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Russian Propaganda and Disinformation

52:54 recording · EN · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

Russia's Doppelganger operation floods the West with cloned news sites to spread doubt, not any single belief.

  1. The goal is doubt, not one beliefJosh and Chuck agree the scariest part is a climate where people stop trusting anything and disengage.
  2. Doppelganger cloned real news domainsFake Washington Post and Guardian lookalikes on slightly different domains carried the stories, spread by bot farms.
  3. Western responses are whack-a-moleApp-store removals, EU bans and the Justice Department taking down 32 websites in September 2024 barely dent the flood.
Executive Summary AI
  • Josh and Chuck open with a joke about Jerry being taken by the Russians, then set up an episode on Russian propaganda and how the internet and social media made it a far bigger problem than the Cold War version.3:05
  • Chuck traces the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm founded in 2013 by a former criminal turned oligarch and Putin confidant who also founded the Wagner Group, which later tried to overthrow Putin.5:51
  • The Doppelganger technique was cloning trusted outlets like the Washington Post and The Guardian onto near-identical domains such as washingtonpost.pm, hidden behind shell companies and shady hosting services.14:06
  • The Good Old USA Project, from a Social Design Agency founder, targeted voters in six swing states during the 2024 election and spent about 10 million bucks getting right-wing influencers to push pro-Russia opinions.26:10
  • A study of the 2016 US election found almost no persuasive effect, with 1% of social media users receiving 70% of the exposures, suggesting the campaigns reinforce existing beliefs rather than change minds.45:31
Key Quote
“So maybe we should jump back a little bit and talk about the IRA, not the Irish Republican Army, but the Internet Research Agency or the Russian Troll Farm, as you might know it better as.”
— Chuck5:51
Key Quote
“And one of the reasons why it's so hard to do anything about it is because they use what the Rand Corporation researchers Christopher Paula and Miriam Matthews call a firehose of falsehood.”
— Josh12:07
Key Quote
“If all of a sudden you start to hear negative chatter about stuff you should know, I'm going to go ahead and say it was probably them after this episode comes out.”
— Josh29:27