanks to everyone who continues to purchase and rep time

suck merch and not only financially support us, but also help spread the suck I appreciate it a ton and that's it So much info to cover today. This is a topic I've wanted to dig into for months and here we are Today we'll be talking about Russia's immense and wildly concerning propaganda machine the famed elusive mechanism of mass Mobilization that they essentially perfected during the Cold War. Look at how it works, why it works, who it affects. More specifically, what we'll be investigating today is how that propaganda machine has been retooled for the digital age and is currently being used to dismantle the West in a brand new form of

cyber warfare. A war they could theoretically win without again ever having to fire a shot. Because of how batshit bonkers today's topic is, we're only gonna spend about half of it inside the timeline. The other half, the first half, has been talking about the history of all this insanity and get to know some of the major players And the cyber war of today without worrying about chronological order Then I'm gonna set the stage a little bit by defining some of the modern military theories that we'll be dealing with like information warfare and interference operations and Go over what propaganda actually is and why modern Russian propaganda is so different than

what you might expect. It's so fucking insidious, so pervasive. Odds are you've already come across it and the opinions you hold about current cultural and political events and actors might have already been shaped by it. Have you already been compromised? Quite possibly. After that we'll get into the nitty-gritty details of the Russian government and its intelligence agencies. And finally we're gonna get to know the Internet Research Agency, a covert Kremlin-backed propaganda generator that operated out of St. Petersburg, Russia, as well as its current successor, Storm 1516. After all of that we'll head east to Mother Russia

and embark on today's Time Suck Timeline. There we will start off in the 1950s during the early days of the Cold War and very briefly cover Putin's rise to power at the turn of the century, the 2016 US presidential election, the beginnings of the current Russo- Ukrainian war, the COVID-19 pandemic and more. If you want a lot more information on Putin, check out what I went over in May of 2022 when I did a full episode on Russia's strong pony boy on episode 294. We will end the timeline in the present. Each stop until we get there, we'll examine how Russia has used propaganda domestically

amongst its own people and then abroad amongst Americans. Shit's going to be fucking wild. It's going to be scary. It's going to be depressing in a way that might leave you feeling like all hope is lost. I don't think it is. I'll end the episode by sharing how I think we can fight back against this propaganda. After explaining a bit more how it works and theoretically move away from the chaotic polarized current state of our culture a bit. So here we go.

Gonna start again by defining the term you might current state of our culture a bit. So here we go. I'm gonna start again by defining the term you might be sick of hearing, felching. Let's not actually do that. Not to kink shame. That's fucking disgusting, you dirty little piggies. Now let's start off by defining information warfare. Despite how this term is often used in the media, information warfare is not a catch-all term

for fake news or political clickbait articles. Information warfare is a legitimate term used to describe a vast range of military and government operations and strategies centered around the protection, exploitation, and control of the information environment. And that environment these days is largely composed of the Internet. It's a specific type of political warfare that nations use to achieve strategic objectives both domestically in their own country and abroad. Oftentimes in the West the terms information warfare, information operations, disinformation campaigns, these are used interchangeably but they're actually each their own separate thing. To understand the difference, we have to break down the three levels of warfare.

Strategic, operational, and tactical. According to the U.S. Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms, the strategic level of warfare is where a nation or a group of allied nations determines its, quote, strategic security objectives and guidance, then develops and uses national resources to achieve those objectives. Information warfare or IW as it is often called takes place on the strategic level. The operational level of warfare is where the strategic campaigns slash operations are actually conducted and the tactical level is where tactical battles slash engagements are executed. As the name suggests, Information Operations, or IO, takes place on the operational level of warfare, where IW is part of the planning process, IO is the carrying out of those plans.

The Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense describes information warfare as, quote, the integrated employment during military operations of information-related capabilities in concert with other lines of operation to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision-making of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own. And holy fucking shit is Russia's IO influencing, disrupting, and corrupting the hell out of American culture. IOs take place in what is referred to in modern military theory as the information environment. There are three layers to this information environment, not to be confused with the three levels of information warfare, each of

which can be attacked, infiltrated, controlled, or protected. First and foremost, there is the physical layer of the info environment, meaning the actual command and control systems that can be jammed or hacked, things like the actual satellites themselves or radio communications. Secondly, you get the informational layer where all types of information is stored. This mostly refers to things like the internet, social media, blogs, text messages, apps, etc. You get the gist. Finally there is the cognitive layer of the information environment and that is where people get down and dirty and felch their sick little piggy hearts out. Why do I keep referencing felching?

Gross! No, the cognitive layer of the information environment is you and me. It's the people who transmit and receive information, be it something as big as nuclear launch codes or something as small as a single post on Instagram. Information operations can take many shapes and forms depending on the nation's government, their goals, their target, and their means. However, there are really only three types of information that are used in information operations. Not to be confused with the three levels of information warfare or the three layers of the information environment. Misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda.

We all probably basically know what these mean, but let's go over what they mean in the context of political warfare. Disinformation is, as you've probably guessed, the intentional spreading of deliberately false information. Examples include planting and promoting false news stories in the media, doctoring real photographs or videos to misrepresent their content, inserting a weird juvenile running fucking felching gag into a topic as serious as this one. Gross! Let me restate that. Examples of different disinformation include planting and promoting false news stories in the media, doctrine real photographs or videos to misrepresent

their content and fabricating statistics. Misinformation on the other hand is the unintentional spreading of false or inaccurate information. Key word being unintentional and it's much more common than the very intentional disinformation. And then last but certainly not least, there is propaganda. And how do we define propaganda? Well, in the modern West, propaganda is largely thought of

as a big bad brainwashing tactic that only totalitarian governments and foreign hostiles used to indoctrinate their own citizens, strengthen their leadership and stoke fears of their supposed enemies enabling them to keep a stranglehold on their own power and ideally help them take over the world. In other words it's thought of as a tool of mass destruction wielded only by the

powerful elite and only against their own people. It's also often thought by many in the West as something that only our enemies do and something that only their people are victims of. And to a certain extent historically you could say that that definition is kind of correct. Propaganda is a tactic of indoctrination and it is used by governments to steer their population towards one idea or another. But it's not something that only our enemies use and it is not something that is innately evil. Propaganda has been around for a thousand years in every nation on every continent across the globe. And I'd say a thousand. Probably the entirety of human civilization has been around.

Despite popular belief propaganda is not fundamentally a weapon of warfare. Sure it can be used in war. Often it is used in war and in preparation for war, but it's also used in commercial advertising, you know, to sell products and services. It's used in public relations to help create or repair a celebrity's image, for example. It can be argued that it's used and has been used in churches and synagogues and mosques to spread religious messages. In 1622, for example, Pope Gregory XV gathered a bunch of cardinals together, gave them the task of spreading the faith to foreign places and people. The group was called the Maserati Buggata Spaghetti Antone Banderas and the Catones

and that's a spicy meatball! Forgive me. It's an old habit. It was called, being serious now, Congregatio di Propaganda Fide, meaning the Congregation the congregation for the propagation of the faith. Propaganda is an extremely common method of persuasion but it is often misunderstood. As USC Santa Cruz professor and Jewish Hungarian American historian specializing in Russian and Eastern European history and politics, Peter Knaez put it in his 2009 book, The Birth of the Propaganda State, while we all think we know perfectly well what propaganda is, in fact,

we have no precise definition that would be value-free and valid regardless of time or political culture. Social scientists have often defined propaganda in such a way as to make their definition into an ideological weapon. They have searched for a definition that covers only the activities of people whose point of view they do not like. Some have insisted that propaganda is something covert. Others have stressed that propaganda appeals to our emotions rather than to our intellect. At a moment's reflection, however, it is evident that such definitions have nothing to do with the real world where propaganda is covert on some occasions but overt on others. Sometimes propaganda is aimed at our emotions sometimes at our minds.

Basically what he's saying is it's impossible to define propaganda in a way that encapsulates all the different ways it's used. That being said generally speaking in broad terms we can think of propaganda as quote the systematic dissemination of information especially in a biased or misleading misleading way in order to promote a particular cause or point of view often a political agenda. Propaganda presents to you a misconstrued version of the truth or an outright lie that is strategically formulated to evoke a strong emotional response.

They'd be fucking with your emotions because we'd be such irrational, emotional creatures so much of the time. Most often propaganda is intended to incite fear, doubt, anger, and distrust. It's a powerful tool for both obtaining and maintaining power. And it's been used in every corner of the world because it fucking works for, again, going back to probably the beginning of civilization. Propaganda is common. It's all around us all the time.

That being said, the reigning and undisputed world champs of propaganda thought by most, if not all propaganda experts to be the wildly corrupt, deceitful, manipulative, outrageously dangerous Russian government. Fuck Putin forever. I will literally never trust a word that comes out of that slimy KGB demon's mouth and I'll definitely have a celebratory drink the day that real-life Bond villain dies. Anyway, Russia is known for its well-established systems of propaganda and disinformation. Both have been embraced by the Russian government as integral parts of hybrid warfare and social

control. And its emphasis and expertise in propaganda in the modern world began back in 1917, when the Russian Empire was toppled by Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR was formed. During its 69 years of existence, the USSR was the biggest country in the world. With a total area of 8.65 million square miles, it shared borders with 12 other nations and spanned across a mind-boggling 11 different time zones. Despite its massive size, as a one-party state, its government and economy were

highly centralized and controlled by, well, one party. In my opinion, the worst party, the communists. The communist party, the Soviet Union, was established after the Bolshevik seized power in 1917. The group of radical socialists were founded in 1912 by Marxist reformer Vladimir Lenin. The ideology of the Bolsheviks was based around, you're not gonna believe this, fucking felching. Those fucking dirty little pinko felcher piggies could not get enough. Forget I said that. If you're like, what the why, what does he keep saying that what the hell even is felching? Please do not look it up. Do not. It is best if you don't know. Just pretend it means riding a unicorn bareback over a rainbow or something. Now the ideology of

the Bolsheviks was based around Marxism-Leninism, which is basically an offshoot of communism that supports the establishment of a dictatorship of the working class aka the proletariat. But in a super ironic turn of events for the time after coming into power the Bolsheviks who had long fought against the czar's bourgeoisie obfuscations, lies and deceptions, fucking immediately implemented harsh policies to censor the media, scrap freedom of the press, and indoctrinate the public with their own views. The party of the people very, very quickly showed themselves to be the party

that oppressed, indoctrinated, and abused, and killed the people. Why would they do that? Well, because they had the very best worldview by far, so fuck everyone else's. That actually is kind of the lie they told themselves. They truly did seem to believe that their view was the only right one. So according to the new communist powers that be, and virtually no one else, suppressing and criminalizing opposing perspectives was actually really a very noble thing to do.

They were protecting the public from evil thoughts and evil people. As historian homeboy Peter Knaes put it, the Bolsheviks were utterly convinced of the righteousness of their cause and had no faith in pluralism or interest in protecting the rights of those who held different beliefs. Does that feel familiar? How many people think that right now today in this country that their political view is obviously the only one that matters because it's so obviously correct. So you better not protest it and if you do you should fucking leave this country. Love it or leave it as it's. I've always hated that simplistic frankly ignorant as fuck point of view.

Within two weeks of the new communist government's formation, every newspaper in the USSR seemed to magically disappear. Weird! Even more magically, a series of government-affiliated publications staffed by Bolshevik journalists immediately filled their place. Huh, what's going on? Regarding the Soviet takeover and subsequent monopoly of the press, Knez writes, it is impossible to say whether Soviet newspapers lied more often than the Western press. In the Soviet case, the deceit was perpetrated by omission. Instead of genuine issues, the newspaper devoted columns more and more often to pseudo issues. Instead of discussing the difficulties of grain procurement, for example,

the press wrote about the campaign organized to celebrate the anniversary of Lenin's decree on literacy. The Soviet regime succeeded in preventing the formation and articulation of alternative points of view. The Soviet people ultimately came not so much to believe the Bolsheviks' worldview as to take it for granted. Nobody remained to point out the contradictions and even inanity inherent in the regime's slogans. Scary, right? Imagine living in a nation where the press does nothing but talk about how amazing the government is. Amazing even in instances where it is definitely without doubt not amazing.

I've gotten a lot of emails over the years that I've not shared you know following certain episodes accusing me of not loving my country or not being patriotic Because I've been critical of our nation in some way You're fucking supposed to be critical of your nation if you love it I don't understand why that is so hard for other people to understand right maybe because I guess they've been brainwashed By uh, I don't know their families the politicians, you know politicians whose personal ambitions for power are served Well by a population that abhors dissent Standing around and enthusiastically waving a flag. No matter what your nation does is not a badge of honor

It's the epitome of mindless bootlicking and it's what people who live in totalitarian propaganda states like North Korea For example do with more enthusiasm than anyone living in a truly free nation. Like I've said before, but maybe not in a while, every citizen on earth is free to agree, you know, especially fanatically with their government. But only in truly free nations can someone vehemently disagree with the government and not be punished. And one of the most important indicators of a truly free country is a truly free press. The examples Knez just shared illustrates what was just a small percentage of the actions taken by the Soviet government to indoctrinate their people. With the establishment of the USSR also came the

creation of the main directorate for the protection of state secrets aka the Glavet. Like their name suggests the Glavet was responsible for ensuring state secrets stay, well, secret. But more than that, what they were responsible for was censoring all forms of media to ensure nobody said anything remotely negative about the new government, or the Communist Party, which was the new government. Newspapers, books, pamphlets, posters, plays, music, advertisements, fucking menus, street signs, and more, all subject to the Glovitz control. Fucking cracks me up. So dystopian that menus are being censored. What is this cheeseburger? Is this some Yankee diner? No! No, you call it

Soviet cheese meat nourishment held in solidarity by strong selfish comrade bread. And no more... no more french fries. You wish we France now, huh? No, you call them... Fortitude blocks for strong Russia. Yes, I would like one Soviet cheese meat nourishment held in solidarity by strong selfish comrade bread with side of 42 blocks for strong Russia. That is fuel for communist victory. Ridiculous as I'm being there. I'm not being that fictional or absurd. It's actually kind of like that in Soviet Russia.

The Glavit itself worked directly under the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, aka the AGSPROP, which obviously worked directly under the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. AGSPROP, excuse me, had a similar job to the Glavit, but instead of purging negative materials from the press, it flooded Russia with positive reinforcements about the government. Both governmental organizations were dedicated to the ideological conditioning of the masses, i.e. societal brainwashing. Their entire purpose was to mobilize public opinion in the direction deemed most beneficial to the government and to eradicate any information and ideas

that were inconsistent with what the state dictated was acceptable. Terrifying. So as you can see, ideological indoctrination has been foundational to the Russian government since the Empire fell. However, it wasn't until the Cold War that they really began industrializing propaganda and turning it into a well-oiled machine. But before we get into all that there are a few more important things we need to go over. Though this may come as a shock, today we're going to be talking a lot about over, though this may come as a shock, today we're going to be talking a lot about... felching. No! No, I don't want to talk about that. And yet I keep bringing it up! No, we're gonna be talking a lot about communism. As a quick refresher, communism is a political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property

and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control. And like I've said many times before, in theory, what a truly beautiful idea. Unfortunately, the control never truly communal. Instead, a small cadre of leaders ends up controlling everything, giving themselves much more than anyone else, and ruthlessly murdering, imprisoning, and overall oppressing anyone who tries to stand up to them or gets in the way of their ruthless power-hungry objectives. In a communist society, the idea is that everyone works to make money for the whole of society

and then that money is redistributed back into society based not on who earned it, but on who needs it. And again, what a benevolent, beautiful thing in theory. The concept of communism was mostly invented by Karl Marx in the 1800s, a man who said that a dictatorship of the proletariat was the only way to defeat the evils of capitalism. Now just as refresher, capitalism is the opposite of communism in a capitalist society such as the US and literally every other western nation to some degree. The means of production are privately owned and therefore private ownership controls the profits of said production. And capitalism certainly also has its evils, but that's not what we're discussing today.

Another term we're gonna use a lot today is, do you care to guess? No, no, no, it's not felching! You fucking maniac! Why would you suggest that? I was gonna keep it classy and on top it can say Kremlin. The Kremlin is a fortified complex in the heart of Moscow that consists of five palaces and four cathedrals and is enclosed on all sides by a big-ass red brick wall with 20 towers. It's kind of like the Russian Vatican. Except instead of the Pope being the big man in charge, it's the president of the Russian

Federation. And instead of Catholicism, they're all about communism. So it's, you know, they're both isms, I guess. The current president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Ponyboy Putin he lives in the Grand Kremlin Palace in the middle of the walled fortress when he is not feasting on Western babies in his ghoul cave or raping children or the elderly and one of the underground fuck dungeons hidden beneath one of his country murder estates. I'm not sure what he does when he's not in the Grand Kremlin Palace

other than you know sometimes prance around on a horse shirtless like a douchebag. Anyway in the past the palace served as the primary residence of the Tsar of Russia. In addition to the name of the physical place in Moscow the Kremlin is also a metonym for the entire Russian government. Now you might be asking yourself gosh Dan how does the entire Russian government? Now you might be asking yourself, gosh Dan, how does the entire Russian government work? Well I'm glad you asked. And the answer is who fucking knows? I don't think anyone really really knows outside of maybe Putin himself and a few other high-ranking Russian politicians. I think

they keep their true structure confusing on purpose because they're, you know, corrupt weasely liars. The Russian government is so convoluted and corrupt that trying to give a breakdown of its component parts is almost pointless. What I will tell you however is that according to Section 1, Chapter 1, Article 1 of the Russian Constitution, Russia is a democratic, federative, law-governed state with a Republican form of government. And that makes me want to laugh. That's what they say it is. No it isn't. The two most powerful positions in the

Russian government are the President and the Prime Minister, even though according to the current 1993 Constitution the President is technically not a part of the government of Russia, which exercises executive power. The President is the executive head of state and the head of the Russian Council of Ministers, which is comprised of the chief officer of each branch of the Executive Government. The President of Russia is also in charge of appointing the Prime Minister, who actually is part of the Executive Government. Really though, just the President matters.

And the President, while they on paper might not be part of the Executive Government, they absolutely control every aspect of Russian Government. And the President is a dictator, not truly an elected official because elections in Russia are notoriously total shams. Since this is not an episode about how the Russian government truly works, let's move on to talking about the part of the Russian government that matters most regarding today's topic, its intelligence agencies. But let's do that after this week's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks.

If you don't want to hear these ads, if you want to help us with donations each month, sign up on Patreon, get the entire catalog ad free and more. Thank you again to our space lizards who have already done so. And now let's talk about the part of the Russian government that matters most regarding today's topic, its intelligence agencies. There are four in total. The GRU, the FSB, the SVR, and the FSO. I'm gonna go over the general purpose of each of these and using a

series of US congressional reports briefly talk about how each of them participate in Russia's cyber operations, aka its dangerous digital age propaganda machine. The section of the primary report I'm reading from, by the way, is titled Russian Cyber Units and it is available through the U.S. Library of Congress online database. According to the report, Russia has deployed sophisticated cyber capabilities to conduct disinformation, propaganda, espionage, and destructive cyber attacks globally. To conduct these operations, Russia maintains numerous units that are overseen by various security and intelligence agencies.

Over the past 20 years, Russia has increased its personnel, capabilities, and capacity to undertake a wide range of cyber operations. No single Russian security or intelligence agency has sole responsibility for cyber operations. The first and most important Russian intelligence agency is the main directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, aka GRU. Not sure how they condensed 14 words into a three-letter acronym, but they did. Maybe in Russian, it's way fewer letters, or maybe it's just fucking nonsensical communist speak.

GRU is an offshoot of the Russian military and is in charge of all levels of military intelligence and also commands Russian special forces which conduct quote battlefield reconnaissance raiding and sabotage missions missions in addition to training and overseeing local proxies or mercenary units. According to that congressional report quote in recent years reports have linked the GRU to some of Russia's most aggressive and public intelligence operations. Reportedly, the GRU played a key role

in Russia's occupation of Ukraine's Crimea region and invasion of Eastern Ukraine, the attempted assassination of former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, in the UK interference, in the 2016 US presidential elections, disinformation and propaganda operations, and some of the world's most damaging cyber attacks.

GRU is the largest, most well-known of all of Russia's intelligence agencies, partly because it prides itself on conducting operations that are aggressive, brazen, and high-risk. On the opposite side of the spectrum, we have Russia's Federal Intelligence Service, the SVR, which puts significant effort into staying undercover. To quote from that congressional report again, the SVR also is known to have high levels of technical expertise, often seeking to gain and retain access inside compromised networks. In contrast to GRU cyber units, the SVR appears focused on collecting intelligence and remaining undetected once it gains access to targeted networks.

Russia also has two domestic security intelligence agencies, the Federal Security Service, FSB, and the Federal Protective Service, FSO. The FSB is responsible for internal security in Russia and counterintelligence. Its main job is to monitor both domestic and foreign criminal hackers. According to the congressional report the FSB is capable of manufacturing their own advanced malware tools and have been documented manipulating exposed malware to mimic other hacking teams and conceal their activities. Reporting indicates the FSB oversees training and research institutes which directly support the FSB cyber mission.

One FSB team reportedly focuses on penetrating infrastructure and energy sector targets. Most operations linked to this team appear to be reconnaissance or clandestine surveillance. Like the FSB, the FSO also concerned with the defense of Russia's governmental networks and securing the security of governmental communications. However, there is no indication that it has ever launched a cyber operation domestically or otherwise. Alright, this last intelligence agency is the one we'll be talking the most about. Much like the president of Russia, not technically part of the Russian government, talking about the Internet Research Agency also known as the IRA or also known as the Russian troll factory and the IRA and its successor storm 1516 is what made me want to explore this topic. On paper the

IRA not the Irish Republican Army but Russia's Internet Research Agency is a privately owned digital marketing business but that's just a bullshit cover. So much of Russia's government is smoke and mirrors. It's maddening. In reality, the IRA is absolutely a fully government-funded, highly specialized, deeply militaristic cyber intelligence unit whose sole purpose was to execute political and electoral interference operations

on behalf of Russian interests. These are the motherfuckers, you know, we have had to worry about most in recent years. The IRA is a or was a Kremlin backed propaganda generator disguised as a corporate entity and chances are they're already in your phone or more accurately on your feed. So that's fun. With a massive staff of an unknown number of professional trolls and a monthly budget equal to at least $240,000 American dollars, discreetly siphoned to them from the Kremlin, the IRA conducted highly sophisticated large-scale information operations across the world. So really they did a lot for an alleged budget of about $3 million a year. I bet in reality it was more than that. But maybe not. Maybe it was

just a deal of, hey, we're going to pay you, we'll pay you this much to be a hacker for me, or you disappear forever and family gets eyeballs ripped out of head. Maybe something like that. Regardless of how much this agency got paid, we now know that the IRA spread propaganda everywhere, from Austria to South Africa, from China to the US, depending on the Kremlin's current needs. Its main target undoubtedly was the U.S. primary rival, long-time Cold War foe. The agency slash company's objectives were simple. According to a 2019 Clemson University publication written by Dr. Patrick Warren, a Clemson University economics professor, and Dr. Darren Linville, a Clemson professor in their College of Behavioral Social and Health Sciences, specializing in data monitoring, social media, social media forensics, social media troll farms, and bots, Russia's goals are to further widen existing divisions in the American public and

decrease our faith and trust in institutions that help maintain a strong democracy. The IRA encourages us to vilify our neighbor and amplify our differences because if we grow incapable of compromising, there can be no meaningful democracy. Russia has dug in for a long campaign. So far, we're helping them win. I hate that last line, but it's so true. So far, we're helping them win. Yep, when we can't talk about shit, when we get so polarized, we can only fucking yell at each other, and mostly online, we're fucked. The IRA's professional trolls worked around the clock to disseminate time zone specific content and engage with international users, and also direct an army of AI bots to further engage with users and also spread the lies created by IRA agents. Between 2014 and 2017 alone, it is estimated that the IRA trolls engaged

with at least 20 million Americans just on Instagram. They engaged with another one and a half million American users on Twitter and 126 million Americans on Facebook. Holy shit! 126 million Americans and overall you know almost 150 million Americans. It's believed by many that these numbers have increased tremendously in recent years thanks to the IRA successor of storm 1516's work. On Facebook, IRA ran at least 470 pages that we know of, the most popular being called being patriotic. Of course it's always these fucking sites. It's always like, you know

Americans for truth. They're like While it was active this page received six million four hundred and thirty one thousand five six million four hundred and thirty one thousand five hundred and seven likes It was shared four million four hundred and twenty nine thousand eight hundred and eighty times so So many Americans duped into think they're just being patriotic when really they were just helping Russia spread inflammatory disinformation Disinformation created in Russia then spread as misinformation here by unwitting Americans Not concerning at all In an article titled that uplifting

tweet you just shared a Russian troll sent it written again by Clemson's Dr. Warren and Dr. Linville they explained internet trolls don't troll not the professionals at least. Professional trolls don't go on social media to antagonize liberals or belittle conservatives they are not narrow-minded drunk or angry they don't lack basic English language skills. They certainly aren't somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, as President Trump once put it. Your stereotypical trolls do exist on social media, but the amateurs aren't a threat to

Western democracy. Professional trolls, on the other hand, are the tip of the spear in a new digital ideological battleground. To combat the threat they pose, we must first understand them and take them seriously. Professional trolls are good at their job. They have studied us. They understand how to harness our biases and hashtags for their own purposes. They know what pressure points to push and how best to drive us to distrust our neighbors.

The professionals know you catch more flies with honey. They don't go to social media looking for a fight. They go looking for a new best friend. And they have found them. Disinformation operations aren't typically fake news or outright lies. Disinformation is most often simply spin. Spin is hard to spot and easy to believe, especially if you are already inclined to do so. While the rest of the world learned how to conduct a modern disinformation campaign from the Russians, it is from the world of public relations and advertising that the IRA learned their craft. Warren and Linville, by the way, are not only both professors

at Clemson, but because of their extensive research into social media disinformation, they are considered some of the world's leading minds, if not the leading minds in the world, on Russia's cyber strategy tactics and impact and they and others have determined that the IRA trolls used five primary tactics to spread their propaganda. Tactic number one, felching. Come on! You knew it was only a matter of time before I said felching again. You're gonna have that word show up in your dreams tonight you dirty little piggies. But don't look it up.

Do not. For the love of all you consider holy, look it up. For real, tactic number one now. Create social media accounts on Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms. Each fake persona is meticulously curated to embody a seemingly normal but opinionated American. The goal of these accounts is to polarize people without being too extreme. Their profile pictures are usually AI-generated images of attractive young women

or occasionally hot young dudes. How many of you have been jerking off to the AI avatar of a Russian propaganda agent? So many of you, you fucking dirty little piggies! Tactic number two. Gain credibility and grow audience with targeted messaging including feel-good content to draw users in each account is meticulously Curated to appeal to a certain American subculture tactic number three Use advertising tools created by Facebook Google among others to target audiences with paid advertisements

tactic number four promote selected like-minded accounts on fake accounts. Tactic number five, promote and amplify selected accounts with a fucking army of AI bots. But this is not all the IRA did to spread propaganda and disinformation in the US. In fact, this was just the tip of the iceberg. Even though it was really a military intelligence operation, internally the IRA functioned exactly like a legit digital marketing firm, complete with a corporate hierarchy and employee benefits. At the very top of the pyramid was the IRA management team, which was comprised of professionals with backgrounds in fields like business, entrepreneurship, advertising, and public relations. According to former IRA employees,

the management team was obsessed with social media statistics, like numbers of page views, clicks, posts, comments, retweets, etc. Based on their personal stats, IRA employees received bonuses or, if they were doing terribly, fines. Additionally, experts have concluded that transforming online behavior and beliefs to action in the real world was a key performance metric for IRA operators. Provoking offline violence between online groups was also a measure of success. They were truly agents of chaos and their successors are currently agents of chaos. Staff members were assigned to different departments

based on their skill sets as far as we know and there could be so much more we don't know because of Russia and because here in the US some of the information the government has gathered on them may be classified. These departments included Design and Graphics, Video Production, IT, Finance, Data Analysis, Search Engine Optimization, and Content Development. And then the Content Development department was divided into various units, each unit being focused on a different target region. The biggest team was allegedly the one dedicated to spreading propaganda in America, and was known as the Translator Project.

The units were divided into teams, each dedicated to a different social media platform within the assigned region. However, all teams worked together to drive comments, boost posts, run Facebook pages, and generate discussions. Most IRA employees were young people in their 20s from all over Russia. Some were highly educated university graduates, others apparently might have been morons. One former troll named Marat Burkhart was quoted in the New York Times talking about his IRA colleagues as saying, they were so stupid. You see these people with a lot of tattoos.

They're so cool like they're from New York. Very hip. They're so cool, like they're from New York. Very hip clothing, very hip tattoos, like they're from Williamsburg, but they are stupid. I gotta say, I don't know if I trust Murat's judgement. Sounds like he just has a strong disdain for people with tattoos and hipsters. Murat allegedly worked for the IRA for two months on the Russian forums team in the content creation department. Amongst other things, his primary job was to post 135 comments a day on niche message boards about remote Russian towns.

Some trolls were required to manage by management to take a grammar class in whatever language they were meant to be posting in. Others had to attend a so-called politiology course in order to learn the proper perspective they should have on current Russian events. Most trolls found the job through a Russian career site similar to LinkedIn, which is hilarious to me. Motherfuckers signing up to dismantle the West, like they're applying to be a barista at Starbucks or sell some insurance for State Farm.

As you can see by resume, I familiarize with Excel. I know Microsoft Word. I have two year customer service experience at Comrade Coffee Company. And I would pray to God to destroy America every night if God was not capitalist lie told to destroy communist strength. Here's a summary of an IRA job posting for Internet Operator Night. This was posted in 2015. Salary 40 to 50,000 rubles a month.

Sounds like a fucking lot. It was not. 50,000 rubles is equivalent to about 600 bucks. Not 6,000, 600. So 7200 a year. to about 600 bucks. Not 6,600. So 7200 a year. So I guess I'm starting to think that that monthly budget of 240,000, you know, might be actually close to the real number. That would have paid for 600 agents. Hours, night shifts ran from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. job responsibilities writing material on a given topic news information and analytical requirements or excuse me an analytical requirements fluent in English and creative writing skills the employer internet research was described in the job posting as a large and stable company with up to 50 employees but they actually had a lot more than that. In and around

2015 it seems according to the New York Times sources anyway if you responded to job posting, you were guaranteed to get hired at the IRA regardless of your training, expertise, or experience. They had this policy of hiring almost everybody because almost nobody lasted very long. According to a 2015 Russian news article titled, The Capital of Political Trolling, which by the way was the first story about the interworking of the IRA to ever hit the internet. The interview process at the IRA was simple. They would just ask you what your opinion was about the Kremlin. Just a loyalty test. If you were pro-Kremlin, bingo, bingo, you're hired. Welcome to the team. In that same article, author Andrei Shashnikov also wrote, the agency's employees are not very inclined to communicate with each other.

For the slightest offense, for example, leaving work one minute early, they find you. The turnover is huge. This next sentence is so Russian. You sit in the cafeteria and wonder, who are all these people? Students, a former radio host, disabled people non-conformists, skinheads, housewives, girls who look like lesbians, even married couples. Such a fucking Russian way to describe them. The highest sum in the weirdo.

Right, radio guys, skinhead people, cripple folk, women who look much manly. On average, most IRA trolls work two consecutive nights, or night shifts, each 12 hours long, and then they would take two days off. During each shift, they'd be required to create a minimum of 135 posts slash comments. They would have to maintain six different Facebook accounts and 20 different Twitter accounts. Other general requirements would include gaining a minimum of 500 followers on each of the profiles by the end of the first month, as well as creating non-political feel-good generic content to mix in with their feed. At the beginning of a shift, each team would be briefed by management on their technical tasks for the day and the political or social

themes they were supposed to address in their content that day. Most teams worked as of 2020, as of 2021 at least according to a report put together by a University of Melbourne team of researchers for Australia's Department of Defense. In a room with about 20 other trolls they would work and often operate in groups of three. One troll would post a controversial statement, another would challenge it, a third would post a link to a fake but fully functioning and real-looking news site. Using this framework, the IRA executed hundreds if not thousands of information operations. The most extreme that we know of

was the one levied against the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In the lead-up to and during the election, the IRA used fake social media accounts, Facebook groups, other means of propaganda to exacerbate existing tensions in the US, spread disinformation, disparage Hillary Clinton, and boost Donald Trump's campaign. The Kremlin took extreme measures to try and get Donald Trump voted into office in 2016. And that's not me speculating. That's not me playing partisan politics that's fact the evidence is overwhelming and it has been confirmed not only by all the by the sorry by the US government and by all of its subsequent intelligence agencies but by the governing bodies of a great number of foreign nations and researchers at universities across the globe as well as you know basically any rational person willing to sit down and take a look at the evidence for themselves.

Without a doubt, Russia wanted Trump to win in 2016. However, this is also important to point out in the spirit of fairness and not displaying a misleading bias, there's no evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign was involved with Russia's election interference information operation. Also no evidence of whether or not their information operation actually did have an impact on the results. And some alleged experts on Russia's intelligence agencies and online disinformation such as Vlad Vexler, a Russian YouTuber who is his family immigrated to Russia or immigrated

from Russia to England. He doesn't think, a number of others don't think that Trump was colluding with Russia, but rather that Trump's brand of spreading chaos and division was ideologically more aligned with Russia's goal of destabilizing our democracy than Clinton's style of leadership. The main question most people want, the answer to regarding the 2016 election seems to be how many, if any, people did the IRA convince to vote for Donald Trump. Well a study jointly conducted by Australia's leading minds and defense technology has a great response to that. They say that while that question is an important one it clouds the bigger more important picture

which is that quote the IRA's main goal it seems was to sow doubt, amplify existing social divisions and weaken the US and its allies as part of a long-term strategy. There is every indication that Putin and the Kremlin, building on Soviet methods of the past, are playing a long game, and the IRA was part of a larger influence and propaganda ecosystem established to conduct Russia's information and hybrid warfare more broadly. This is a very important thing to understand. Focusing on Trump versus Hillary or Trump versus Biden, or being outraged

that Russia may have turned the 2016 election in Trump's favor or the 2024, a 2024 election in his favor, or the 2020 election away from him. That's exactly what Russia wants us to do. They want us to be angry, to be outraged, to be divided most importantly. Well actually seconds most important to be divided. Most importantly to lose faith in governmental processes and become confused as to what really is the truth. I'll expand on these points later but in the the end, for Russia's long-term strategy, they don't fucking care about Trump.

They don't fucking care if Trump wins or loses. They don't care about any particular US politician. They care about creating instability. They want to create destabilization. They want to sow chaos. They want to increase tension and confusion and destroy trust in government. If they continue to turn more and more of us against each other and create enough infighting within various factions of the left and the right, we will truly be a house divided, a house divided a thousand times

over and that house will not stand and they know that. And we will no longer be the world power we are today and if enough of the West follows suit, Russia is targeting so many other Western nations with this shit, well then the West as we know it will cease to exist and then Russia will have won a war that didn't actually truly end with the fall of the USSR and That is thought to be the real goal of this fucked up chess match To make sure the West will no longer be a threat to Russia and its ambitions And if that ever actually happens the invasion of Ukraine will be just the beginning.

Back to the IRA vs the US now. The disinformation and propaganda spread by the IRA was just a fraction of Russia's 2016 influence operation targeting the US. Their plan in total consisted of three major parts. Part 1. Sow doubt in discord. Amplify wedge issues issues, suppress electoral participation, promote candidate Trump, and denigrate Clinton on American social media.

Part 2, hack and release documents from the Democratic National Committee. Part 3, get all of us to become so focused on felching, constant dirty little piggy felching, that we will have no time for anything else in American society will crumble. What I meant to say was part three was hack the US voter registration system. It does not seem they were able to do that though to hack into the US voter registration system thank God but how many people did the IRA convinced to vote for Trump? Well we can never truly know that number.

It's impossible to ascertain who saw Russian propaganda, inspired disinformation, and was then influenced enough by it that they changed their vote. Instead, maybe we should ask, were Russia's 2016 election interference efforts successful on any level? Well, according to a declassified version of a joint study conducted by the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, Russian intelligence services would have seen their election influence campaign as at least a qualified success because of their perceived ability to impact public discussion. Putin's public views of the disclosure suggest the Kremlin and the intelligence services will continue to consider using cyber-enabled disclosure operations because of their belief that these can accomplish Russian goals relatively easily without significant damage to Russian interests.

So they felt their efforts were successful enough to want to continue running similar operations in the future, which they have. Not concerning at all. A former U.S US Director of National Security James Clapper felt Russia's efforts were actually very successful. During a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, he said, Russia's influence activities in the run-up to the 2016 election constituted the high water mark of their long-running

efforts since the 1960s to disrupt and influence our elections. They must be congratulating themselves for having exceeded their wildest expectations with a minimal expenditure of resource. And I believe they are now emboldened to continue such activities in the future, both here and around the world, and to do so even more intensely. If there has ever been a clarion call for vigilance and action against a threat to the very foundation of our democratic political system This episode is it that's a fucking strong warning Yes, this is something that every American should be aware of and concerned about because it is wildly concerning As we will see in the timeline Despite its success the IRA was shut down in 2022.

Kind of, but not really. Its brazen attack on the U.S. democratic system garnered the covert company considerable international attention making it difficult to continue to be covert. Also its founder, Evgeny Prigulshin, the oligarch and head of the Wagner mercenary group who spoke out against Putin's invasion strategy and momentarily launched a rebellion against Russian military leadership Well, he got fucking murdered by Putin Putin Putin put out a hit on him that was successful in August of 2023. So, you know that kind of hurt the IRA But anyway, the IRA was not really shut down

It was absorbed by a different Russian online propaganda machine known as Storm 1516. Starting in 2020 as an offshoot of the IRA, Storm 1516 is also a propaganda generator that specializes in creating and disseminating disinformation campaigns aimed at advancing Russian governmental interests. Though both entities operate in similar ways, use similar methods, there are actually a few major differences between Storm 1516 and the IRA. For one thing, Storm 1516 doesn't pretend to be a real company. It's supposed to be a completely clandestine organization, but they were discovered by those

fucking kick-ass media forensic researchers at Clemson in that 2023 study. Secondly, Storm 1516 in that 2023 study. Secondly, Storm 1516 supposedly much smaller operation than its predecessor. According to the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, while there were at least 70 Russian actors working for Storm 1516, the IRA had at its height up to 10,000. I fucking knew that budget did make sense. Lastly, what really sets the two apart is that Storm 1516 specializes in creating primary sources to reinforce its disinformation. Where the bulk of the IRA's employees were professional trolls, Storm 1516 consists of an actual production team and what they do is scarier. Using paid actors and AI, they produce video, audio, photo, and websites

that appear to be completely legitimate primary sources of information. Not these fucking janky, you know, half-thought-out websites and Facebook pages. In that 2023 Clemson study, those media forensics researchers explained Storm 1516's production and distribution process as follows. researchers explained Storm 1516's production and distribution process as follows. A key step in the Storm 1516 distribution process is the use of a set of fake online news pages. These sites run two sorts of stories. The bulk of the content is thousands of AI-generated news stories stolen and rewritten from genuine news sources.

Those stories are short and standardized. Because they're created in an automated manner, they have certain consistencies. Hidden amongst this mass of real news are a small number of longer, more involved and media rich stories. Stories relating to Storm 1516 narratives are in this class. This is fascinating. They kick out a whole bunch of real news on sites that all look the same, then sneak in some disinformation that comes from a site that looks a lot like the other sites, kicking out the real information to create, again, confusion, distrust, chaos.

In addition to being linked to the IRA, Storm 1516 is also very tightly linked to Russia's Foundation to Battle Injustice, RFBI, another Russian propaganda generator disguised as a human rights organization this time. Always the nicest sounding names these shitty fucking organizations. The foundation to battle injustice. Shit like that is why I whenever I see a source that sounds a little bit too fucking nice, you know? Too many references to patriotism, America first, or you know, truth, light. I'm always like, a little suspicious. What what do you have to fucking grifty McGee on their website RFP I states their mission is to work quote worldwide to address human rights violations support civil activists provide legal assistance and financial support to victims of judicial injustice police brutality and political persecution but that's of course bunch

of bullshit the real mission is to lend an air of legitimacy to Russian propaganda. How many other organizations just like them are out there we may never know. Pretty scary to think about. But we do know more about Storm 1516 and the RFPI and we will learn more about them in the timeline which it is finally time to dive into. Right after we take today's second of two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors and now it is timeline time. September 1st, 1939.

When World War II first began, the Soviet Union was aligned with Germany as the two countries had entered a non-aggression pact just one month before. However, that silly old goose, that mustachioed knucklehead, and king of the Felters himself, Adolf Hitler, did not stay true to his word. That rascal. And Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Gosh dang! And that really grinded Joseph Stalin's gears.

And Stalin was, of course, the murderous, tyrannical head of the Communist Party at that time. And in retaliation, the USSR joined the Allies. Prior to entering the Second World War, Soviet propaganda was mostly focused internally on the Soviet Union, on reinforcing Russian nationalism and promoting communist values. These themes remained present during the war, but the message then shifted. While speaking at the Tehran Conference in December of 1943, Joseph Sweet Baby Daddy Stalin, gentle giant, said that the war would be won through, quote,

British brain, American brawn, and Russian blood. And boy was he right regarding that last part just publicly saying I'm gonna fuck about my people I'm gonna throw them just their deaths Within three short years. It was estimated that over 8 million Soviet soldiers were killed in battle just tossed out You know poorly trained with shoddy equipment like the completely disposable cannon fodder Stalin clearly saw them as being Because they're losing so many men day after depressing day, most of Soviet propaganda during World War Two was focused on recruiting more soldiers to replace all the dead ones. In the propaganda, which was mostly disseminated through posters, Soviet soldiers were depicted in a very specific and powerful way meant to evoke national pride and encouragement.

Captions for these types of posters loosely loosely translated into English, were phrases like Be a hero! For the motherland! Honor and freedom! And eat that rotten butt you dirty little piggy! Felchina is for cool kids! No. Also, stuff like Long live the Red Army of workers and peasants.

The true guard of the Soviet borders. Oh boy. The magnificent guard of the Soviet borders. The magnificent glory of the Soviet soldier was further emphasized by the vivid depictions of Nazi troops. On some posters the Nazis were illustrated as exceptionally grotesque and inhuman, literal monsters who delighted in the slaughter of unarmed and innocent women and children. Which to be fair, you know, pretty fucking accurate as far as the slaughter part. These posters meant to rouse people's sense of duty to abolish evil in the world.

Not the worst way to use propaganda, I gotta say. Conversely in other posters, Nazis were portrayed as sniveling little cartoonish pansies, no match for the strong Soviets. Eventually, World War II came to an end. September 2nd, 1945. Despite all the bloodshed, the U.S. benefited greatly and capitalism was booming. A wartime production pulled the economy from the devastation of the Great Depression, thus reviving a growing middle class. In addition to the economic explosion,

the U.S. military power was now honed to a sharpened point. Medicine was advancing at a rate never before seen thanks to research focused on keeping troops alive and new commercial products based on new military technology were flooding the consumer market. In other words, World War II had transformed the US into a formidable world power, the most powerful nation in the world perhaps, but it also did the same for the USSR, which was the other nation arguably the strongest in the world, thanks in large part to their larger population, 179 million compared to 151 million for the US at the end of the war, and their unparalleled willingness to sacrifice as many young men as deemed necessary to win a war,

and their openness to allowing women to also take certain combat positions. In the wake of the war, the Soviet Union went on one hell of a land grab. Their proximity to war-torn nations liberated by the Allies was a big advantage the US did not share. They set up communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania. It became real clear real quick that they wanted to bring their style of communism to the rest of the world and the US did not like that plan one bit, thank God. Fueled by their ideological differences, communism versus capitalism, their disagreement over what should happen to post-war Germany, and a need to show everyone in the world who truly had the biggest fucking dick now that they were both global powers,

the US and USSR entered a decades-long conflict known as the Cold War. The Cold War was not a war in the traditional sense. And although historians have given it the end date of December 26, 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to be the Soviet Union, I don't think Putin believes it ever really ended. And I don't think it's over either. I think modern Russia, or at least Putin's Russia, is still essentially the Soviet Union of old, but with a little less land and a lot bigger chip on their shoulder. That said, the Cold War was or is a war of contrasting ideologies. Instead of tanks, machine guns, poison gas, grenades, it was, and I'll use past tense now to refer to the traditional understanding of the Cold War that did end in 1991,

it was fought using political maneuvering, military coalitions, espionage, and strategic provision of economic aid to proxy nations. But by far the most powerful tactic used during the Cold War was propaganda. On both sides of the conflict, the governments produced a constant series of propaganda campaigns meant to undermine the adversary. Both the US and the USSR used propaganda, but just like with World War II, we're only going to focus on how the Ruskies used it. This episode is big enough already. Because the strict hold the Soviet government had on the flow of information, spreading propaganda domestically within the USSR was a fairly easy task for them.

In terms of the media, Soviet propaganda was spread through state-controlled newspapers, radio, TV, film, and literature. Additionally, all forms of Western media were banned and the rest heavily censored. So either banned or heavily censored. As our buddy old pal Peter Knaez put it, in circumstances where only one point of view can be expressed, the distinction between belief and non-belief and truth and untruth is washed away. Propaganda was also a foundational aspect of the Soviet education system. Of course, right?

Brainwashing works best when the mind's young and at its most impressionable state. Throughout the Soviet period, the law required children to attend school from ages 7 to 14, though many continued in the Soviet system well into their early 20s, and they learned a heavily distorted view of the truth that whole time. In addition to mathematics, a history of the USSR, a proper understanding of the Russian language, and studying select, conformist Russian literature and physical training, young students of the USSR were also required to take courses in Marxism-Leninism, Soviet biology as opposed to bourgeoisie biology, interesting, and the development of malign Western capitalism. And quick note on Soviet biology.

I won't get into the weeds. But essentially they promoted an alternative view of evolution which aligned better with their political ideology and that alternative view was full of a bunch of bullshit. Basically when it came to nature versus nurture for example, they just completely discounted nature. They literally chose not to believe in genetics and inherited traits because they pushed a belief that a communist lifestyle and mindset would literally make you bigger, stronger, smarter, and healthier than a capitalist mindset. And for decades, any scientists who disagreed were either imprisoned or executed. Medical advancement, the treatment

of diseases suffered immensely because of this. Fell far behind the western world because that's what fucking happens when you start to think that your bullshit is smarter than the collective conclusions of actual fucking scientists. Hopefully, we don't repeat that fully here in the US, that ignorant mistake. It'd be nice not to have more measles cases. Have shit like fucking polio become common again. I hate the weather, whether or not you just fucking get your kids a fucking polio vaccine

has now become a political issue. Jesus Christ. And yes, modern Russian propagandists are pushing an anti-vaccine narrative online right now. Back to the Russia of old. The goal of the entire state-run Soviet education system was to indoctrinate future citizens with the correct ideology and perspective. Correct based on Marxist theory. Incorrect pretty often based on scientific fact. Before graduation, all doctoral dissertations in every field in the USSR from philosophy to engineering to business to medical science were reviewed by the Soviet Ministry of Education. If the dissertation was not deemed ideologically correct, then that student did not graduate.

And this idea was the impetus behind all levels of education, not just post-grad. The Soviet government decreed that elementary and middle schools' primary function was to, quote, educate the youth in the spirit of unrestrained love for the motherland and devotion to Soviet authority. Love and devotion to Mother Russia. That was a quality you know deemed more important than being actually educated and intellectually curious. And that is yet another example of why blind nationalism is a fucked belief system. Soviet propaganda during

the Cold War revolved around three primary themes. One, international peace and unity for any and all communist nations. Two, the demonization of the evil Empire of the United States. And three, the moral superiority of socialism but really communism over capitalism. In Soviet propaganda the USSR portrayed itself as bringers of international peace and as the guardians of socialism, but really communism. It constantly pointed out or pointed to how it helped the Allies win the war and highlighted other forms of financial aid. It provided foreign nations, nations like Cuba and China. Posters often depicted lines of people of all different ethnicities

standing together, holding hands, symbolizing socialist solidarity and fraternity worldwide. However this image of the USSR as a tolerant progressive unifying force was pretty harshly contradicted by Soviet military operations. For example in Czechoslovakia which was at the time one of the USSR satellite states began to radically reform its suppressive politics. The USSR, literally invaded them with 165,000 troops and 4,600 tanks to get them to knock that shit off and do what you're fucking told. Clearly they weren't as ideologically tolerant as their propaganda suggested. They also were not that ethnically tolerant either, but

that's a topic for another day perhaps. Throughout the Cold War the Soviets were heavily interested in promoting the superior nature of a socialist society to demonstrate the supremacy of their social and political ideology. Soviet propaganda emphasized the nation's economic progress, technological achievement, education. To their credit a 1968 UNESCO report found that in just 40 years literacy rates in the USSR did increase from just 26 percent of their total population to a staggering 90 percent. That stat was often reiterated to validate how awesome their education system was. Similarly the fact that in the 1970s USSR had 37

medical doctors per 10 000 citizens while the US had less than 15 doctors per 10 000 citizens was repeated a lot. However those numbers don't really tell the whole story. The truth is most doctors in the USSR were all concentrated into a few major cities, so everyone else in the rural and distant parts of the country didn't have access to medical care. Also, Soviet doctors were subpar to their Western counterparts because they weren't allowed to study real science whenever it contradicted with Soviet ideology, which is partially why throughout the 20th century the life expectancy for American men and women

was consistently greater than the life expectancy for Soviet men and women. More than anything else, USSR's greatest proof of socialist superiority to their citizens was its space program. And its program actually was truly superior for quite a while. On October 4th, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik into space, and it was the Earth's first artificial satellite. Four years later, April 12, 1961, the USSR sent the first human to outer space. Traveling aboard the Vostok 3K space capsule, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Grigoryan launched into space, completed one orbit around Earth, taking 108 minutes.

Take that, capitalist scum! The incredible achievement bolstered the Soviet's message that the USSR was superior in every way to everybody else, and that the US was a sad little shit pile of micro-peen limp dick capitalists who can't even get one fucking dude into space. In more eloquent terms, Soviet propaganda promoted the narrative that America was an imperialist nation plagued by racial injustice, warmongering, greed, and materialism. And, well, not an inaccurate assessment in many ways, if you just focus on the negatives.

This assessment began almost immediately after World War II ended. Throughout those early years of the Cold War, the CIA, then called the Central Intelligence Group the direct successor to the Office of Strategic Services, provided President Truman with daily, weekly, and monthly summaries of all the sneaky shit the USSR was up to. The originally top-secret summaries were declassified in 1991 and the first time the CIA mentions Soviet propaganda was in a summary from August 2nd 1946. Here's an excerpt of what President Truman read that day to give us a little cool look into the very beginnings of the US's assessment of post-World War II

Soviet propaganda. During the past two months Soviet propaganda against United States has increased in volume and intensity while attacks on Great Britain, the chief Soviet propaganda target during the early part of the year, have diminished. The Soviet press which last March extolled the tradition of unvarying political friendship between the US and USSR now sees US atomic diplomacy and its alleged attempt to impose a Pax Americana on the world as the principal threats to international peace. The shift of propaganda emphasis from the UK to the US appears to have several aims.

One is to influence US policy by arousing anxiety amongst US groups who fear the consequences of a firm US attitude towards the USSR at the Paris Peace Conference and in other fields of conflicting interests. Another is to prepare the Soviet people for a possible deterioration of relations with their former U.S. allies. A third objective, which the Soviets appear to feel was not achieved by their attacks on the British, is to split the Anglo-American bloc. In support of this aim, the Soviet press has played up clashes between the British and US economic interests in Yemen, the oil fields of the Middle East, and Anglo-American competition for the markets of India and the Far East. In the current shift of emphasis from the UK to the US, however, the basic aim of post-war

Soviet propaganda remains the same, to prevent the formation of any block of countries outside of the Soviet sphere and to maintain the unity of the Soviet people behind the government by emphasizing the menace of capitalist powers seeking to encircle the USSR. As the Cold War went on, Soviet propaganda increasingly focused on the horrors of racism that were happening on American soil to emphasize the Western nation's failures. In one famous poster, the image of Soviet soldiers helping a small Vietnamese child, is juxtaposed against the image of American police officers beating the fuck out of a black man with batons. One phrase that became fairly famous during the Cold War was, and you are lynching Negroes. Essentially,

whenever the US criticized the USSR for human rights violations, that was like, they were like, ah! And that was their response. Well, look what you're doing. And again, it's fucking fair. And this is why all the current attacks on DEI make my fucking blood boil. Despite my own and other cynicism about how DEI, DEI, excuse me, actions were employed in the past, I find the current policies, you know,

of shit like literally erasing the web page of a black war hero from the US Department of Defense website, Army Major General Charles Calvin Rogers, who received the fucking Medal of Honor, abhorrent. That webpage was only restored after public outcry, by the way. I myself checked when it went down and it definitely went down. And this is important to note as I attack Russia for its problems. We should only feel good about, you know,

judgmentally pointing our fingers at the Soviet Union and Russia now as having a shitty ideology if our own ideology is actually morally superior. If it's not, well then we've become no better than our enemy. That America, you know, as many of us, you know, want to see it, the America I want to see it, the America I want to believe in is nothing more than a lie in that case. If we want the world to see us as virtuous white knights and defenders of democracy, freedom, the so-called American dream, well, then we have to fucking act like it.

Otherwise, quote-unquote propaganda like the Soviets old claim about the US being a racist is not propaganda. It is truth. It's accurate journalism. It's real news. So let's be fucking better in every way than Russia. Let's make it that much harder for the propaganda to sound even remotely plausible. Hail Nimrod. Back to Soviets again. The USSR began to spread propaganda internationally through a couple of different methods. While they couldn't control the media in foreign nations like they could at home, they could contribute to it. To that end, the USSR had news radio shows broadcasted in multiple languages so that listeners around the world could tune in and get a good dose of, you know, the Soviet perspective on things, at least the

Soviet government's perspective. On the TV side of things, they created the TASS news agency, which provided pro-Soviet news stories to foreign media outlets, and sometimes would share those amongst their own populations. To showcase Soviet superiority and excellence, the USSR's government also funded and founded cultural exchanges. They would do stuff like send ballet dancers, musicians, and outstanding athletes abroad to demonstrate their superior skills. Then started in the 1960s, the Soviets began conducting a form of political warfare

called active measures or maskerovka in Russia. The term active measures had actually been around since the Bolshevik Revolution but it wasn't until the Cold War that it really became a full-fledged operation. Active measures is a term used to describe a range of covert and deniable political influence and subversion operations including but not limited to felching. You knew I wasn't done! No, including but not limited to running disinformation campaigns, staging insurrections in foreign countries, supporting extremist terrorist groups, supporting regular political groups, blackmailing journalists or politicians,

forging documents, orchestrating domestic unrest, and assassinating people. In a lot of ways, active measures are the very manifestation of Soviet paranoia. Since the establishment of the USSR, its leadership has operated under the assumption that it is surrounded by enemies, particularly from the West, who are constantly planning or actively trying to sabotage the Soviet state. The USSR's political and military systems basically revolve around this permanent wartime mentality and active measures as a result of this mentality. When you think everyone is secretly trying to get you, the best defense is a strong offense. During an interview with CNN in January of 1988, Oleg Kalugin, former KGB general and spy who spent 32 years undercover in the U.S. during the Cold War, spoke out about the goals of Soviet

active measures. He said, the heart and soul of the Soviet intelligence was subversion, not intelligence collection, but subversion, active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among Allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs, to make America more vulnerable to the anger and distrust of other peoples. Back in the 1980s the KGB's disinformation department had a multi-million dollar budget and a staff of over 15,000 agents working on spreading disinformation and fabricating false stories both in Russia and abroad.

Another former KGB agent, Yuri Bezmanov, who was also active during the Cold War before defecting to the US, that despite an abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country. That's fucking terrifying. That is quite the nefarious long con to get every American just so existentially confused that we are unable to come to any sensible conclusions basically at all right to make us question reality and just devolve into so much infighting that we're just paralyzed and unable to defend ourselves you know from anything especially Russia. In 1983 the USSR launched its most notorious active measures campaign. Its code name was Operation Denver, but is perhaps better known by the moniker given

to it by American intelligence agencies, which is Operation Infection. Operation Infection was a disinformation campaign created to make the world believe that the Pentagon had manufactured the AIDS epidemic specifically to kill as many African Americans and gay Americans as possible. Or, you know, as many people in the, well, I guess, you know, specifically the gay community. In 1983, the KGB covertly sent a letter titled, AIDS May Invade India, to the editor of an Indian newspaper called The Patriot. The letter claimed to have been written by, quote, well-known American scientists and

anthropologists who wish to remain anonymous, of course. The supposed American scientist, but of course truly a Russian intelligence operative, wrote that the deadly mysterious disease AIDS is believed to be the result of the Pentagon's experiments to develop new and dangerous biological weapons. The author claimed the virus was artificially synthesized at a U.S. chemical and biological warfare research facility in Fort Detrick, Maryland in 1977 and that the researchers behind the endeavor created aids from existing naturally occurring viruses. The main message of the letter was that the Pentagon was continuing their bioweapon experiments in Pakistan

and therefore it was likely that AIDS would soon spread to India as well. So watch out! According to another KGB defector, the newspaper the letter was printed in was actually a KGB run publication that had been planted in India a few years prior for the specific purpose of spreading disinformation abroad that would look legitimate because it wasn't even based in Russia. Pretty fucking clever. The conspiracy theory soon took root in India or in India and with a little help from the Soviets' vast propaganda network, it soon went international.

On September 7, 1985, the KGB sent a telegram to their allied forces in Bulgaria explaining the AIDS Disinformation Campaign and how the Bulgarian Committee for State Security should spread it. That letter was actually later obtained by American forces and became the smoking gun proving the KGB's culpability. Translated to English, this is what the letter said. We are chin deep and so much asshole. Holy shit, it's all we taste.

Well that's in the semen of course. Operation Felching is cruising along swimmingly despite the massive outbreaks of both pink eye and hepatitis. Forget I said that, sorry about that. It's unnecessary and disgusting. And if you feel traumatized right now, and you have every right to feel that way, I want to share a toll-free number for you to call and get some much-needed counseling. It's 1-800-FELCHME. I'm a fucking child. Translated in English. This is what the letter actually really said now. We are conducting a series of active measures in connection with the appearance in recent

years in the USA of a new and dangerous disease, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, AIDS, and its subsequent large scale spread to other countries including those in Western Europe. The goal of these measures is to create a favorable opinion for us abroad that this disease is the result of secret experiments with a new type of biological weapon by the secret services of the USA and the Pentagon that spun out of control. It would be desirable if you could join in the implementation of these measures through your capabilities in party, parliamentary, public policy, and journalistic circles in Western and developing countries by promoting the following theses aka talking points in the bourgeoisie press. 1. Having first appeared at the end of the 70s in New York, AIDS has become by 1985 one of the

most dangerous diseases in the world. In the USA alone, more than 12,400 cases have been registered, of which around one-half have died. By 1985, AIDS has spread far beyond the United States. Numerous cases of AIDS have been reported in almost all countries that import donated blood from the United States. The World Health Organization has declared AIDS to be one of the most dangerous diseases on the Earth. Two, facts have already been cited in the press of the developing countries, in particular India, that testify to the involvement of the special services of the United States

in the Pentagon in the appearance and rapid spread of the AIDS disease in the United States as well as other countries. Judging by these reports, along with the interest shown by the U.S. military in the symptoms of AIDS and the rate and geography of its spread, the most likely assumption is that this most dangerous disease is the result of yet another Pentagon experiment with a new type of biological weapon. This is confirmed by the fact that the disease affected initially only certain groups of people, homosexuals, drug addicts, immigrants from Latin America. Three, an indirect indicator of the Pentagon's involvement in the work with the AIDS virus is that it has been namely the military that has achieved the most significant results in the fight

against the disease. Military medical centers in the USA, including the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland, have developed in the strictest secrecy quite effective methods for the early detection of the disease, its treatment at this stage, and appropriate medications. This allows it to limit the spread of AIDS in the U.S. Army and dramatically reduce the number of fatalities, which naturally affects the combat capability of soldiers. At the same time, the Pentagon is not in a hurry to share its achievements in this area

with civilian medical institutions, given that it is namely the AIDS patients in civilian hospitals upon which the Pentagon's experts are studying the effects of people being infected with the AIDS virus. Please let us know your thoughts and possible suggestions as soon as possible. What's important to note about the aptly named Operation Infection is that the disinformation and conspiracy theories were centered around real life problems and real systemic issues in the US. And that's the heart, the MO of Russian propaganda use just

enough of the truth to make it sound believable right like like any good grifter and rely on people's natural emotional outrage to spread the propaganda operation infection also illustrates one of the Soviets most effective propaganda tactics narrative laundry it's a pretty cool term there narrative laundering narrative laundering is basically money laundering. It's a pretty cool term there, narrative laundering. Narrative laundering is basically like money laundering but with ideas instead of with dollars or rubles. It's the process the Russians use to conceal the true origins of false information and this is fascinating. There are three stages of narrative laundering. The first is the initial placement of the false

information. In the case of Operation Infection, that was the fake letter published in the KGB-run Indian newspaper. The second stage is layering, or repetition. Within seven months of the letter first appearing in that small, local newspaper in India, the story was then retold in 32 other Russian-backed newspapers around the world. And for the most part, you know, newspapers that people didn't know were Russian-backed. This stage of narrative laundering is arguably the most important because psychology has proven that when you see something repeatedly, you're more likely to accept it as credible, which makes sense, right?

You know, you hear something outlandish, sounds conspiratorial from one person, well, hopefully you quickly dismiss it. But if you just fucking keep hearing that same story from a dozen other people and some of them are much more credible over the following weeks, you're likely to start to think, wait a minute, is this actually true? This is exactly why Internet echo chambers and social media algorithms are so destructive and dangerous. They bombard you with the same narrative. True or not, from so many fucking sources, it gets hard not to believe it after a while. This is known as the illusory

truth effect and it essentially means that people unequivocally consider statements as more truthful, valid, and believable when they have encountered those statements previously than when they are new statements. What's also important about this stage is that unwitting people help propel the disinformation without even knowing it for free, right? Just free labor for the KGB and their successors. The Soviets supplied this disinformation, their targets then spread it unknowingly

and for free as misinformation. Ideally, even if most inauthentic sources initially repeat the false story, like in the case of Operation Infection, it's not too long until authentic sources actually start to repeat the story as well. That's another hallmark of Soviet propaganda, getting targets to act in the interests of the propagandists without realizing they've done so. Right?

That story eventually shows up in real fucking newspapers where journalists are like, what the fuck is going on here? So scary. This also leads directly to the third stage of narrative laundering which is integration. The integration stage is where the false information becomes endorsed by credible official sources and is widely disseminated by real people. Narrative laundering and active measures were what made Soviet propaganda in the Cold War so damn effective. And modern Russian propaganda leans on

and has further honed many of these decades old techniques. After the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed by both the Soviet Union and the US, on July 31st, 1991, the Soviets ceased to use such tactics in their military and political systems, supposedly. Then on December 31st, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Its successor was the Russian Federation. A new constitution was adopted and it established itself as a federal semi-presidential system.

Fast forward to March of 2000, when former Lieutenant Colonel of the KGB Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, fucking strong pony boy for Russia, wins the presidential election in a fucking sham. Under his first, his first one, he may have won somewhat legitimately. Under his first presidential tenure, Putin did a complete overhaul of Russia. In addition to reviving the failing economy from the depression it was in, he did also roll back all the democratic institutions that were erected after the fall of the Soviet Union and successfully re-implemented state-controlled media, internet censorship, crackdown on dissent, turned the burgeoning democracy into an authoritarian dictatorship. So now Russia

is essentially the Soviet Union 2.0. Alright, let's fast forward again to 2011 when the IRA is officially formed in St. Petersburg to run political and electoral interference operations on behalf of Russian interests which basically just means it was their job to sow disinformation on the internet and again the Internet Research Agency not the Irish Republican Army if you've somehow jumped into this episode late or distracted earlier that would be fucking very confusing like why are Irish guerrilla fighters helping Russia spread propaganda? Because that's how they get their AK-47s, okay?

They gotta fucking do what they gotta do. Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off! The IRA, the Russian one, was originally founded in 2011 by again, Ifjene Prigozhin, famed Russian oligarch and close confidant of President Vladimir Putin before Putin later had murdered For context in addition to the IRA Prigozhin was also the founder and leader of the Wagner Group, which we mentioned earlier

I mentioned earlier a powerful mercenary company used heavily in the early days of the Ukraine invasion That's still active in various regions of the Middle East and Africa even though privately owned military outfits are technically illegal in Russia, the Wagner Group and Prigozhin had extensive ties to the Kremlin and Russian intelligence agencies, specifically the GRU, Russia's military intelligence. For the past decade or so, the Kremlin consistently denied involvement with the Wagner Group, but in 2022, President Vladimir Putin publicly stated that the quote, maintenance of the entire Wagner Group was fully provided 2022, President Vladimir Putin publicly stated that the, quote, maintenance

of the entire Wagner Group was fully provided for by the state. The Wagner Group was named after Richard Dick Wagner, German composer, most well known for revolutionizing the opera by attempting to synthesize its poetic, musical, visual, and dramatic aspects, and also for being a raging anti-Semite and personal hero of Adolf, sweet little mama's special boy, Hitler. The extent to which Purgosian was involved with the interworking of the IRA is unknown, but the fact that he financed the endeavor is absolute. In a lot of ways, the Internet Research Agency was a lot like the Wagner Group.

Both were private military companies serving the Russian government's domestic and geopolitical goals. However, instead of tactical operations on foreign soil, the IRA conducted covert acts purely within the digital space. And like the Wagner Group, although they claimed to be a private business, evidence shows they were either run directly or indirectly by Russian intelligence agencies and the Kremlin. Within a few years, the IRA would expand their operations to an international level but back when they were first formed in 2011 they were solely focused on spreading propaganda domestically. At the time anti-government and anti-Putin campaigns were running rampant

online and Putin wanted to quash that shit yesterday. To counteract that the IRA started flooding social media with comments and posts celebrating Putin and what a good job he was doing with the government. They posted these comments on all sorts of sites from social media posts to personal blogs to fucking cooking recipes to news articles. Didn't matter whether or not the post that they were commenting under was related to Putin. What mattered is wherever you went on the internet, you're gonna see something just talking about how great the Kremlin was. Everywhere you looked online in Russia, it seemed as if everybody but you absolutely adored Putin.

The style of online propaganda was, still is, all about volume. Very much a flood the zone type of mentality, which is all about drowning out the voices of the opposition. When anti-government activists tried to make their hashtags trend on Twitter, the trolls and eventually the bots controlled by the trolls would post so many pro-Kremlin hashtags that they would trend instead. The pro-Kremlin pro-Kremlin online trolling was just one of the ways Putin was trying to snuff out the anti-government protesters and bury the narrative that he was doing a

shitty job. That same year the government cracked down on media censorship which was already super strict to begin with. Laws were passed requiring online bloggers to register their site and its contents with the state. In previous years the Kremlin was required to obtain a court order before censoring the contents of a website. To get around that they now created a blacklist of websites that due to their allegedly dangerous content could be subjected to government censorship without a court order Obviously almost every fucking website available in Russia was on that blacklist

In addition to the covert pro Kremlin trolling online Putin was also very publicly running an anti-internet propaganda campaign He called the entire internet a quote CIA project that the Russian people needed to be protected from of course that the Russian people needed to be protected from. Of course. Whenever a powerful political leader tells you to be wary of what people are saying about them online or what the media is saying about them, oh man be so nervous. Be so skeptical. Whenever it's a question of is this politician line or is all of the internet line or all of the mainstream media line, it's pretty fucking obvious. Who's lying? Or at least it should be.

Around this time the Kremlin also hired a literal PR consultant, one that normally works with major clothing brands to help them better their image online. Per the consultant's suggestion, the Kremlin collabed with popular Russian fashion and foodie online influencers for exposure. Well, not really. What they actually did was pay prominent voices online to sneak in one or two pro government posts into their regular content. In March of 2012, Vladimir Putin shockingly wins the presidential election.

What? Fucking underdog pulled it off. It's not shocking, of course. Nearly every non-Russia media outlet around the world who covered Russia's 2012 elections claimed the election was fucking blatantly rigged. Like they didn't even do a good job of hiding it. July of 2013, the Internet Research Agency registered with the Russian government as an independent corporate entity. January of 2014, a man named Mikhail Ivanovich Bistrov joined the IRA in its highest ranking position

according to internal IRA documents that were procured by American officials. By January of 2014, the troll farm had shifted its primary focus to now interfering with the upcoming 2016 U.S. presidential election with the stated goal of, quote, spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general. And that last part is the scariest, spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general. And that last part is the scariest. Spreading distrust towards the political system in general. They want us to feel utterly lost and hopeless. To just completely check out.

Don't even bother voting. You know, the political process is bullshit. Which will then make it that much easier for them to determine who wins our elections and also weaken our entire society by infecting us with this general nihilistic malaise. At this time the company also moved its operations to 55 Savashkina Street in St. Petersburg, Russia. Amongst the many strange facts about the IRA's office environment was, excuse me, one of the creepiest is that everyone was required to keep the blackout curtains closed tight over every window in the building. What a depressing place to work.

If a curtain was found to be open, even just like the tiniest bit, the staff in that room would be fined. And of course they're going to do that because they don't want somebody to open the little windows of somebody else from, I don't know, another fucking window and another building can peek in and, you know, find out what they're really up to. By July of 2014, Progozhin, again the head of the IRA and the Wagner Group, had created a series of other registered Russian businesses to obscure the IRA's operations. These fronts included Mediasintes LLC, Gloveset LLC, Mixinfo LLC, Azamut LLC, and Novinfo LLC. On September 11, 2014, the Information

Research Agency executed a highly coordinated and elaborate disinformation campaign targeted at a very random region of the US, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana between Lafayette and New Orleans. The small rural county has an area of only 1,119 square miles, 50% of which is made up of water. Less than 50,000 people live there in total. But one of its residents is a man named Duval Arthur, who at the time was serving as director of the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness for St. Mary Parish. On the 13th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Arthur was suddenly bombarded with phone calls

from terrified residents. At around 8.30 a.m. that morning, all of them received the same distressing text message, toxic fume hazard warning in this area until 1.30 p.m. Take shelter, check local media, and Columbiachemical.com. Arthur was dumbfounded. It was his job to keep track of disasters like that one. He hadn't heard of the explosions that morning or the night before.

He also never heard of Columbia Chemical. There was a Columbian chemical in Centerville, but no Columbia. Arthur checked in with each of the nearby processing plants for chemicals and natural gas. None of them had anything out of the ordinary to report. So why were residents receiving alerts for toxic fumes? And why was Twitter suddenly filled with hundreds of posts by locals or people claiming to be locals documenting the explosion supposedly first-hand? A powerful explosion heard from miles away happened at a chemical plant in Centerville, Louisiana.

Hashtag Columbian Chemicals. A supposed Louisiana man allegedly named John Merritt tweeted using the same hashtag. The account at KSara12 tweeted a video of surveillance footage from a local gas station which showed the Columbian chemical explosion bursting over the Louisiana skyline in the distance. Another user at Anne Russella tweeted a photo of the chemical plant engulfed in massive flames. At Chloe Eva 12 posted a screenshot of CNN's online news page which showed the top story being plant explosion in Centerville caused panic. The first photo or the this photo attached the

article was a vague forest line with smoke rising into the air and the caption read the plant explosion at Colombian chemicals company Centerverville, Louisiana caused a wave of panic among the residents of the nearest towns. Using hashtag Colombian chemicals, other accounts tweeted about how ISIS had taken responsibility for the disaster in Louisiana, along with a link to a YouTube video that had just been uploaded.

In the YouTube video, an unseen guy films his living room television based on scrolling text at the bottom of his TV screen, he is tuned into an Arabic news channel which is playing a video of some masked members of ISIS delivering a speech next to the footage of the Colombian chemical explosion. A Louisiana local named Anna McLaren, whose username was atzpokodon9, tweeted at famed Republican political consultant, Carl Rove. Carl, is this really ISIS who is responsible for Colombian chemicals?

Tell Obama that we should bomb Iraq. Despite the panic it caused in St. Mary Parish, after a few hours, everyone eventually realized the whole thing was a hoax. Some sort of demented prank initially thought to be masterminded by a few sadists in town, probably some teenagers. Duval Arthur himself told the New York Times, personally I think it's just a real sad sick sense of humor. It was just someone who likes scaring the daylights out of

people. But as one of the first American journalists to investigate the IRA, Adrian Chen wrote, the Colombian chemicals hoax was not some simple prank by a bored sadist. It was a highly coordinated disinformation campaign involving dozens of fake accounts that posted hundreds of tweets for hours, targeting a list of figures precisely chosen to generate maximum attention. The perpetrators didn't just doctor screenshots from CNN, they also created fully functional clones of the websites of Louisiana TV stations and newspapers.

The YouTube video of the man watching TV had been tailor-made for the project. A Wikipedia page was even created for the Colombian chemicals disaster, which cited the fake YouTube video. As the virtual assault unfolded, it was complemented by text messages to actual residents in St. Mary Parish. It must have taken a team of programmers and content producers to pull off. So a scary example of the type of chaos Russian intelligence operatives can quickly sow anywhere in the West. And why do that at all? Well, I think it was just a it was a test. They

wanted to see if they could pull that off. And you know, for the most part, they did. On February 26, 2015, the US Director of National Intelligence at the time, James Clapper, warned Congress that Russia and China continue to develop very sophisticated cyber programs. While I can't go into detail here, the Russian cyber threat is more severe than we had previously assessed. On June 2, 2015, the New York Times published investigative journalist Adrian Chen's article titled The Agency. And that's the first time a story about the Internet Research Agency appeared in the US media. The day after the agency article was published, Facebook blocked all Facebook pages traced back to the IRA as well as accounts of fictitious administrators.

However, this was just a minor setback for the IRA. The company's IT department had devised a system to deal with issues just like that. According to one former employee, as soon as an account or page is blocked, the IT department goes to work purchasing proxy servers, issuing new IP addresses and virtual operating systems as well as buying new SIM cards or cloud numbers and opening up new payment accounts to hide the new account accounts true origins. On March 15 2016, Oleski Vertrovich, a senior lieutenant of GRU, sent a spear phishing email to Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. The email from the no Reply at accounts.googlemail.com read, Hi John, someone just used your password to sign into your Google account.

And then emails redacted. Details of sign in attempt Saturday, 19 March, 83420 UTC IP address 134.249.139.239 location Ukraine. Google stopped this sign in attempt. You should change your password immediately. Best, the Gmail team. Below the email there was a link if you wanted to change his password. Well Podesta foolishly clicked that link and was sent to a site that looked identical to the actual Google account sign in page.

Thinking it was legit, Podesta entered his password. Big fuck up by Johnny here. Do not ever use those emails to sign into any of your accounts. Never use those links. Not fucking ever. If you get an email from your bank, Google, Facebook, you know, your, uh, uh, Ameriprise, Edward Jones, whatever your, uh, Wells Fargo, never click the login link, just close the email, open up your web browser or app, corresponding app, go straight to the source and login there.

And if you then can't find the information mentioned in that email, well, that's probably because you just got fucking spammed. You got, you know, scammed, spammed, it was bullshit, whatever. With that one mistake, Podesta opened the door of the entire DNC network to Russian military intelligence. And he made Hillary and her entire campaign looking competent. March 22nd, 2016, 32 people are killed in suicide bombings in Brussels, Germany. The bombings which took place at the Brussels Airport and on the public metro system are later claimed by ISIS. That same day there's a big spike in IRA Twitter activity.

The IRA accounts, which remember look like accounts belonging to regular real American people, linked the horrors of the suicide bombing to the threat posed by Muslim refugees in the U.S. A senior fellow at the Atlantic Council later was quoted saying that the IRA ramped up their activity on that day in order to quote, demonize Muslims, migrants, refugees, and anyone who supports them, and to panic real Americans into increasingly extreme views. The troll account at Janine McCarthy Zero tweeted,

Islam kills. This is seriously getting out of hand. I'm so scared for the future of my children. Pray for Brussels. Stop Islam. Similarly, Ryan Maxwell One tweeted, Brussels, let's close all mosques. Free speech is overrated.

Islam kills. The Russians didn't have to invent some new story for this. They just distorted the truth around the real story. Much more effective persuasion technique. Using naughty Johnny's stolen log information, back to that now, on April 12, 2016, Russian hackers gained access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, aka the DCC's entire network. Once inside, they remotely installed what US officials would refer to as ex-agent malware on at least 10 DCCC computers.

The ex-agent malware was used to monitor the computer's activity by logging keystrokes and taking screenshots of different pages. Around that same time, the IRA stole the identities of at least four Americans, including their Social Security numbers, to set up PayPal accounts in America. On April 14, 2016, Russian hackers used X-Agent to monitor one of the main DCCC computers for eight continuous hours, obtaining various high-ranking officials' passwords and top-secret information about voter outreach initiatives. Jesus! By April 18th, using stolen information from the DCCC network, the Russian hackers infiltrated

the DNC network. Within less than a month, they will have total and complete access to 33 different DNC computers. The next date, April 19th, the GRU registered the domain name DCLeaks.com. To disguise the domain origins, they used a VPN and Bitcoin to purchase a host server in Malaysia. On April 22nd, X-Agent was activated to take screenshots of DCC's financial information. Then using a program called X-Tunnel, they compressed the stolen data, sent it to one of their own computers. By the end of the month the DNC had come to suspect there had been a breach of their network computers. On April 30th

2016 they contacted a well-respected cyber technology and security firm CrowdStrike to help. CrowdStrike began to analyze the breach the following Monday, May 1st. Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and former CTO of CrowdStrike, said that it took a while to find the infected machines on their network because, quote, this wasn't just on one system. There were hundreds of DNC systems that were being impacted. When they began investigating the malware, CrowdStrike quickly realized it was actually malware they had seen multiple times before that they had, quote, high confidence was attributed to the GRU, Russian military intelligence.

In a later interview for the HBO documentary, The Perfect Weapon, a look inside the rise of cyber warfare as the primary way nations now compete with and sabotage one another, Alperovitch went on to say that we're seeing the Russian malware spread from system to system, touch files, take those files out of the network, stealing data, monitoring everything. We can't just shut down one machine because they're everywhere. So you have to shut everything down and spend several days rebuilding all the infrastructure. It's a fucking nightmare. Crowdstrike asks the DNC when would be the best time for them to conduct this remediation. Given when

they did it, everything in the entire DNC network would have to be shut down and become unstable and unusable for several days. At the time, the US was right in the middle of the primaries and the Democratic presidential nominee had yet to be chosen. So the DNC told CrowdStrike to wait until the primaries were over to conduct the remediation, which was five weeks away. In the doc, Alperovitch said, over that period of time, the Russians continued stealing documents and we were sort of helplessly watching them. This is a huge fuck up.

Much bigger than Johnny's. That's unacceptable. Right? They knew the computers were compromised by fucking Russian intelligence, that Russia could get a hold of sensitive information because of that, and they were just like, nah, we gotta focus on the primaries. That's another example of politicians putting what's best for them ahead of you know what's best for the US. Alperovitch was absolutely right they were stealing. May 25th 2016 the Russian hackers successfully gained access now to the DNC's Microsoft Exchange server where they then stole thousands of

emails that have been sent and received by DNC staff. It was later discovered that on May 31st 2016 the Russian hackers started researching the company CrowdStrike on CrowdStrike's own computers now. Those assholes are fucking good. June 1st 2016 Facebook notified the FBI that they detected evidence of the Russian information operation on the platform. Same day Russian hackers attempted to cover their tracks at the DNC and the DCC using a program called Cleaner. On June 8th 2016 the website DCLeaks is launched and with it thousands of DNC emails are now made public. DCLeaks also had its own Facebook page, Twitter account, both of which had actually been created a little over a year before.

A lot of planning went into this. But they hadn't posted anything until now. The first users to join the DC leaks Facebook page and follow DC leaks on Twitter were, you guessed it, IRA troll accounts. After DC leaks went live, a Facebook account belonging to an American dude named Melvin Reddick posted a link to it with the caption, these guys show the hidden truth about Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and other leaders of the US. Visit hashtag DCLeaks website. It's really interesting.

Melvin Reddick, of course, not a real person, just an IRA troll. Hundreds of posts, just like Melvin's, great name choice by the way, proliferated the internet within hours of the DCLeaks launch. While they all came from fake accounts run by IRA trolls, they would end up driving thousands

of very real American people to the site who then would spread the information further. It's a fucking brilliant way to spread chaos. Well this created a real shit storm for the DNC. Because even though the overwhelming majority of leaked emails were benign, when looked at as a whole they clearly proved that the DNC favored Hillary Clinton as the presidential nominee before she was nominated. Sorry Bernie. Bernie Sanders supporters and Bernie himself understandably live it

as had every right to be. The DNC was supposed to be impartial when it came to candidates because it's actually not their job to pick the nominee it's the right of the delegates to vote on it. And in this way many American suspicions about big political machines like the DNC you know being corrupt were validated and faith in America's political process is further weakened. Right? Of course it is. The DNC was exposed basically for being rigged. But what was really fucked up about the situation was that the media storm that followed was all about the DNC's favoritism and not the fact that a maligned foreign body, although still anonymous at that point,

had infiltrated a democratic system. On June 10, 2016, now CrowdStrike finally receives the go-ahead to initiate their coordinated remediation process. The goal of the process, in addition to kicking the Russian intruders out of the system, was to ensure they could not access it again. By the time the Russians were kicked out of the DNC network, June 13, 2016, well, they'd already been there for a little under a year. June 14, 2016, the DNC publicly announced that their network was hacked and that their entire database had been stolen by Russian intelligence. When asked about the claims, Putin's advisor about all things internet related at the time, German Klemenko said, usually these kinds of leaks take place not because hackers broke

in but as any professional will tell you, because someone simply forgot the password or set the simple password 1 2 3 4 5 6, it's always simpler to explain this away as the intrigues of enemies rather than one's own incompetence. And then the spokesperson for the president of Russia, Dmitry Peskov, made a similar remark saying, I absolutely ruled out the possibility that the government or government agencies were involved in this, of course. Russians are fucking loving this. Podesta did something stupid.

Hillary and her campaign did something more stupid by not letting CrowdStrike fix the problem much sooner. And now the Russians make all the Democrats look incompetent. To undermine the credibility of the DNC's announcement that Russia was responsible for the hack, the very next day, the GRU created an online persona, Guccifer 2.0. Guccifer 2.0 claimed on Twitter to be a Romanian hacker and the sole person responsible for

the cyber attacks on the DNC network. His tweets went viral with the help of both IRA hackers and real Americans. June 27th, Guccifer 2.0 begins reaching out to American media outlets offering to send them some of the stolen emails. Many outlets take them up on this offer. Fuck, I hate the Russians for this, but goddamn, it's just genius. July 15, 2016, the FBI announces it has launched an investigation into the cyberattack on the DNC computer network.

Same day, representatives from the DNC make a public apology to Senator Sanders for unfair treatment. July 21, Donald Trump is declared the Republican presidential nominee. That same day, there's a massive spike in IRA activity, and from that day on, it will maintain that level of intensity. July 22nd, 2016, Wikileaks, Wikileaks, publishes the first batch in a series of hacked emails taken from the DNC. The release is followed by a massive group of IRA trolls on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

talking about the leak, driving people to the site. Two days later, chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, publicly resigns from her position following the immense backlash over her favoritism for Hillary Clinton. During a press conference at his Miami estate, Mar-a-Lago. July 27th, Trump says to the camera, Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find Hillary Clinton's 30,000 emails that are missing. How much is fucking Trump loving this? Right? Russia just gave him a massive boost in his chances of winning the presidential election.

July 29th, Hillary Clinton officially accepts the Democratic nomination for president. Now even though there's a cloud over it now. And then there's another spike in IRA activity on Twitter. On August 11, 2016, the IRA posted about voter fraud for the first time. On that day, the Twitter account, at 10 GOP, posted, North Carolina finds 2,214 voters over the age of 110. Hashtag voter fraud. At 10 GOP was one of the IRA's most successful troll accounts.

According to its bio, it was the unofficial Twitter of the Tennessee Republicans. It had over 130,000 followers, amassed thousands and thousands of likes, was frequently retweeted by members of the Trump administration. The account was basically a firehouse of inflammatory statements disguised as joking political commentary. It constantly posted memes about how dumb liberals are, repeatedly questioned the validity of the democratic voting system, praised American military forces, condemned the mainstream media for publishing fake news while promoting IRA disinformation because it's a fucking IRA site.

Partly due to 10 GOP's popularity, recent studies have now determined that the majority of Americans who retweeted posts made by Russian trolls were from Tennessee and also from Texas. Real Texans shared more than 26,000 IRA tweets and Tennesseans shared over 50,000. Fucking Russia just planes like a fiddle. August 13th 2016, Guccifer 2.0, that supposed rogue hacker but really an IRA account, released a cache of stolen DNC documents to The Hill, a newspaper and online media company based in Washington, DC. According to an article published by The Hill, Guccifer 2.0 had messaged

them over an electronic chat room saying, the press gradually forgot about me. Wiki, god damn it, Wiki, god damn it, Wiki leaks. I don't know why that's so hard for me to say correctly. Is playing for time and have some more docs. Later that same day Twitter deleted the account of Guccifer 2.0 for releasing private and confidential files from the DNC. However, the very next day, August 14th 2016, Guzman's account is reinstated by Twitter for unknown reasons. Not sure what the deal was there. Ten days later, August 24, 2016, AttenGOP tweeted,

MSM NBC will never show this pic from Austin. Keep saying only whites attend Trump rallies. hashtag why Trump canceled rallies. The tweet was attached to a picture of people of color attending a Trump rally. The post got over 1,600 retweets and 1,600 favorites. The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issue a joint statement about the FBI's investigation into the cyber attack on the DNC computer network on October 7th and this was their conclusion. The U.S. intelligence community is confident that the Russian government directed the recent

compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked emails on sites like DCLeaks.com and Wikileaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow. The Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for

example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities. The Department of Homeland Security urges state and local election officials to be vigilant and seeks cybersecurity assistance from DHS. A number of states have already done so. DHS is providing several services to state and local election officials to assist in their cybersecurity. These services include cyber hygiene scans of internet-facing systems, risk and

vulnerability assessments, information sharing about cyber incidents, and best practices for securing voter registration databases and addressing potential cyber threats. On October 15th, the IRA began trying to spread two awful narratives now. A, that liberals were pro-rape and B, that Hillary Clinton used a slur in one of the leaked emails. That day, troll account at Emily Warren tweeted, Women who vote Hillary are telling their daughters rape is okay and they will be slandered on top of it. Later the popular troll account Hydrox tweeted,

Never hashtag Hillary because white, excuse me, because while calling Trump a racist in a leaked email, she referred to a Muslim man as a sand N-word. And this is bullshit, right? This is disinformation propaganda. During the final presidential debate October 19th 2016 IRA trolls posted excessively about conspiracy theories and divisive topics. The goal with their activity that day was as always to make the American people question the legitimacy of the democratic system and push them towards

more extreme views. During the length of the debate on average the IRA trolls each pumped out three posts a minute. There's hundreds and hundreds of them doing this. They're responding to the debate in real time, interacting with one another and other users. The tweets put out by at 10 GOP during the debate amassed thousands of likes and retweets. Here's a few of the accounts most popular post just from that night. Iran payment wasn't just ransom. It was money laundering. The deal was set up by Hillary when she was Secretary of State. Hashtag debate. Hashtag debate night. Donald Trump's ending was perfect. Retweet if you are also sure that Trump won. Hashtag debate. And I'm sorry, it was also

hashtag Trump won. At real Donald Trump. Can't wait to see you in the White House. On October 21st, 2016, at 10 GOP tweeted, breaking thousands of names change in voter rolls in Indiana. Police investigating hashtag voter fraud, hashtag drain the swamp. Later that day, the account tweeted again saying, Bob Creamer, who was just implicated in the mass hashtag voter fraud video, is also a writer for At Huffington Post, hashtag drain the swamp. That post had over 5,000 likes and almost 6,000 retweets. Leading up to election day the IRA troll accounts worked literally

around the clock to disseminate as many conspiracy theories as possible. One that actually took a pretty good hold of America's imagination was that Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager John Podesta were Satanists. Fuck yeah bro! You can't go wrong in America with some satanic panic. Who cares that Satanists. Fuck yeah, bro. You can't go wrong in America with some satanic panic. Who cares that Satanists are literally almost never convicted of sex crimes? And yet religious sexual predators are convicted literally every day.

This satanic theory was rooted in one of the leaked Podesta emails wherein his brother asked him if he would be attending a spirit cooking. Sorry, I'll back up. This satanic theory was rooted in one of the leaked Podesta emails wherein his brother asked him if he would be attending a quote spirit cooking dinner party hosted by performance artist Marina Abramovic. Never mind the fact that Podesta did not attend the dinner, the IRA trolls took the leaked email

as fuel for an outlandish conspiracy theory right right? Just sowing the seeds of Pizzagate here. I fucking truly hate how conspiratorial our nation is at this point. It was amusing for a while. Like years ago. It's just so fucking embarrassing now. It would be so much harder to manipulate us if so many of us just didn't just fucking seem to just leap on believing in the dumbest shit ever. Alongside the link to the email on Wikileak, the trolls directed their followers to a video of Marina Abramovic's

1996 art installation, which was intentionally disturbing and surreal as art sometimes is. November 5th 2016 the IRA account at World News Polly now posts, Breaking Clinton Foundation paid a cult spirit cooking priestess She's the priestess now ten thousand dollars for operational support That same day this is like fucking Salem witch trial mentality that same day the Russian troll at Nick Luna retweeted a post from another Russian troll At micada saying wiki leaks wiki fucking whatever Clinton campaign chair John Podesta attended satanic spirit cooking ritual, hashtag spirit cooking. And then Fox News host Sean Hannity, excuse me, helped spread the conspiracy tweeting a link to the WikiLeaks with the caption, leaked email appears to link Clinton campaign chairman to bizarre occult ritual.

November 9th, 2016 2016 Donald Trump is now declared the winner of the US presidency. While speaking at an industry conference the next day Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook responded to the reports that Facebook was plagued with Russian propaganda saying personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook of which is a very small amount of the content influence the election in any ways it's pretty crazy idea. Well of course course he's gonna say that. He's the fucking owner of Facebook. He doesn't want Facebook to look like a fucking dumpster fire. On November 12th, Zuckerberg doubles down on that claim,

writing in a Facebook post, of all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what people see is authentic. There's no way you can know that. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. Again, how do you know that if they fucking if they're not found out? He says the hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes change the outcome of the election in one direction or another. But again, is that true? We'll never know.

Probably. January 6, 2017, a report conducted jointly by the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA January 6, 2017, a report conducted jointly by the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA concludes that the Russian government did, for sure, attempt to intervene with the 2016 election through information operations. Here are the key judgments outlined in their report. We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We also assess Putin and the Russian government

aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment. NSA has moderate confidence. Moscow's use of disclosures during the US election was unprecedented, but its influence campaign otherwise followed a long-standing Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations such as cyber activity with overt efforts by Russian government agencies, state-funded

media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or trolls. By their nature, Russian influence campaigns are multifaceted and designed to be deniable because they use a mix of agents of influence, cutouts, front organizations, and false flag operations. Moscow demonstrated this during the Ukraine crisis in 2014 when Russia deployed forces and advisors to eastern Ukraine and denied it publicly. The Kremlin's campaign aimed at the U.S. election featured disclosures of data obtained through Russian cyber operations, intrusions into U.S. state and local electoral boards, and overt propaganda. Russian intelligence collection both informed and enabled the influence campaign. Under a section titled, Election Operations Signals, New Normal and Russian Influence Efforts,

the report said, We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts in the United States and worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes. We assess that the Russian intelligence services would have seen their election influence campaign as at least a qualified success because of their perceived ability to impact public discussion. Again, this is so scary. And if you don't think this is a big deal because you're candidate one, you are truly missing

the point. The point is that Russia is figuring out how to use our paranoia and divisiveness and conspiratorial thinking against us in an attempt to control our electoral process, right? And if they perfect that, we will essentially become a Russian puppet regime that doesn't know it's a Russian puppet regime. How long will it be until truly compromised US political candidates start to actively seek out Russia's help to win elections if they're not already doing that? According to a written testimony Facebook submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is obtained by NBC on October 30, 2017,

126 million Americans, about a third of the nation's population, were shown Russian-backed content during the 2016 presidential campaign. February 16, 2018, a U.S. grand jury in the District of Columbia indicted the Internet Research Agency, its founder, Ifghini Prigozhin, and 13 of its intelligence agents for attempting to interfere with the U.S. political system, specifically the 2016 presidential election. In May of 2018, Vladimir Putin is inaugurated for a fourth term. Oh my god, he did it again! He's president! Oh, the Russian Federation wanted a landslide! Holy shit! Get the fuck out of here! How'd he do it? By the time 2020 rolled around, U intelligence agencies, tech companies, and cyber security

experts were far more prepared to counter Russia's interference operations than they were in 2016. Hopefully. Before the Troll Farm could launch any large-scale influence campaign, the FBI and the US Cyber Command launched cyber attacks against the internet research agency servers and all subsequent networks. Additional sanctions were placed Research Agency servers and all subsequent networks. Additional sanctions were placed on the IRA and all the companies it was related to in an attempt to cut off their ability to fund disinformation campaigns. However, despite the US's efforts to combat their propaganda, the IRA and the GRU were still able of course to conduct some disinformation campaigns in the run-up to the 2020 US presidential

election. Starting in 2020, Russian intelligence began spreading a new disinformation campaign in the US focused on undermining people's faith in vaccines. Of fucking of course they did. They've been fucking us so hard for so long now. So much discontent, so much chaos, so many families and friends and co-workers and neighbors going off on each other in real life and online in arguments that they don't even fucking realize were fueled by Russian propaganda. Although the operation looked as though it was executed by the IRA, it was actually the work of its adjunct

enterprise, Storm 1516. A representative from the State Department's Global Engagement Center, which is a governmental body dedicated to identifying and monitoring foreign disinformation efforts within the U.S., said they found four online publications that were fronts for Russian intelligence. The official told the Wall Street Journal, we can say these outlets are directly linked to Russian intelligence service. They're all foreign-owned, based outside of the U.S. They vary a lot in their reach, their tone, their audience, but they're all part of the Russian propaganda and disinformation ecosystem. February 20th, excuse me, 24th, 2022, Putin announced his decision to execute a quote special military operation in Ukraine now.

Within minutes, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, beginning in the eastern Ukrainian territory of Donbass. After a night of Russian military attacks on Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, a group of Twitter accounts began posting that Ukraine was fabricating civilian casualties. This was the first of many waves of pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation about Russia's violent invasion of Ukraine, propaganda that continues at a heavy volume to this day. At the time, many news sources attributed the trolls to the IRA, but as with the disinformation Ukraine, propaganda that continues at a heavy volume to this day. At the time, many news sources attributed the trolls to the IRA, but as with the disinformation about vaccines, it was actually the work of Storm 1516.

The morning after the attacks on Kiev, the Twitter account NENUCHI posted a video of a reporter in Ukraine in front of a bunch of body bags filled with corpses. As the Ukrainian reporter spoke, one of the corpses behind him reached its hand out of the bag to keep it from blowing away in the wind. The caption of the video was, Propaganda makes mistakes too. One of the corpses came back to life, right as they were counting the deaths of Ukraine civilians. What this fake user was suggesting here was that Ukraine was faking casualties to make Russia look bad. And I actually had friends post me or fucking text me that fucking video being like, man, it's fucking bullshit. Look what's going on over there.

Eight minutes later, the account at Enot Kremlin bought tweeted the same video with the caption, I'm screaming. One of the corpses came back to life during a segment about civilian deaths in Ukraine. Information war reached a new level to other accounts created at the same time as Enot posted the same video with similar captions. One said Ukrainian propaganda does not sleep. All those Twitter accounts of course run by Russian intelligence. As for the video of the corpse in Ukraine, it was footage of a climate change demonstration that had taken place in Austria earlier in the year, the reporter also Austrian. But they all look the same, right?

March 3rd, 2022, a prominent pro-Kremlin blogger from Ukraine named Daniel Besnikov posted a video named How Ukrainian Fakes Are Made. The video was a massive explosion, or the video was of a massive explosion in the densely populated city of was a massive explosion or the video was of a massive explosion in the densely populated city of Harkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine. The caption explained that Ukrainian propagandists spreading that video or worse, excuse me, spreading that video around the internet, claiming it to be footage of a recent Russian missile strike. However, according to Deneil, the footage actually showed a deadly arms depot

explosion in the same area back in 2017. Then Deneil's message was clear. Don't trust footage of supposed Russian missile strikes. Footage actually showed a deadly arms depot explosion in the same area back in 2017. Danil's message was clear, don't trust footage of supposed Russian missile strikes. Ukrainians are spreading lies about what's really going on and pro-Russian groups are debunking them. Danil's post heralded a new method of digital propaganda, disinformation disguised as fact checking. Within one month of Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine, Storm 1516 produced over a dozen

of these types of videos that claimed to debunk Ukrainian fake news. By April of 2023, the videos had already garnered millions of views. Thousands and thousands of likes on Twitter, according to Dr. Patrick Warren, that expert in media forensics from Clemson. The purpose of these fake fact-checking videos of Ukrainian propaganda were to make people doubt the veracity of real footage of carnage in Ukraine. He wrote, the reason that it's so effective is because you don't actually have to convince someone that it's true. It's sufficient to make people uncertain as to what they should trust. In a sense they are convincing the viewer that it would be possible for a Ukrainian propaganda bureau to do that

sort of thing. Fuck. In addition to accusing Ukrainians of fabricating casualties and spreading fake news online, in those first few months of the conflict Storm 1516 was also hard at work sowing doubt amongst the American people about what was happening on the other side of the war. Troll accounts impersonating Americans posted baseless comments about how the Ukrainian military was using civilians as human shields. At the time this was all happening Dr. Darren Linville, Dr. Warren's colleague, told the news and research agency ProPublica that all signs pointed to a resurrection of the Russian troll farm. He said these accounts express every indicator that we have to suggest

they originate with the Internet Research Agency and if they aren't in the IRA that's worse because I don't know who's doing it. Three weeks after Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine, Storm 1516 disseminated a blurry glitchy video of Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky standing completely still behind a podium urging his fellow Ukrainians to give up the fight and surrender to Russia Though that video was not very convincing It was nevertheless spread all over Russia used to reinforce claims that the conflict was the unnecessary doings of Ukraine Over the next couple of years storm 1516 will still will get a whole lot better and making deep fakes So good that multiple productions were widely

circulated in the US and reposted by a shitload of prominent US politicians. We'll go over those in a second or some of them, but before we do, let's check in on Evgeny Progozhin, the now deceased founder of the IRA and owner of the private military group called the Wagner Group. When you know it, June 23rd, 2023, the Wagner Group stages an uprising, which I briefly mentioned earlier, against the Russian government over disagreements about Ukraine. In a video posted online, Progosian accused Russia's military leadership of incompetence and cowardice. They neglect the lives of soldiers.

They forgot the word justice. We will return it, Progosian said in the video. Therefore those who destroyed our guys today and tens of thousands of lives of Russian soldiers will be punished. That night, Wagner forces, around 25,000 strong, highly trained, seized the Russian city of Orostov-on-Don after meeting no resistance. June 24th, the Wagner group began marching towards Moscow. God, I remember that. I remember being so fucking hopeful. They were gonna storm that city, somehow capture Putin, and execute that piece of shit. While Kremlin officials fled the city, troops were sent into defend it on their way to Moscow the Wagner group shot down multiple Russian

Military helicopters that have been sent to stop them all signs pointed to a violent coup so exciting however When the private military was just hours away from Moscow they suddenly halted Negotiated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin and Prigozhin agreed to a peace deal. Fucking dumb move on Prigozhin's part. Rule number one when dealing with Putin, never trust a word that man says. He is a walking manipulation machine and he has no soul. The deal was struck, the coup avoided and the whole thing was called off. Part of the deal was that in order to avoid prosecution, Prigozhin was to go into exile

in Belarus, which he did. No one heard from him for a while. And then August 23, 2023, when Yevgeny Prigozhin's private plane was supposed to be heading out of Belarus, it mysteriously crashed while in mid-flight. Fucking weird, right? He and nine other people on board all killed in the accident. But of course, it wasn't an accident. Assassination is a better word.

As it turns out, remnants of hand grenades were found in the wreckage of the aircraft. And investigators concluded, well, that's what caused its fucking plummet. A few well-placed bombs on board that I'm sure Putin ordered to have put on there. Jumping ahead to last year now. In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Storm 1516 ramps up its influence efforts with a broad range of conspiracy theories and false reports about Vice President Harris and her running mate, Governor Walz. One disinformation campaign launched at the beginning of September 2024 alleged that

Walz visiting San Francisco in 2011, Kamala Harris hit a 13-year-old girl with her car and then just drove off. And because of that, she was left completely paralyzed as poor girl. As this conspiracy based in nothing but lies began to gain traction online, Microsoft's threat analysis center did some digging into its ferocity and found out that Storm 1516 produced the video. They had paid an actor to play the part of a paralyzed victim, spread the claim through a fake website for a non-existent San Francisco media outlet called KBSF-TV. The website for KBSF

was registered online just a few days before the rumor was first spread. Before it got shut down, the website was actually fully functional. It was even populated with a bunch of real local news stories about San Diego. Stories which were stolen from real news sites and then they had some other stories that were created with AI. Then in October of 2024, Storm 1516 conducted two disinformation campaigns. One aimed at Kamala Harris's running mate, Governor Tim Walz. The other at the trustworthiness of the democratic voting system. Citing a video interview of one of Tim Walz's former students, saying that the vice presidential nominee molested him when he was a teen, an army of storm 15, 16 trolls and their bot accounts spread the rumor online that Walz was a sexual predator.

Within the week, the video was outed as fake. The rumor traced back to Russian intelligence, but the damage was done because way more people read the headline than the retraction. A fucking a whole bunch of you know politicians, you know retweeted this spread this lie Representative for the office of the director of national intelligence said during a briefing about the incident The intelligence community assesses that Russian influence actors created an amplified content alleging inappropriate activity committed by the Democratic vice presidential candidate during his earlier career when asked why Russia was trying to disparage Kamala and her running mate, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walls campaign said, Vladimir Putin wants Donald Trump to win because he knows Trump will roll over and give him

anything he wants. We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections. Later that same month, a video of a man sifting through election ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and tearing up those cast for Donald Trump goes viral online. Looks like election interference, of course. The original post on X got over 1.2 million views in the very few days it was up before getting deleted. Who created that video?

Of course, Storm1516. November 7, 2024, the Storm1516 troll account, uh, at O'Canonist posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, of a group of Ukrainian military personnel shooting a mannequin wearing a red hat and a white shirt. Caption of the video read, Ukrainian soldiers dress up a mannequin in a Trump 24, Trump 2024 t-shirt and MAGA hat. They then began firing at it and set it ablaze. It's time to defund this degenerate country. Within 24 hours, AtokanonistPost had over 13.4 million views, over 131,000 likes, and was retweeted over 26,000 times. Including by a few high-profile conservative influencers such as Gunther Eaglemannann who retweeted the video with the caption,

We are no longer going to fund wars in countries that hate Americans. These Ukrainians made sure to let us know what they think of us. Unbeknownst to Eaglemann, or maybe he did know but just didn't give a shit because he knew it would play to his audience, the video was a meticulously curated piece of Russian propaganda produced, edited, disseminated by Storm 1516. Jumping to this year now. In January of 2025, Storm 1516 circulated a fake e-news segment about how USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, paid various American celebrities millions and millions of taxpayer dollars to visit Keefe in order to boost Lensky's popularity in America.

The video and the claims in it? All completely fake. But it was apparently convincing enough to persuade both Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. to re-share it on their own accounts. After that, this fake ass video reported as truth amassed over 32 million views. And by the time you hear this podcast, more disinformation bullshit will have been created and circulated within the US and within other nations were not their only target by storm 1516 and that disinformation will undoubtedly then be shared by thousands if not millions

probably millions of Americans and citizens of other countries who believe it to be truth and you might be one of them and you might believe their bullshit because they've already gotten in your head thanks to pumping out similar narratives for fucking years what What you think about Ukraine, what you think about vaccines, what you think about various US politicians, a fair amount of what you believe right now might be due in large part to a consistent fucking stream of Russian propaganda. How deep into your mind have they already burrowed? It's truly scary shit.

Now let's pop out of this timeline so I can share a few more details on how Russia's modern propaganda machine operates as it tries to topple us from within and then, you know, what I think we can do to fight against this. Back! Barely! Oh, uh, real quick, before I share those thoughts, I do need to sneak in just one more sponsor here. Hello! It is me, Yuri Putin! Maybe I brought out Vladimir, but he no speak to me, because he me I was talking about my Soviet cheese meat nourishment held in solidarity by strong selfless common bread. How can I be quiet about what delicious communist fuel I make fresh every other month at the place of my food business? The Department of Good Physical Health conditioned the vision of sustenance dwelling Yuri Putin's

glory of Mother Russia digesting nibbles. We just got shaker of dairy water into more cold and less liquid shape of tasty sweet, but not weak capitalist candy drink. In both courageous cocoa and victory vanilla for Glory of Putin's bold war against Ukrainian aggression of flavors. war against Ukrainian aggression of flavors. Or perhaps you'd like to try my poetry-powered chest meat held in solidarity by strong Soviet comrades-in-arms. You may like it. If it is strong Soviet nourishment for building to dismantle lies of evil capitalist dirty

little piggies, then you come to the right place in the end and respectfully put in love. For putting in rush in your strong heart. The Department of Good Physical Health Conditioned Division of Sars-Lis Dwell in your importance, Gloria Mother Russia, touch your toes and I'll see you there. For Russia! Holy shit, that sounds like one of the fucking worst hamburger places on Earth. But, you know, I guess if you're in Russia, you know, just check it out. Now before I dig into any preliminary research one of our researchers have done here, I do like to first read a variety of articles, watch a

variety of videos, you know, about whatever the subject of the week is. And since this week, this subject was one I came up with when I was particularly passionate about. I watched more videos than most and the best video I found to explain modern Russia's cyber disinformation strategy is called the postmodern hell of Russian propaganda. Created and posted by Vlad Vexler, April 3rd, 2022. To share who Vlad is, I referenced him earlier, but I'll read a bit from his bio now. He was born in Soviet Moscow, 1981, grew up in an apartment with four generations of his family, including a great-grandmother who had lost all her possessions during the Russian Revolution. Economic turmoil meant that through his childhood there was rationing of basic provisions and supermarkets with no food.

With the economic situation worsening, his family escaped to Israel where Vlad had his first taste of the West. A few years later, they immigrate to the UK. Vlad becomes a British citizen and he makes his home in London. In 2003, during postgraduate studies at Oxford University, Vlad contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the stabilitating health condition of the brain and nervous system. Now being physically unable to hold down a traditional office job, he began to figure out how to make money with his mind as a content creator. He builds his content as a philosopher's guide to our political world, and I fucking love

how he condenses, summarizes, dispenses very heady information. And in the video I watched, he shares what he considers to be the four pillars of modern Russian propaganda. I found this fascinating, brilliant and terrifying. Number one, felching. God damn it! Why do I keep doing that? No, brilliant and terrifying. Number one, Felching. Goddamn it! Why do I keep doing that? No, not Felching. Number one is doubt truth itself. Not just a particular truth, but the very idea that there is a truth to be discovered. Russia wants the citizens of whatever nation and culture they're targeting to question reality itself.

Just think about that. They want you to start questioning the very nature of truth. Take Russia and Ukraine. They don't just want you to think that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the fault somehow of Ukraine, which is fucking insane. They want your doubt to run so much deeper. They want you to think, is any war really anyone's fault? Does it even matter who the aggressor is? What even is war? Really? What really are national borders? I mean just arbitrary lines carved up by long-dead politicians and King's rights. I mean who really cares if some chunk of land is inhabited by people calling themselves quote Russians, quote Ukrainians. What does it really matter in the end? They want you to have a full-blown existential crisis. And why?

Well, because if they're able to deprogram you that thoroughly, they can then reprogram you to believe whatever they want you to believe. Number two, give up commitment to consistency. Whereas Soviet Cold War propaganda created a consistent alternative version of reality, a narrative the Soviets would maintain for years, like, you know, American capitalists, evil, racist, sexist bastards. Modern Russian propaganda wants to create chaos. They deliberately send out mixed messages, trying not to force any consistent narrative, but to make you think that essentially reality, as you have known it,

is breaking down before your eyes. They want you to trust no one and nothing. And that tactic reminds me of a cult leader, wearing down and exhausting their followers with a steady stream of contradictory nonsense and cycleobabble and eventually the followers are just so fucking exhausted and confused they don't have faith in much of anything they no longer trust themselves it's a terribly depressing hopeless position to be in and eventually they just want someone to tell them what to think what

to do and there's mother Russia for just that number three prioritize. They kick out a massive amount of disinformation that is intentionally contradictory, flood the internet with confusing divisiveness to again make you question reality and truth. That's similar to number two. This next one crucial to understanding how Russian propaganda works so well, I think. Number four, Russian propaganda starts not with what should motivate you, but with what should motivate you, but with what already motivates you. For example, they're not going to try and convince you to love Putin if you hate Putin.

Like the Soviet Union of old would have done. No, if you already hate, say, communists or socialists, they're going to try and get you to hate them even more. They're going to flood your informational access with disinformation and distorted truths about socialists and communists, amp up distorted truths about socialists and communists, amp up your hatred of socialists and communists, and to fear some kind of impending communist takeover, you know, and who's gonna try and pull off that communist takeover? Well, maybe the Democrats, you know, people you're already prone to thinking of communist leanings.

They're gonna come for your guns, your freedom, your property, your children. They're gonna fucking destroy you. They're gonna destroy your nation. They're gonna fuck up everything you love. They want to bring your hatred to just this boiling level. Or if you already don't like the MAGA movement, they're gonna flood your informational field with disinformation and distorted truths about MAGA and bring your rage to a fever pitch.

They're gonna make you think that the MAGA movement wants to turn America into a version of fucking Gilead from the Handmaid's Tale. You know, that soon if you're a, oh you're gonna be an enslaved breeder being raped by your commander every day and if you resist you'll be sent to die in the radioactive colonies. Right? They're gonna take what you already fear, amplify, distort that fear, exaggerate it until you feel completely paralyzed by it, until it consumes you. They're gonna take what you already hate about America

and just make you just obsessed and overwhelmed by that hatred. Russia will also, as they flood the web with disinformation, send, you know, see discord and conflict within a movement or protest, trying to get protesters or members of the same movement to fight with each other, right? This is constant chaos.

They wanna create as much division and mayhem as possible. Just keep dividing us in the smaller and smaller factions who hate everyone else. Just full of paranoia. They want to say, first divide, you know, our population into two sides of a political discourse, right? Republicans, Democrats, conservative liberals, but that's not where it's going to end, right? Then they're going to want to divide each side further, have Republicans not only

fight with Democrats, but with themselves. Oh, you're a Republican who doesn't love Trump? Then they're going to want to divide each side further, have Republicans not only fight with Democrats but with themselves. Oh, you're a Republican who doesn't love Trump? Then fuck you, you're not a Republican. Oh, you're a Democrat who doesn't want, I don't know, fucking socialized, you know, hell's good. Well, fuck you, you're not a real, just brutalize the entire population's psychological health. And why? Because a divided nation will not stand. And if they can topple their enemies from within They can take over more land get better trade deals They can do pretty much whatever the fuck they want so much easier and I think for Putin, you know, I think it's it's this deeper I

Think he just revels and this is speculation But I think he just revels in destruction of the West because he wants to celebrate finally winning the Cold War I just think he hates America to a degree many people don't understand here. And to win the Cold War, right, he wants us to be outraged. Even when we discover, you know, the propaganda, he wants us to be outraged by the fact that the propaganda could be injected into our social media companies and elsewhere. Why weren't our politicians protecting us?

Right, it undermines our trust and faith in government to keep us safe from this kind of shit. They want us to bicker over what information is really Russian and what isn't. They want you to be fucking mad at me for pointing out that Trump benefited from Russian interference as if I'm partisan. They want the truth to appear partisan. They want the truth to appear divisive. They want me pointing out the truth to be seen as me being anti-American, anti-patriotic. How dare I criticize, you know, the leader of this nation? How dare I fucking reveal truth? They want us to fight, hate, distrust, and they're fucking good at it. We currently have no

idea how many Facebook pages or Instagram profiles, etc. are actually Russian propagandas or AI bots created by, you know, with software by Russian propagandists because they're so insidious so sneaky and also because think about this Facebook Instagram TikTok etc they don't want us to know if they're compromised that would be devastatingly bad for their business model they don't want their customers to lose faith in their systems right just like the Democratic Party in 2016, they are more concerned with succeeding themselves than they are with the health of the overall country. Politicians don't want us to know the real extent. Our politicians, they don't want us to know the real extent of

Russians, you know, Russia's cyber invasion of the US. Not some of them, right? Because it makes them look bad. Or because the interference and chaos helps advance their careers. I think there's an insane proliferation of Russian interference online in America today. I mean, how many times have you been online, clicked on the profile of somebody who left some, I don't know, shit-stirring comment that fired you up under a YouTube video or a Facebook comment, etc., you know, and then you reach their account and it looks fake as fuck. I've done this so many times, hundreds and hundreds of times over the years. I've gone back and forth with somebody. Well, I thought it was somebody. Gone off on them online. Really let them,

you know, get into my head. Only to realize, god damn it, it's a fucking bot. You know, maybe the profile picture is a stupid meme. Maybe the posts have no captions. The tone of the post is not consistent. Maybe they're never posting selfie videos. If they do, the videos don't seem to match up with other posts, etc. There's so many accounts like that. There's millions and millions of these accounts. How many of them are pushing Kremlin agendas? So how do we fight all this insanity

and keep it from literally destroying our Western nations and societies and just making us fucking insane? Well, you might not like this, but I think it's, I mean, it would work. We have to kill our families and then ourselves. Think about it. If we're all dead, well, they can't manipulate us anymore. Come on, take that pony boy. No, for real though.

How do we fight back? For starters, and now I'm being 100% serious. We stopped spending so much time online. Stop doom scrolling. You want to check out what your friends are up to on Facebook? Yeah, fine. You know, you want to see what your favorite band or podcasters up to? Okay, cool.

You want some emotional support from members of a private Facebook group who seem to know a lot about the same things you know a lot about, you know, and they're just help, they're just being nice. Okay. But after that, why are you still fucking around TikTok? Just being fed their algorithm? Why are you still fucking around Facebook for hours on some occasions? What does that do for you? And more importantly, why would you ever get your news from places like Facebook or TikTok? That's fucking insane. Who are the people you're getting your news from? Real people?

Bots? Russian agents? Real people who've been corrupted by disinformation from Russian agents or their bots? What are their credentials? Why should you trust them? And why are you getting into arguments on social media with people you don't know but with people you don't even know are people? Or the people that they say they are. And this is the big one. Why are you saying crazy inflammatory things to people online that you would never say to anyone's face? What good does that do anyone? How much time are you spending absorbing information about current events from accounts sharing information coming from God knows where, maybe Russia, and then getting into arguments with random people online about that information. Information you don't even know is legit

with people who might be Russians or bots created by Russians. And then because you do that, you keep getting fed more of the same bullshit because of a toxic algorithm that preys on us, that feeds you more of whatever horrible shit you engage with. This is a great way to become a crazy extremist. Instead, start talking to real people more. In real life, get the fuck outside. Go to town halls, join some local political group that meets up in person, go to protests, go to rallies, put on by people you don't agree with or people you do, talk to them. Try and figure out why they believe what they believe. When people say something political to you that you don't agree with, stop ignoring it.

You know, don't just agree to be civil, just question it. You don't have to be a dick in that way, but you can question it. You can do it in a civil way. I had a conversation with a guy at the gym this morning before I recorded this. Guy named Ty, who I've talked to for years. A guy I like a great deal. We were meeting to hang out forever. We're going to go have dinner here soon. He assumed that I adored Musk as much as he does.

And I explained why I don't without being a dick. And he agreed that I made some fair points. And he agreed that I made some fair points. And I agreed that he made some fair points. And then, even though he is far more conservative than I am, I talked to him about how fucked it is that basic health care is getting more and more cost prohibitive for more and more Americans. And he agreed that the system needs to be changed and share some struggles that he has had with the insurance regarding his wife's recent knee surgery.

And how fucked over some of his friends have been and While he didn't agree with me necessarily that America should implement a two-tier health care system socialized care for everybody as a base Private concierge system for those who can afford it I would say he was open to the idea and then we went back to busting each other's balls about you know How fucking weak each other is or whatever about how much we can or can't lift but that kind of shit that's productive and it's free from Russian interference keyboard warring is not but what about the news you want to be informed right you still need to get some news where should you get it without being sucked into all this bullshit well there's this belief held by many in recent years that

non mainstream news sources are much more trustworthy than mainstream media. I question that. I think a lot of people would say that because mainstream media organizations make their money by getting ad dollars from big corporate entities, aka corporate sponsorship, and they're compromised because big corporate entities control them in the sense that they will pull that sponsorship if the person says something they don't like. And there is a logic to that. But don't influencers essentially get paid the same way? The more followers someone has, the more

listeners they have, the more they make from whoever's buying ads on their platform. But what about influencers who don't ever take ad money? Right? They're out there. Well, they make their money via subscribers. Subscribers who can cancel, who will cancel, if they stop liking the content creator's message. So aren't we, myself included, aren't we content creators also inherently compromised when we do this professionally? Aren't we controlled by trying to keep you entertained and pleased

in a way that is very similar to being controlled by a corporate entity? Does it matter if we don't say something because we're afraid it will make a corporate sponsor leave or because we're afraid it will make our fans leave? Right? The end result is the same. I think it's something to think about. The problem with media in general is that media doesn't make money based on how truthful it is, but rather based on how popular it is. Okay, so where do I think you should get your news? In my opinion, from a variety, keyword variety of several long established

news sources, my top four, that don't need to be yours. I like to check out Reuters, the AP, the BBC and Al Jazeera English. Again, they don't have to be yours. Maybe you could look to Fox, maybe then CNN to balance out some right bias with some definite left bias. And then I would look to other news sources not based in America to get a different perspective. I personally like the AP because they're not for profit. They don't endorse candidates. They're old. They were founded back in 1846, long before the USSR became a nation.

They have more than 100 regional offices around the world. They've earned 59 Pulitzer Prizes. They operate 235 news bureaus in 94 countries. The primary source of revenue comes from licensing fees, which are paid by its members and other organizations for the use of their content, including print, audio, and video material. They do have a slight bias. They do have a slight bias to the left. Reuters, better that way. I feel they are truly centrist.

Reuters also makes money primarily. I feel they are truly centrist. Reuters also makes money primarily through licensing news content and information to media organizations, technology companies, governments, corporations, as well as through subscriptions to its website and digital products. They employ around 2,500 journalists, 600 photo journalists in about 200 locations worldwide. They write in 16 languages, founded in London in 1851. To find out what bias a news agency employs, I personally like two rating sites. If you have

others you like more, please let me know. I like Allsides.com and I like MediaBiasFactCheck.com. Reuters, for example, currently has a center rating regarding bias from Allsides.com and a least bias rating from mediefactcheck.com. Fox News, hard right bias, CNN, strong left bias, Newsmax, very liberal, very far left, JK. No, their rating is all the way to the right on both those sites. But seriously, find a few that work for you. And then I would suggest downloading their apps as opposed to following them on socials, as opposed to watching clips on YouTube. That way you do not get sucked in to engaging with other users, you're not influenced by

comments that might be left by Russian propagandists. And I would suggest reading news articles or apps like Reuters instead of watching the videos because then you don't have to hear opponents bias and be influenced by that. I find especially Reuters app to be very boring in the best of ways. Very no frills. And that's, and that's it. Don't get your news from bullshit retweets and TikTok videos. And why is my batshit crazy uncle sending me this fucking bullshit from Facebook? That's insane. Don't sit on your couch and watch, watch, you know,

nothing but Fox news all day or nothing but CNN all day or nothing but Newsmax or nothing but MSNBC hour after hour until you're so worked up you're about to have a goddamn stroke. You know, they get paid to work you up. If it bleeds, it leads. Fear sells. They're paid to be sensational. If you want to watch fear-mongering news all the time, well, you're gonna be afraid. And finally, when it comes to elections and your overall political choices, don't complicate it. Take an hour, take one hour of your life, get a piece of paper, write down what you care about. Are you pro-life or pro-choice? Are you pro-death or anti-death as far as the death penalty or just I don't know in general? Pro gay marriage or anti gay marriage? Would you be open to some form of socialized medical care or absolutely not? And so on and so forth. It not rocket science with each answer ask yourself. Why do you believe what you believe right know thyself?

How can you make intelligent choices if you don't even know where the fuck you stand? And then when it comes to election just go to each candidates website look over their platform Look up their voting record if they got one right see what they actually fucking do not what they say and just see Do their values line up with yours? Which candidate's values align with yours the most closely out of any of the candidates running the race? And then pick that one. That's fucking it. We make this shit so much more emotional, so much more complicated than it needs to be. And also, please hope that Putin fucking dies and that the next Russian in charge doesn't stick with their current efforts to fucking destroy us

through division and confusion, right? Just chaos. And hope that no other nation like China doesn't start doing, you know, the same shit to the same degree as efficiently. Shit that's only gonna get worse, only gonna get more effective as AI and deep fake technology evolves. And that's all I got. If you think I'm wrong, okay, yeah, fuck, maybe I am. Send me your better alternative or just an opposing point of view, whatever, to countering Russia's infiltration of our online lives, send it to Bojangles at time suck podcast.com. I would love to hear your thoughts because this shit's important.

Shit's gotten fucking crazy online. It's only going to get crazier. Unless we do something about our current collective online addiction. That's just gonna get a lot worse I truly believe that Russia could legitimately destroy our culture and Not have to fire a shot to do so if we allow them fucking Russia Just fucking die Putin you piece of shit time now for the takeaways Time now for the takeaways. Time shock, top 5 takeaways.

Number 1. Propaganda has been an inherent part of the Russian political and military system since the USSR was first formed in 1917. However, the Soviets began to perfect their brand of propaganda during the Cold War by manipulating domestic and international media and engaging in active measures. 2. The Internet Research Agency, better known as the Russian Troll Factory, was a Kremlin-backed propaganda generator disguised as a digital marketing firm. Using a staff of probably somewhere between 600 and 1,000 employees, it conducted disinformation campaigns in the U.S. with the goal of undermining democracy itself and sowing discord amongst our citizens. 3. In 2016, the IRA and the Russian military intelligence executed the biggest information interference operation in history. While the IRA spread disparaging conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton and posted inflammatory content online, the GRU hacked

into the DNC's computer system and stole confidential campaign information and thousands of emails, which then systematically leaked to the American public. Number 4. The IRA was eventually publicly shut down, but then privately resurrected as Storm 1516, another generator of very effective Russian propaganda that is active right now. Number 5. New info.

On November 12, 2016, around 10,000 people marched in a protest called Trump is not my president. One of the largest demonstrations in the country. And guess who organized it? Russia. It was organized by IRA operatives on fucking Facebook. They don't care about Trump. They tried to help him win, but then immediately tried to turn Americans against him. They only care about instilling maximum levels of chaos in American society and making all of us hate each other and they're doing a

pretty goddamn good job right now. Time Suck Top 5 Takeaways Russia's terrifying cyber war against the West has been sucked. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for help making Time Suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic Lindsay Cummins for letting me Pull a couple of later nights on this one because I was obsessed and hearing me talk about it incessantly Thanks also to Logan Keith helping to publish this episode design and merch for the store at bad magic productions comm Thank you to Molly box doing some fucking awesome research to kick this shit off

Also, thanks to the all-seeing moderating the Cold to the Curious private Facebook page, the Mod Squad, making sure Discord keeps running smooth. Everyone over on the Time Suck Subreddit, Bad Max Subreddit, I apologize in advance for all the shit this episode's gonna give you guys. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker Up. You know, let's start with something light and silly from a funny sucker Ryan Rausch who sent an email to Bojangles at timesuckpodcast.com with the subject line of I see your blaze and raise you. Hey Dan and the whole Time Suck crew. Totally doubt this will be read on a pod

since there have been so many updates regarding the amount of blazes in the Norway attack episode. But I have found these names incredible and hilarious since I first heard them in 2015. And I simply cannot, I can't not share them with you. The Naval Academy football team had two Hawaiian brothers back in 2015, 2016, I think. Blaze Ryder came a year or two after his older brother Wave. football team had two Hawaiian brothers back in 2015-2016 I think. Blaze Rider

came a year or two after his older brother Wave. Yes a native Hawaiian whose legal name was Wave Rider. Blaze almost feels lackluster after that. That is fucking crazy and awesome though. Wave Rider. I hope he's never served. Anyway thanks for all you do. Time sucking scared to death. Keep the demons at bay in a very real way for me. On the off chance you read this, could you please give a shout out to my girl Megan? I introduced her to Scared to Death.

She introduced me to Time Suck. Despite me being a grandma and her being a baby, she's one of my best friends and I can't live without her. I'm only 31. Now you're a very young grandma. She got cut down. And she regularly asked me what the Great Depression was like.

I have to imagine she would ask you what it was like living during the Civil War. Oh yeah. Tell your dogs I said hi, serious I mean it, and please don't ever stop sucking. With love from your loyal sucker Ryan Rausch, and I love how you wrote pronounce it like a spouse. P.S. Don't let the first name confuse you. I'm a woman. Well, thank you, Ryan. Thank thank you Ryan thank you Ryan and yeah Lindsey loves to be like what was life like back in 1800s that kind of stuff. It was great as far as I can remember it was great I was born in 1872 but no I'm

glad he sent that message in I love these random names it just cracks me up when parents do that. Wave Rider it is is a cool name, but it's just it's just It's just a name that like alright now you've settled that kid with every time people meet them for their whole life They're gonna be like, I'm sorry Wave Rider? Your name is Wave Rider Alright this next one sweet Pennsylvania sack John Nace wrote him with a subject line of favorite episode ever He said dear suck master I wanted to say how much I love the recent episode on mr. Rogers. Oh hell yeah. Yes I am of course a fan of mr. Rogers, but more than that

I'm a Western Pennsylvania native and have deep connections to La Trobe, Pennsylvania You told me thank you for telling me that it's actually La Trobe by locals Specifically my alma mater st. Vincent college in La Trobe is well known for its connection to Mr. Rogers. Arch Abbott Nowicki, who made a brief cameo at the end of the episode, was still Arch Abbott when I attended in the 2010s. And SFC, or S, excuse me, SVC, is the proud home of the Fred Rogers Center. The Fred, as we call it, that's awesome, is home to the education department and houses a notable museum style exhibit dedicated to him, including the original clock, letters written by Fred, and several of the puppets. They also have a life-size trolley to take people around on campus tours. That's badass.

Shuttle fans during Steelers training camp, which takes place on campus, and much more. I know you're a Browns fan. I know. You know what? It's not a lot of fun. I picked the worst fucking... well, I wasn't gonna say I picked the worst time to be a Browns fan, but it's been a really bad time to be a Browns fan since like the 1950s. I know you're Browns fan, but if you can stomach the trip to training camp, you too can ride the trolley to the neighborhood of make-believe. One of my favorite college memories is when I got to be the ghost storytelling guide riding the trolley to the monastery graveyard. That's awesome.

Fred truly was an amazing man. Thank you for telling his story. Now, I know this is going long, but I wanted to give a few more facts about my favorite town. Laetrobe is home to a larger than expected amount of important people and things. First for many years when you entered Laetrobe, you would be welcomed by a sign of Daniel Tiger welcoming you to town. And yes, Laetrobe was widely recognized as the birthplace of the Banana Split and we host the Banana Split Festival every summer. I know you have a checkered history around banana peels, but you and the family are welcome so long as you can control yourself around that many sexy ass nanas. I don't know. As I said above, Laetrobe is the home of Steelers

Training Camp, but also we claim the first professional football game, no matter what those folks in Ohio say. Laetrobe was the site of the first airmail pickup in 1939, and St. Vincent Monastery is the oldest monastery for the Benedictine order of monks in North America. Laetrobe also the original home of Rolling Rock beer. I didn't know that and I'm not a huge beer drinker but when I did drink a lot more beer I loved Rolling Rock. Last but not least the coolest fact that I can't believe you didn't find in your research is that Arnold Palmer also from Laetrobe, Pennsylvania but wait there's more. They went to high school together. Arnie was a junior when

Fred graduated and a local legend says that Arnie's dad was the one to teach Fred how to golf. I know notable people go to the same high school all the time, but usually not in the small town of barely more than 10,000 in 1946. It's about 8,000 today. So thank you, Dan, for telling the story about a man who so many of us here try to emulate and for shining a spotlight on my neighborhood. You are special just the way you are, John. Well, John, well, thanks, neighbor. I loved all that information. Yeah, Fred Rogers, man.

That guy. Oh, man. I still wonder, like, why would I fucking get feeling? I would just feel so many emotions like going over Fred Rogers. I'm like, why? Ah, just a special human and finally scientific and strong-ass sucker Emily Savoy wrote in with the subject line of another scientist in her story Hello, Dan and the bad magic crew due to being a busy human. I've been playing catch up with time suck This morning on my way to work. I've I appreciate you listen at all

On my way to work. I finished the never surrender episode as a side note that shit's fucking wild Then the time sucker updates came on and one of them really hit me. I want to give you my story and I'm sure I'm just one of hundreds of other active scientists sharing their feelings on the current state of things. I'll ask some background. I worked in a bacterial ecology lab from 2014 until I graduated in 2018 with a BS in marine biology and microbiology at LSU. After graduation, I got hired on as a research associate in a viral ecology lab at LSU.

The job was great until it wasn't. My boss turned out to be a crazy asshole. I quickly found myself trying to help the graduate students navigate handling awful mistreatment. And truly, if you want to know the kind of person she was, she made me return to work in the lab during the COVID pandemic when I had a three month old baby and she lived alone. That's right, she made a brand new mom put her three months old in daycare at the height of uncertainty with the pandemic going on while she hermited herself away completely alone. Anyway, while she turned out to be crazy, I did know that I wanted to keep up with that type of work. I truly found my passion with lab work and helping students, so I applied for

the same job in other labs at school, got hired by someone on our vet medicine campus. Huge change of pace for me and a completely new field focus. New boss, also crazy. He was a massive workaholic, felt everyone should be on his schedule, he also believed that every member of his lab should be working on their own full-blown project, including me. So he had me doing a project that could have been a master's thesis project on top of handling all of his budget, ordering, onboarding of studentsing of students protocol writing troubleshooting and fish care.

We use zebrafish for experiments. I'm a salaried employee and this man had me working overtime every single week. I will say that with my position, there is an expectation of flexibility to be there late on occasion. Science is science and sometimes shit happens. Typically with the idea that you can leave early or come in late on other days to make up for the lack of overtime pay. But he worked me so hard and questioned me every week about not getting everything he has done that it was essentially impossible to do that.

So I reached out to a professor I had met during my first job. She had great news. She could afford to hire me. Her lab was another ecology lab, so I got to go back to the field that I was familiar with and really enjoyed. She's a person that believes in the happiness of her lab members before lab work, work-life balance

for everyone, and paying people actual livable wages. Her lab requires field work which I adore. She got me scientific diver certified so I could help out on more student projects. Essentially, I found my dream job. Finally found my dream job. I get paid to go out on a boat in the marshes of Louisiana. Our lab handles the annual science cruise to measure the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico every summer. This past year I got to go diving on the oil rigs in the Gulf for work. When I tell you that I find myself in the field some days feeling so grateful I could cry, I mean it. I spent years with abusive bosses that didn't care about the health and well-being of who worked for them and I finally didn't have to do that anymore.

But now I'm watching all of that be at risk. While my boss has luckily put a lot of effort into plans to keep the lab going, I'm watching students that I care about and want to see become successful worry about whether or not they'll be able to do anything in this field. I find myself arguing with people that cheered me on to get my degrees, insisting that I have no idea what I'm talking about, despite the fact that I've spent 10 years in an academic lab setting. It's infuriating.

I apologize for essentially just rambling here. If by some chance this happens to get read on the podcast, I have a message specifically for students and early career scientists and people like me that rely on new funding to maintain their jobs. We can do this. The science community is strong. Remember that no matter how awful people get, it is up to us to keep spreading accurate information. It is on us to be scientists and science communicators.

We have power with our knowledge and we will persist. And just know that I'm here as a support along with others like me. Whether you know me or not, if you find yourself feeling alienated and unsupported in your lab, feel free to reach out. I'll put my work email at the end of this. I just know that not every lab actually takes care of its people, especially students, you will get through this. Thank you, Dan and the Bad Magic Crew for all that you do. And especially for being a space that promotes actually listening to people that spend their lives working to become experts.

Best Emily S and here's Emily's email. best Emily s and here's Emily's email it is e n a l l 1 at LSU dot edu that's e n a l l at LSU dot edu e is an elephant n as in nerf a is an asshole. L as in lick. Another L as in also lick. At L as in lick again. At S as in scat. And U as in university dot E D U. I wanted there to be an F so I could say Felchie. And that's it. And I'll just leave it there. Thank you Emily for sending that in.

Thanks for sharing your email so people can reach out. I love when that happens. I love, you know, being able to help connect like-minded folks, especially in times of turmoil for whatever that, you know, group is going through. If other people want to send in their emails and be like, hey, I know shit's fucked up for this population right now, or whatever. Like, you know, here's my email. If you want to reach out and talk, it'd be fucking awesome. I'll share it. And I'll share it and

I'll check you felt yours later We all did Well, thanks for listening to another bad magic productions podcast Scared to death and time suck each week short sucks and nightmare fuels on the time suck andred to Death podcast feeds twice a month. If you haven't checked out Nightmare Fuels, fucking do it! I'm having so much fun writing them. Please don't spread Russian disinformation this week. Get off Facebook. Go outside. Go touch some grass. When you're done, keep on sucking. FELCH FELCH. This definition is provided by the fine folks at Dictionary.com. Felching is the sexual act of licking or sucking semen out of a partner's anus. Hope you enjoy this episode, comrade.