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THE BLACK MARKET for SOCIAL MEDIA MANIPULATION NATO Stratcom COE Singularex
COUNTERING THE MALICIOUS USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA THE BLACK MARKET FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MANIPULATION NATO StratCom COE Singularex ISBN 978-9934-564-31-4 ISBN: 978-9934-564-31-4 Authors: NATO StratCom COE Research: Singularex Project manager: Sebastian Bay Text editor: Anna Reynolds Design: Kārlis Ulmanis Riga, November 2018 NATO STRATCOM COE 11b Kalciema iela Riga LV1048, Latvia www.stratcomcoe.org Facebook/stratcomcoe Twitter: @stratcomcoe Singularex is a Social Media Intelligence and Analytics company based in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Website: www.singularex.com Email: [email protected] This publication does not represent the opinions or policies of NATO. © All rights reserved by the NATO StratCom COE. Reports may not be copied, reproduced, distributed or publicly displayed without reference to the NATO StratCom COE. The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of NATO StratCom COE. NATO StratCom COE does not take responsibility for the views of authors expressed in their articles. Social media manipulation is undermining democracy, but it is also slowly undermining the social media business model. Introduction Around the turn of the decade, when the popularity of social media sites was really beginning to take off, few people noticed a secretly burgeoning trend — some users were artificially inflating the number of followers they had on social media to reap financial benefits. Even fewer noticed that organisations such as the Internet Research Agency were exploiting these new techniques for political gain. Only when this innovation in information warfare was deployed against Ukraine in 2014 did the world finally become aware of a practice that has now exploded into federal indictments,1 congressional hearings,2 and a European Union Code of Practice on Disinformation.3 At the heart of this practice, weaponised by states and opportunists alike, is a flourishing black market where buyers and sellers meet to trade in clicks, likes, and shares. -
The Church Committee, the CIA, and the Intelligence Dimension of US
13 Unquiet Americans: The Church Committee, the CIA, and the Intelligence Dimension of U.S. Public Diplomacy in the 1970s Paul M. McGarr On September 13, 1974, William E. Colby, the Director of U.S Central Intelligence, stood before the annual conference of the Fund for Peace, a Washington D.C. based non- profit institution, concerned with security and development in the global south. Speaking in the context of a post-Watergate political climate heavily laden with conspiracism and suspicion, Colby surprised his audience by making a case for greater “openness” and transparency on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency. Alluding to CIA-led interventions stretching back to the late 1940s, that had sought to effect regime change in Italy, Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, the Congo, and Cuba, amongst others, Colby acknowledged the Agency’s record in, “assist[ing] America’s friends against her adversaries in their contest for control of a foreign nation’s political direction.” Remarkably, America’s spymaster went on to publicly defend the utility of CIA interference in the internal affairs of independent sovereign states. “I . would think it mistaken to deprive our nation of the possibility of some moderate covert action response to a foreign problem,” Colby volunteered, “and leave us with nothing between a diplomatic protest and sending in the Marines.”1 In India, where the CIA had been under a media microscope since 1967, when the American magazine Ramparts exposed the Agency’s longstanding financial relationships with an international network of anti- communist educational and cultural bodies, Colby’s candor, in the words of U.S. -
Inside Russia's Intelligence Agencies
EUROPEAN COUNCIL ON FOREIGN BRIEF POLICY RELATIONS ecfr.eu PUTIN’S HYDRA: INSIDE RUSSIA’S INTELLIGENCE SERVICES Mark Galeotti For his birthday in 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin was treated to an exhibition of faux Greek friezes showing SUMMARY him in the guise of Hercules. In one, he was slaying the • Russia’s intelligence agencies are engaged in an “hydra of sanctions”.1 active and aggressive campaign in support of the Kremlin’s wider geopolitical agenda. The image of the hydra – a voracious and vicious multi- headed beast, guided by a single mind, and which grows • As well as espionage, Moscow’s “special services” new heads as soon as one is lopped off – crops up frequently conduct active measures aimed at subverting in discussions of Russia’s intelligence and security services. and destabilising European governments, Murdered dissident Alexander Litvinenko and his co-author operations in support of Russian economic Yuri Felshtinsky wrote of the way “the old KGB, like some interests, and attacks on political enemies. multi-headed hydra, split into four new structures” after 1991.2 More recently, a British counterintelligence officer • Moscow has developed an array of overlapping described Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) as and competitive security and spy services. The a hydra because of the way that, for every plot foiled or aim is to encourage risk-taking and multiple operative expelled, more quickly appear. sources, but it also leads to turf wars and a tendency to play to Kremlin prejudices. The West finds itself in a new “hot peace” in which many consider Russia not just as an irritant or challenge, but • While much useful intelligence is collected, as an outright threat. -
The Mitrokhin Archive Reveals the STASI Usage of Number Stations
The Mitrokhin Archive reveals the STASI usage of number stations Major Vasili Mitrokhin (1922- 2004) was a senior KGB archivist. He began his carrier in the Soviet secret service from 1948. He started as overseas undercover operative, but later was moved to archives of the KGB's First Chief Directorate. It was responsible for foreign operations and intelligence collection activities by the training and management of the covert agents, intelligence collection management, and the collection of political, scientific and technical intelligence. As archivist he gained access to many secret and sensitive documents. He became disillusioned with the Soviet system by listening western radio broadcasts and reading the documents about the Soviet repressions and atrocities. He managed to make copies and detailed notes of the documents from the archive, while he supervised the archive move from Lubyanka building to the new KGB headquarters at Yasenevo. In 1985 he retired. After the collapse of the Soviet Union he traveled to Riga, Latvia and tried to make contact with the US embassy. He was however, turned down by the Americans who did not trust the authenticity of his documents. The UK embassy was more helpful and Mitrokhin gained appointment with the British Secret Service the MI6 and the 25,000 pages of files hidden in his house, covering operations from as far back as the 1930s. The content of these notes and documents have been described in various books, but now his archive has been made digital in the Churchill Archives Center. Among the published documents one document caught our attention, the STASI German/Russian lexicon of intelligence terms. -
Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference by Fletcher Schoen and Christopher J
STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVES 11 Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference by Fletcher Schoen and Christopher J. Lamb Center for Strategic Research Institute for National Strategic Studies National Defense University Institute for National Strategic Studies National Defense University The Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) is National Defense University’s (NDU’s) dedicated research arm. INSS includes the Center for Strategic Research, Center for Complex Operations, Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, Center for Technology and National Security Policy, Center for Transatlantic Security Studies, and Conflict Records Research Center. The military and civilian analysts and staff who comprise INSS and its subcomponents execute their mission by conducting research and analysis, publishing, and participating in conferences, policy support, and outreach. The mission of INSS is to conduct strategic studies for the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Unified Combatant Commands in support of the academic programs at NDU and to perform outreach to other U.S. Government agencies and the broader national security community. Cover: Kathleen Bailey presents evidence of forgeries to the press corps. Credit: The Washington Times Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference By Fletcher Schoen and Christopher J. Lamb Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Perspectives, No. 11 Series Editor: Nicholas Rostow National Defense University Press Washington, D.C. June 2012 Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Defense Department or any other agency of the Federal Government. -
The Russian Job
The Russian Job The rise to power of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation “We did not reject our past. We said honestly: The history of the Lubyanka in the twentieth century is our history…” ~ Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev, Director of the FSB Between August-September 1999, a series of explosions in Russia killed 293 people: - 1 person dead from a shopping centre explosion in Moscow (31 st August) - 62 people dead from an apartment bombing in Buynaksk (4 th September) - 94 people dead from an apartment bombing in Moscow (9th September) - 119 people dead from an apartment bombing in Moscow (13 th September) - 17 people dead from an apartment bombing in Volgodonsk (16 th September) The FSB (Federal Security Service) which, since the fall of Communism, replaced the defunct KGB (Committee for State Security) laid the blame on Chechen warlords for the blasts; namely on Ibn al-Khattab, Shamil Basayev and Achemez Gochiyaev. None of them has thus far claimed responsibility, nor has any evidence implicating them of any involvement been presented. Russian citizens even cast doubt on the accusations levelled at Chechnya, for various reasons: Not in living memory had Chechen militias pulled off such an elaborated string of bombings, causing so much carnage. A terrorist plot on such a scale would have necessitated several months of thorough planning and preparation to put through. Hence the reason why people suspected it had been carried out by professionals. More unusual was the motive, or lack of, for Chechens to attack Russia. Chechnya’s territorial dispute with Russia predates the Soviet Union to 1858. -
The Impact of Disinformation on Democratic Processes and Human Rights in the World
STUDY Requested by the DROI subcommittee The impact of disinformation on democratic processes and human rights in the world @Adobe Stock Authors: Carme COLOMINA, Héctor SÁNCHEZ MARGALEF, Richard YOUNGS European Parliament coordinator: Policy Department for External Relations EN Directorate General for External Policies of the Union PE 653.635 - April 2021 DIRECTORATE-GENERAL FOR EXTERNAL POLICIES POLICY DEPARTMENT STUDY The impact of disinformation on democratic processes and human rights in the world ABSTRACT Around the world, disinformation is spreading and becoming a more complex phenomenon based on emerging techniques of deception. Disinformation undermines human rights and many elements of good quality democracy; but counter-disinformation measures can also have a prejudicial impact on human rights and democracy. COVID-19 compounds both these dynamics and has unleashed more intense waves of disinformation, allied to human rights and democracy setbacks. Effective responses to disinformation are needed at multiple levels, including formal laws and regulations, corporate measures and civil society action. While the EU has begun to tackle disinformation in its external actions, it has scope to place greater stress on the human rights dimension of this challenge. In doing so, the EU can draw upon best practice examples from around the world that tackle disinformation through a human rights lens. This study proposes steps the EU can take to build counter-disinformation more seamlessly into its global human rights and democracy policies. -
Signature Redacted Certified By: William Fjricchio Professor of Compa Ive Media Studies Thesis Supervisor Signature Redacted Accepted By
Manufacturing Dissent: Assessing the Methods and Impact of RT (Russia Today) by Matthew G. Graydon B.A. Film University of California, Berkeley, 2008 SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY JUNE 2019 C2019 Matthew G. Graydon. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. S~ri' t A Signature red acted Department of Comparative 6/ledia Studies May 10, 2019 _____Signature redacted Certified by: William fJricchio Professor of Compa ive Media Studies Thesis Supervisor Signature redacted Accepted by: MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE Professor of Comparative Media Studies _OF TECHNOLOGY Director of Graduate Studies JUN 1 12019 LIBRARIES ARCHIVES I I Manufacturing Dissent: Assessing the Methods and Impact of RT (Russia Today) by Matthew G. Graydon Submitted to the Department of Comparative Media Studies on May 10, 2019 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Comparative Media Studies ABSTRACT The state-sponsored news network RT (formerly Russia Today) was launched in 2005 as a platform for improving Russia's global image. Fourteen years later, RT has become a self- described tool for information warfare and is under increasing scrutiny from the United States government for allegedly fomenting unrest and undermining democracy. It has also grown far beyond its television roots, achieving a broad diffusion across a variety of digital platforms. -
The Soviet Roots of Meddling in U.S. Politics
The Soviet Roots of Meddling in U.S. Politics PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 452 January 2017 Mark Kramer1 Harvard University The release on January 6 of an unclassified version of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s report describing efforts by Russian security services to influence last year’s U.S. presidential campaign in favor of Donald Trump evoked a sense of deja vu. Despite the advent of cyberwarfare, the Russian government’s attempts to sway the U.S. election in 2016 were strikingly reminiscent of Soviet “active measures” during the Cold War. The Intelligence Community report says that Russia’s use of cyberwarfare and other tactics in 2016 was “the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order.” This is undoubtedly true, but the report goes on to claim that “these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.” This sweeping characterization is toned down later in the report, but only slightly. The notion that Russian intelligence services’ actions in 2016 were unprecedented in scale reflects an inadequate understanding of the historical context. The reality is that the two main Soviet intelligence and security agencies—the KGB and GRU (military intelligence)—kept up a vigorous campaign for several decades to meddle in U.S. politics and discredit the United States. The “active measures” used by the KGB and GRU during the Cold War, including disinformation, forgeries of documents and letters, and the spread of propaganda through sympathetic individuals and front organizations, were remarkably similar to the tactics and goals of Russian intelligence agencies in 2016. -
ASD-Covert-Foreign-Money.Pdf
overt C Foreign Covert Money Financial loopholes exploited by AUGUST 2020 authoritarians to fund political interference in democracies AUTHORS: Josh Rudolph and Thomas Morley © 2020 The Alliance for Securing Democracy Please direct inquiries to The Alliance for Securing Democracy at The German Marshall Fund of the United States 1700 18th Street, NW Washington, DC 20009 T 1 202 683 2650 E [email protected] This publication can be downloaded for free at https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/covert-foreign-money/. The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the authors alone. Cover and map design: Kenny Nguyen Formatting design: Rachael Worthington Alliance for Securing Democracy The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a bipartisan initiative housed at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, develops comprehensive strategies to deter, defend against, and raise the costs on authoritarian efforts to undermine and interfere in democratic institutions. ASD brings together experts on disinformation, malign finance, emerging technologies, elections integrity, economic coercion, and cybersecurity, as well as regional experts, to collaborate across traditional stovepipes and develop cross-cutting frame- works. Authors Josh Rudolph Fellow for Malign Finance Thomas Morley Research Assistant Contents Executive Summary �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 Introduction and Methodology �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� -
British Anti-Communist Propaganda and Cooperation with the United States, 1945-1951. Andrew Defty
British anti-communist propaganda and cooperation with the United States, 1945-1951. Andrew Defty European Studies Research Institute School of English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History University of Salford Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, January 2002 British anti-communist propaganda and cooperation with the United States, 1945-1951 Contents Acknowledgements................................................................................................. .......ii Abbreviations.................................................................................................................iii Abstract..........................................................................................................................iv Introduction....................................................................................................................! Chapter 1 The Origins of Britain's anti-communist propaganda policy 1945-1947.............................28 Chapter 2 Launching the new propaganda policy, 1948.....................................................................74 Chapter 3 Building a concerted counter-offensive: cooperation with other powers, 1948-1950 ........123 Chapter 4 'Close and continuous liaison': British and American cooperation, 1950-1951 .................162 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................216 Notes Introduction .........................................................................................................226 -
PERSUADE OR PERISH Addressing Gaps in the U.S
PERSUADE OR PERISH Addressing Gaps in the U.S. Posture to Confront Propaganda and Disinformation Threats Dr. Haroro J. Ingram Program on Extremism Policy Paper February 2020 PERSUADE OR PERISH 1 INGRAM | PROGRAM ON EXTREMISM Abstract: The purpose of this policy paper is to assess the U.S. government’s posture to deal with malicious ‘influence activities’ (i.e. propaganda and disinformation) by state and nonstate actors. It argues that while the U.S. government has provided inconsistent support for its foreign policy and national security information sector for decades, since 2017 an effort has been made to lay the foundations for a rejuvenated U.S. posture to address propaganda and disinformation threats. However, significant gaps remain that will weaken those foundation building efforts if left unaddressed. This paper concludes with four recommendations focusing on (i.) the need to learn lessons from the institutions’ history, (ii.) the value of an overarching paradigm through which to understand a spectrum of threats, (iii.) the important role of overt attributed U.S government messaging, and (iv.) initiatives to strategically cohere interagency activities. The United States and its allies are facing a complex spectrum of propaganda and disinformation threats that are rapidly evolving strategically, operationally, and technologically. 1 The U.S. government’s ability to address these malicious ‘influence activities’ will depend on its adoption of an appropriately balanced, resourced, and legislatively empowered posture that will be as much a product of institutional history as contemporary strategic-policy decisions. This policy paper assesses the U.S. government’s posture to deal with these threats and outlines ways in which strategic-policy gaps, drawn from this analysis, can be tackled.