‘Nuclear Psychosis’ — Russian Style
As the 277-page ‘Doppelganger’ affidavit proves, the Russians know us better than we know ourselves
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Doppelganger — derived from the German word that means ‘double walker’ — is a biologically unrelated look-alike or double, of a living person. In fiction and mythology, a doppelganger, also spelled doppelgänger, is often portrayed as a ghostly or paranormal phenomenon and usually seen as a harbinger of bad luck. Other traditions and stories equate a doppelganger with an evil twin.
‘Nuclear Psychosis’ — Russian Style
They used ‘real facts to complement fake facts,’ except fake facts aren’t a thing. Just another weaponized oxymoron tilting ‘reality’ toward russkiy mir.
And the Russians spent big crypto to ensure the West was conditioned to believe lies about Ukraine, masking Putin’s gluttony and cruelty with fabricated bullshit about their democratic neighbor. The most difficult reading for me was how well they knew us — it was like viewing a psychological profiles of loved ones and feeling powerless, because of the accurate depictions of their vulnerabilities.
When the Russian agents talk amongst themselves, as they did in the dossier I read, they reveal a profound understanding of our reality and weaponize that knowledge to destroy us from the inside.
In my report on the RT indictment from yesterday — What’s the Frequency, Oleg? — I noted that the Justice Department had seized 32 internet domains in a “Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaign.”
And last night, to help out an ally on the other side of the world, I began reading the 277-page affadavit just before midnight. I’m a veteran docunerd so I’m happy to read court documents, footnotes, exhibits, etc, so you don’t have to, but if you choose to, you can view the affidavit here.
The doppelganger affadavit, as it’s colloquially called, included a dossier translated from Russian to English so we could understand exactly what the project’s directors were intending and how they view us in the West.
Relying heavily on influencers, AI-generated content, and paid social media advertising, the campaign directors drove internet traffic to ‘cybersquatted domains.’
A Mirror World
So now we’ll go through the looking glass together, to reveal a mirror world, where authentic news sites are mimicked with sophisticated trickery. Sometimes the bylines of real journalists were added to fake stories, and a site that may look like, say, the Washington Post, is slightly askew and always pushing the reader toward Russian narratives and away from democracy and support for Ukraine.
I am going to breeze through some highlighted pages with a bit of cut-and-paste commentary, but first I want you to understand the specific details from the DOJ:
The Justice Department…announced the ongoing seizure of 32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as “Doppelganger,” in violation of U.S. money laundering and criminal trademark laws. As alleged in an unsealed affidavit, the Russian companies Social Design Agency (SDA), Structura National Technology (Structura), and ANO Dialog, operating under the direction and control of the Russian Presidential Administration, and in particular First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko, used these domains, among others, to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections, including the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election.
In conjunction with the domain seizures, the U.S. Treasury Department announced the designation of 10 individuals and two entities as part of a coordinated response to Russia’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election. This announcement follows the designation of actors involved in Doppelganger announced by the Treasury Department in March.
“The Justice Department is seizing 32 internet domains that the Russian government and Russian government-sponsored actors have used to engage in a covert campaign to interfere in and influence the outcome of our country’s elections,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “As alleged in our court filings, President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, including Sergei Kiriyenko, directed Russian public relations companies to promote disinformation and state-sponsored narratives as part of a campaign to influence the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. An internal planning document created by the Kremlin states that a goal of the campaign is to secure Russia’s preferred outcome in the election. The sites we are seizing today were filled with Russian government propaganda that had been created by the Kremlin to reduce international support for Ukraine, bolster pro-Russian policies and interests, and influence voters in the United States and other countries. Our actions today make clear that the Justice Department will be aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by the Russian government, or any other malign actor, to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy.”
“The Department’s seizure of 32 internet domains secretly deployed to spread foreign malign influence demonstrates once again that Russia remains a predominant foreign threat to our elections,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. “At Putin’s direction, Russian companies SDA, Structura, and ANO Dialog used cybersquatting, fabricated influencers, and fake profiles to covertly promote AI-generated false narratives on social media. Those narratives targeted specific American demographics and regions in a calculated effort to subvert our election. Our republic depends on elections that are free from foreign interference, and we will not rest in our efforts to expose foreign malign influence operations and protect our democracy, without fear or favor.”
The propaganda did not identify, and in fact purposefully obfuscated, the Russian government or its agents as the source of the content. The perpetrators extensively utilized “cybersquatted” domains, a method of registering a domain intended to mimic another person or company’s website (e.g., registering washingtonpost.pm to mimic washingtonpost.com), to publish Russian government messaging falsely presented as content from legitimate news media organizations. In other instances, the perpetrators sought to create their own unique media brands to promote Doppelganger content (e.g., Recent Reliable News). Among the methods Doppelganger used to drive viewership to the cybersquatted and unique media domains was the deployment of “influencers” worldwide, paid social media advertisements (in some cases created using artificial intelligence tools), and the creation of social media profiles posing as U.S. (or other non-Russian) citizens to post comments on social media platforms with links to the cybersquatted domains, all of which attempted to trick viewers into believing they were being directed to a legitimate news media outlet’s website.
Overview
The affidavit describes the perpetrators’ own internal strategy meeting notes, project proposals, and other records obtained during the course of the investigation. Several notable propaganda project proposals directed against the United States included:
Good Old USA Project: Attachments 8A, 8B
The Guerilla Media Campaign: Attachments 9A, 9B
U.S. Social Media Influencers Network Project: Attachments 10A, 10B
Doppelganger’s foreign malign influence efforts were not directed solely against audiences in the United States. Other targets of the perpetrators’ propaganda included Germany, Mexico, and Israel, among others. Doppelganger’s influence campaigns sought to influence the citizenry of those countries to support Russian government objectives, including by undermining the United States’ relationship with those countries.
Doppelganger’s use of the U.S.-based domain names at the direction and control of, and for the benefit of, sanctioned persons, including Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko, SDA, and Structura, violates the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). As a result, the accompanying payments for Doppelganger’s online infrastructure violate federal money laundering laws. In addition, Doppelganger’s publication of content on cybersquatted domains with names and content that mimic legitimate media outlets violates federal criminal trademark laws because those domains feature trademarks registered on the Principal Register maintained by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Cut and Paste Lowlights
So those are the facts of the domain seizures, and what we learn almost immediately is this was a project overseen by Putin.
The Russians directing the doppelganger operation “took notes related to at least 20 Russian Presidential Administration meetings.”
The directors took steps to be effective in the “creating of a nuclear psychosis.”
We watch as they plot their psychological warfare attacks on European nations, noting that Germany was a particularly soft target.
In meeting notes, one participant suggested using “real facts to complement fake facts.”
Fake facts don’t exist. Lies do, and the Russians pollute the minds of the West with their intentional and targeting lies.
“One suggestion included trying to ‘make a fake on an American soldier that raped a German woman. That would be great!’”
🥺
Another meeting note:
“We need influencers! A lot of them and everywhere. We are ready to wine and dine them.”
As noted, we learn that Putin received direct reporting about the ‘project.’
They refer to a media cluster with 40-50 websites per country, including the use of influencers.
Of course, no mind goes unhacked, so the dossier shows they also targeted the Russian people with influence campaigns to benefit Putin’s ‘election.’
“Our battlefield is here,” they declared.
It gets quite interesting when my colleague and Bette member Zarina Zabrisky’s report in Byline Times is included in an internal document titled Countermeasures by foreign agencies and organizations.
Their internal memo reads:
The “collective West” countries are seriously concerned by the effectiveness of the project. Government and private agencies of all four countries—Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community and Federal Foreign Office, France’s General Secretariat for Defence and National Security, the US Department of State, and Israel’s Security Agency, as well as major online platforms, factcheckers, and investigators such as META, Microsoft, DesInfoLab, and others—have been involved in the effort of countering our narratives since September 2022. Articles about the project and its “destructive impact on public opinion” have been regularly published by major European and US media outlets.
Zabrisky’s report is listed along with 15 other examples in Exhibit 2, which “reflects SDA’s acknowledgement of its role in Doppelganger,” according to the FBI.
And in order to combat social media companies from identifying ‘cybersquatted domains’ and blocking them, the agents planned to post “60,000 comments per month for France and Germany combined.”
A Separate Department for Fakes — A Factory!
SDA’s strategy for implementing its foreign malign influence campaigns was to create ‘a factory’ just for fakes, specifically aimed at England, Germany, and Italy.
A neat and often used trick was to create fake profiles, people posing as US citizens or anyone but a Russian. These fakes would post comments and content promoting Russian narratives, and then include a handy hyperlink to “the cybersquatted domain impersonating a legitimate news outlet.”
By doing this, they could dupe Joe American into believing he was sharing the point of view of a fellow American, and not the Russian government.
Big Brother Is Watching
Here’s an interesting bit. Big Brother is watching — the Russians are monitoring thousands of pro-Russian bullshit artists, and they’re also monitoring thousands of ‘anti-influencers’ holding views deemed ‘contrary to Russian objectives.’ Here is that paragraph:
SDA documents further reveal that SDA extensively monitors and collects information about a large number of media organizations and social media influencers. One document revealed a list of more than 2,800 people on various social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Telegram, spanning 81 countries, that SDA identified as influencers, including television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors, and comedians. When referring to politicians, the list often mentioned which U.S. state and/or political party they represent and the position they hold in Congress. The U.S.-based influencers accounted for approximately 21% of the accounts being monitored by SDA. On another list of over 1,900 “anti-influencers”14 from 52 countries, the U.S.- based accounts comprised 26% of the total accounts being monitored by SDA. I assess that “anti- influencer” indicates that the account posts content that SDA views as contrary to Russian objectives. Based on my review of other records obtained during this investigation, I know that SDA adds information captured through its monitoring efforts to dashboards. These dashboards analyze trends in public opinion and thereby measure the effectiveness of the malign foreign influence campaign based on its impact on public opinion. SDA’s content varies from project to project; however, it can include videos, memes, cartoons, social media posts, and/or articles. SDA’s content delivery also varies each campaign, but often relies heavily on social media posts driving targeted audiences to domains SDA controls, like the SUBJECT DOMAINS.
Media Mirror Outlets
They called the doppelganger’s use of cybersquatted domains ‘media mirror outlets,’ and they deployed them to ‘escalate’ and ‘destabilize’ our ‘societal situation.’
‘The US is behind everything’ is a component of narrative warfare used against Germany.
Targeted Social Engineering
The Russians engage in what they call ‘targeted social engineering’ by mass distribution of text comments and memes, blanketing social media platforms, in a ‘commentary campaign’ to spread false narratives bolstered by their ‘fake facts.’
The Good Old USA Project
That title is a euphemism for targeting the US 2024 election. And the goal: to steer Americans away from Ukraine with ‘bogus’ stories complimented by mass distribution. More social engineering.
Pursuant to a Warrant
We also learn that Meta was served a warrant so that is how we are able to see the actual targeted advertising by the Russians. That is also how we learned the doppelganger campaigns use of AI for ‘negative advertising about US politicians.’
The Guerilla Media Campaign in the United States
This campaign aimed to exploit the polarization of US society.
Least surprising, everything was paid in virtual currencies in an attempt to make the financial transactions opaque.
The Russians found Musk’s Twitter ‘user friendly’ when it came to creating ‘a network of 200 accounts… four in each of the 50 states: two active and two dormant.’ They ‘active’ is a fictitious persona make-believing they represent a community of local activists. The goal of that project was to reach a million people.
Like Russian Nesting Dolls
The FBI described the trickery like ‘russian nesting dolls’ — layering on top of layering, revealing a high level of technical sophistication.
And the reason there are zebra lines throughout the affidavit: the investigation is ongoing.
Between a Donkey and An Elephant
Politically, the Russians know what divides us and how to further wedge us apart.
Project directors note that Twitter is the only mass platfom currently ‘mass exploitable’ with little oversight.
The Russian directors ensured the “highly resonant content and hot topics should not exceed 20 percent of the total volume of all publications.”
That technique is called ‘parasitizing’ and it’s an old Soviet-era trick.
The Saddest Page
The saddest page came toward the end — when it became clear the Russians knew how America was thriving under Biden, how he’d saved the economy and in their words, “fed the rednecks.” So the Russians looked for proxy wars that could fool us into disparaging the best president in my lifetime, metaphorically kicking him to the curb. They denied us our own success story. And for that, I will continue to rage against the Russian machine until all that is left of the Kremlin is a crater and a lone wooden signpost bearing these words:
“For Crimes Against Humanity.”
Image courtesy High Fidelity
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I’ve been saying [that] this has been going on for a while. It’s nice to see it was not wishful thinking or dreaming. It's now looking like we were all correct about Russian influence as far back as 2016. Thanks to the DOJ we may yet expose this network of liars so the “average” voter in the USA has reliable and accurate intel and can (hopefully) make the right choice when they vote. Stay woke!