Internet Research Agency

  • Narrative as a Weapon: Russian, Iranian, and Chinese Approaches to Cognitive Warfare 2026-03-19 13:45 Small Wars Journal The Social Design Agency (SDA), a Kremlin-linked agent, executed a significant influence operation known as Operation Doppelgänger from 2022 to 2024. Through Doppelgänger, the SDA disseminated pro-Russian narratives by fabricating legitimate news websites …
  • AI Fakes Spread Disinformation. Is the Distrust They Create Even Worse? 2026-03-09 13:08 Mother Jones Mother Jones illustration; Alejandro Barba/Unsplash Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Less than a day after President Donald Trump falsely suggested that Ilhan Omar had …
  • The Cognitive Battlespace: Psychological Operations, Influencer Warfare, And The Fight For Human Perception 2026-03-04 10:00 Military.com Military and intelligence doctrine increasingly identifies cognition as a central domain of modern warfare. Rather than focusing exclusively on physical destruction, contemporary conflict seeks to influence perception, belief formation, and decision-making …
  • Why Russia’s War for Minds May Be Its Best Weapon—An Interview with a Spanish Colonel 2026-02-26 18:10 UNITED24 Media Europe has invested billions in tanks, aircraft, and cyber defense. But another domain is often overlooked: cognition. In this interview with Spanish Colonel Juan Bustamante, we explore how Russia’s doctrine of information warfare leverages disinformation …
  • FT: The PMC “Wagner” propagandists massively recruit agents for sabotage in Europe 2026-02-16 21:09 Babel Recruiters and propagandists who previously worked for the Russian PMC “Wagner” have become one of the main channels for Kremlin-organized sabotage attacks in Europe. This is reported by the Financial Times, citing data from Western intelligence …
  • McIntosh: We’re being played, America. And we keep falling for it 2026-02-13 08:17 The Press Democrat - California Our federal budget deficit is on track to be another $1.8 trillion this year. Our national debt is fast approaching $40 trillion. Around 27 million people in the United States lack health insurance, which is a little over 8% of the population. The No. 1 …
  • Lies, deceit and disinformation: The fake news with the power to change the course of war 2026-02-06 18:57 Forces Network Deceit and disinformation - the weapons of grey zone warfare Can fake news really change the course of a war? Behind the scenes, hostile states can distort the stories that land on your newsfeed and change the way you see the world. "Info Ops" …
  • How Russia rebuilt hacker gangs to attack the West, leading to a US indictment 2026-02-03 17:01 The Kyiv Independent St. Basil’s Cathedral, right, and the Savior Tower on the Kremlin walls are seen at twilight from Red Square in Moscow, Russia. (Photo: Peter Turnley / Corbis / VCG via Getty Images; Collage: The Kyiv Independent) Muleshoe, population 5,000, sits …
  • Eurasia Review Interviews: Disinformation, Platforms, And Cognitive Security In The Algorithmic Age  2026-01-29 17:38 Eurasia Review An interview with Yuliia Dukach, PhD, Head of Disinformation Investigations at OpenMinds  Disinformation is no longer best understood as a sequence of viral falsehoods or episodic campaigns. It now operates as a persistent feature of the digital …
  • Did Racially-Targeted Ads Decrease 2016 Election Turnout? 2026-01-28 01:17 Urban Milwaukee - Wisconsin Get a daily rundown of the top stories on Urban Milwaukee Madison residents fill out ballots Tuesday, April 1, 2025, at the Madison Senior Center in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR Targeted digital voter suppression advertisements from undisclosed …
  • Racially-targeted voter suppression ads likely decreased 2016 election turnout 2026-01-27 11:53 Wisconsin Public Radio Targeted digital voter suppression advertisements from undisclosed organizations likely shaped turnout during the 2016 presidential election, a new study has found.  The ads mainly targeted Black, Native American and Latino potential voters living in …
  • AI-Powered Disinformation Swarms Are Coming for Democracy 2026-01-22 23:57 Wired In 2016, hundreds of Russians filed into a modern office building on 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg every day; they were part of the now-infamous troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency. Day and night, seven days a week, these employees …
  • Allegations of Russian Interference in Elections Raise Concerns Over Electoral Integrity 2025-12-17 23:27 Misbar Germany has accused the Russian government of a cyberattack on air traffic control, as well as attempts to interfere in German elections, and has summoned Russian Ambassador to Berlin Sergei Nechayev over allegations of Russian “hybrid attacks.” Germany …
  • Disrupter Of The Year: GAIM 2025-12-15 20:14 MediaPost It has been seven years since the editors of MediaPost awarded a media "Disrupter of the Year," and the last time we bestowed it, it was awarded to Russia's Russia's Internet Research Agency for the ingenious way it disrupted the 2016 U.S …
  • The war on disinformation is a losing battle 2025-12-09 12:29 The Verge As he called the House Judiciary Committee into session on a cold and snowy February day in Washington, DC, Chairman Jim Jordan was ready to take a victory lap. American free speech had been critically threatened, and now it was saved — in large part …
  • The Hybrid Threat Imperative: Deterring Russia Before it is Too Late 2025-12-08 04:00 Res publica While Russia's hybrid tactics are not new, their scale and sophistication in the digital age present unprecedented challenges. Executive Summary Hybrid warfare is not episodic, but a permanent feature of Russia’s strategy, rooted in Soviet “active …
  • The Long Arc of Influence: How Modern Governments Build and Weaponize Propaganda 2025-12-07 15:46 Military.com Propaganda evolves with technology, but the mission never changes: shape perception to shape policy. Propaganda has always evolved with technology. During World War I, the United States built its first formal influence machine through the Committee on …
  • From Darknet to Disinfo: How a ‘Bulletproof’ Russian Host Evades EU Sanctions 2025-12-04 21:38 Vsquare The Russian server hosting company Aéza is known for its involvement in the pro-Kremlin Doppelganger disinformation campaign, which spread propaganda through look-alike clones of major news outlets. In November, the company was sanctioned by the United …
  • The Hybrid Threat Imperative: Deterring Russia Before it is Too Late 2025-12-04 03:46 CEPA Executive Summary Hybrid warfare is not episodic, but a permanent feature of Russia’s strategy, rooted in Soviet “active measures” and enhanced by modern tools like artificial intelligence–enabled information manipulation and cyber operations. It exploits …
  • Slopocalypse Now 2025-12-01 11:42 Artforum Ani, X AI’s artificial intelligence companion, 2025. ON MY PHONE I have a clip of Ani, “a 22 year old beautiful blonde” anime girlfriend who engages users on Elon Musk’s Grok in flirtatious conversation, dressing in outfits that get skimpier as the “ …
  • Business, sport and Russia’s information warfare 2025-11-27 09:43 Business Matters Moscow relies on various instruments of “soft power”: from economic presence to cultural and sports-related projects. The Kremlin actively exploits the ideology of the “Russian world” and the narrative of “protecting compatriots abroad” in an attempt to …
  • X’s new location feature raises questions about the origin of some MAGA accounts 2025-11-25 13:49 El País A new update on X that makes it possible to see users’ locations has cast doubt on whether some of the most prominent Make America Great Again (MAGA) accounts on the platform are actually being operated from inside the United States. Since the platform …
  • Twitter’s Foreign Influence Problem Is Nothing New 2025-11-24 21:23 Mother Jones Elon Musk, X's owner, smiles at Mohammed bin Salman during the Saudi leader's November state visit.Evan Vucci/AP Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Late last week …
  • Social media’s reckoning may have arrived — thanks to Elon Musk 2025-11-24 15:08 Salon In 2014, Buzzfeed News reported on the Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in Russia that waged an organized propaganda campaign across social media. According to internal emails, operatives were instructed to run multiple Facebook, Twitter and …
  • The Marketplace of Ideas Isn’t Working 2025-11-24 15:05 TIME Magazine On a sweltering August afternoon in 1918, on the fourth floor of a hat factory on east 93rd Street in Manhattan, a young Russian immigrant named Hyman Rosansky tossed anti-war flyers out the window to the street below. The flyers urged workers to stage a …
  • Hybrid warfare in the Information Age: The cybersecurity implications of a distorted information ecosystem 2025-11-23 16:49 Business Day The rapid digitalization of modern societies has intensified the scale, speed and impact of information disorder, creating new vulnerabilities that adversaries exploit across political, social and security domains. Misinformation, disinformation and …
  • The ‘Dead Internet Theory’ and the Rise of Synthetic Politics 2025-11-20 01:36 The Good Men Project - California   By Mimi Mihăilescu, The Loop The Dead Internet Theory, once dismissed as ‘paranoid fantasy’, now offers a disturbingly useful framework for understanding digital politics. Mimi Mihăilescu argues that the theory’s growing credibility masks deeper …
  • Some of the largest online propaganda campaigns are using 'AI slop,' researchers say 2025-11-19 11:50 NBC News Many of the largest and most widely established state-sponsored online propaganda campaigns have embraced using artificial intelligence, a new report finds — and they’re often bad at it. The report, by the social media analytics company Graphika, analyzed …
  • After 15 years, HackPrinceton completes mission 2025-11-18 12:24 The Daily Princetonian - New Jersey On Saturday afternoon, HackPrinceton completed the mission it has pursued for 15 years: It hacked Princeton. HackPrinceton President Syber A. Tack ’29 claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that “HackPrinceton is proud to have succeeded in its …
  • Online, Russia Invents Ukrainians Who Cheer On Its Occupation 2025-11-15 00:50 The Moscow Times On Russian social media, they sound like ordinary residents of occupied Ukrainian towns praising Moscow’s “reconstruction” efforts, commending Russian soldiers for their bravery in battle and railing against the so-called “neo-Nazi” regime in Kyiv. …
  • Are We Ready? | AI, Espionage, and Influence, With Jessica Brandt 2025-11-13 16:42 Council on Foreign Relations LINDSAY: The world has turned dangerous. Is the United States prepared to meet the new challenges it might face? In this special series from The President's Inbox, we're bringing you conversations with Washington insiders to assess whether the …
  • The geopolitical costs of AI  2025-11-07 09:04 Geopolitical Intelligence Services What began as a scientific breakthrough has now become a complex security threat. Geoffrey Hinton, often called the “godfather of AI,” is a pioneering computer scientist whose work on neural networks laid the foundation for modern artificial intelligence …
  • Playing dirty used to be the west’s preserve. Now we’re letting Moscow beat us at our own game 2025-11-04 05:13 The Guardian We in the west used to play dirty – and during the cold war, we were good at it. Nowadays, we leave grey-zone tactics and hybrid warfare to Russia, which is winning the disinformation war. Europe’s pride in playing by the rules might just be democracy’s …
  • Foreign adversaries are weaponizing the intelligence revolution 2025-10-27 05:54 New York Post Russia launched a covert offensive in 2016 that took direct aim at American society. The operation affected millions through an ambush few citizens saw coming. No weapons of mass destruction were deployed. There were no fatalities. The soldiers didn’t …
  • How deepfakes and cloned voices are distorting Europe's elections 2025-10-24 21:49 Modern Ghana Europe's busy election schedule in 2025 and 2026 is being targeted by AI-generated manipulation on social media. But this time around, Europe's political landscape is transforming. The fight for voters' hearts is no longer waged on the streets …
  • Manipulation Of Social Reality 2025-10-23 07:12 Omaha Daily Record - Nebraska To stand shoulder to shoulder with my countrymen against the injustices of the world, were thoughts of a little boy who was raised to put his hand over his heart for the flag; that the differences of liberals and conservatives would be put aside for the …
  • What Nathan Did Next: A Kremlin-Backed Forum on How to Subvert Western Democracy 2025-10-17 18:07 Byline Times Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features When police stopped Nathan Gill at Manchester Airport on 13 September 2021, they did so under Schedule 3 of the …
  • Flights frozen across Europe in suspected Russian cyber strike 2025-10-10 18:57 Madhyamam In September 2025, several European airports suffered cyberattacks impacting the check-in system. These included London Heathrow, Dublin, Berlin Brandenburg, and Brussels. This caused thousands of travellers to be delayed or to miss their flights. Several …
  • Maxime Audinet: “One of the biggest strengths of Russian propaganda is its ability to adapt. It adapts to the targeted public.” 2025-10-07 19:42 Reporters Without Borders RSF: Who are the influence "contractors” and “entrepreneurs" that are significant players in the propaganda world, according to your research?  There are "influence entrepreneurs", both Russian and African, who decide to sell influence …
  • Russian Motivations Behind the “Hanoi Convention” Against Cybercrime 2025-10-07 16:07 Just Security Later this month, governments from around the world will be invited to sign a new international treaty: On Oct. 25, in Hanoi, Vietnam, the “United Nations Convention against Cybercrime; Strengthening International Cooperation for Combating Certain Crimes …
  • Algorithm Nation 2025-10-02 13:39 The New York Review of Books In 2019 Alex Stamos, the former chief of information security at Facebook, founded the Stanford Internet Observatory, a research center focused on foreign influence operations and other abuses of social media. Stamos had left Facebook in frustration over …
  • Russia accused of election interference in Moldova 2025-09-23 01:16 Straight Arrow News Russia is accused, once again, of interfering in a foreign election — this time, in Moldova. Several news outlets reported on a plan, allegedly created by the Kremlin, to weaken the position of Moldovan President Maia Sandu and her political party, the …
  • The GoLaxy papers: Inside China’s AI persona army 2025-09-19 16:42 The Record On a jet-lagged April morning earlier this year, Brett Goldstein’s phone buzzed with a message from a trusted colleague asking him to check out a link he’d just found. Goldstein, a former government technologist and now a special adviser at Vanderbilt …
  • Moscow's interest in this autumn's Czech and Moldova elections 2025-09-18 13:42 EUobserver In the coming weeks, both Moldova and the Czech Republic will hold elections. In Moldova, authorities estimate the Kremlin will spend €100m — €31 per registered voter — to influence the outcome.  In the Czech Republic, Kremlin-linked outlets are pumping …
  • Russia Targets Africa with Retooled Information Operations 2025-09-10 04:01 Africa Defense Forum As Russian involvement in Africa has shifted from the private Wagner Group mercenary force to government control under the Africa Corps, information operations also have evolved. Wagner widened influence campaigns and information operations in Africa as …
  • Russiagate Redux 2025-09-05 03:58 Quillette Eight months into Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, Portuguese president Marco Rebelo de Sousa remarked that the president of the United States was “objectively” acting as a “Russian asset.” That comment brought back the ghosts of the “ …
  • Jude Law is perfect as a petulant Putin in The Wizard of the Kremlin 2025-08-31 15:28 The Times Somebody, quick, give Jude Law an award. No, not an Oscar, but the George Cross for acts of heroism in circumstances of extreme danger. For, here, he has dared to play a thin-skinned, grudge-bearing and clearly very lethal Vladimir Putin in a sprawling …
  • ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin’ Review: Paul Dano Is Putin’s Kingmaker in an Olivier Assayas Movie that Won’t Start a Revolution 2025-08-31 14:52 IndieWire Paul Dano becomes embroiled in the cold heart of the new Russia in Olivier Assayas‘ mellow recounting of three decades of the post-USSR empire’s history in “The Wizard of the Kremlin.” A respectable if minor-register effort from the sometimes-detached …
  • We Failed The Misinformation Fight. Now What? 2025-08-26 21:35 NOEMA Credits Zeve Sanderson is the executive director of NYU’s Center for Social Media & Politics, and a research affiliate at the NYU Center on Technology Policy. Scott Babwah Brennen is the director of the Center on Technology Policy at NYU and a …
  • Hybrid Threats and the Evolution of Russian Sabotage 2025-08-26 08:44 E-International Relations Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Europe has witnessed a sharp increase in suspected Russian sabotage attempts (Richterova et al. 2024a). These destructive attacks, primarily leveraged against NATO member states, reveal important …