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BTS ARMY Bogoshipda, from Bogotá, shared an image of the flag during the concert and described the experience as an opportunity to "align the chakras." The post included the hashtags #AsarabiaThanksBTS and #BTS_WORLDTOUR_ARIRANG_BOGOTA. #AsarabiaThanksBTS #BTS_WORLDTOUR_ARIRANG_BOGOTA https://t.co/SdiBE0rPKr #BTS #Concierto #Música (translated)

We are here because this is an emergency moment. We must preserve democracy. Wrapped in a rainbow flag, businesswoman Ana Nogueira, 41 years old: "We are here because this is an emergency moment. We must preserve democracy," she stated alongside Vânia Ferreira, a 55-year-old businesswoman and her wife of 18 years. #EleccionesBrasil #Lula #Democracia (translated)

Operation Dark Clark – Russia built a real organisation around a false identity Most influence operations create fake people, fake websites or fake news stories. Operation Dark Clark appears to have gone considerably further: Russian operators built what looked like a functioning research organisation in Latin America, employed real people to produce genuine research and concealed from those employees who was ultimately directing their work. OpenAI disclosed the operation on 8 October after banning a cluster of accounts originating in Russia. The actors used ChatGPT while targeting countries across Latin America, principally to damage Ukraine’s reputation, manipulate domestic political debates and manage a self-described research organisation called the Social Research Center, or SRC. OpenAI assessed Dark Clark as Category Five on the six-level Breakout Scale, the first operation it has disrupted since beginning its influence-operation reporting to reach that level. A front organisation with real employees The SRC presented itself as a research platform studying subjects including Latin America’s relationship with India and the Indian diaspora. OpenAI found more than 60 articles on its website, most of them apparently original rather than plagiarised. Internal reports produced by the Russian operators discussed hiring, dismissals, salary scales, staffing and unfinished research projects, strongly suggesting that the operators controlled the organisation rather than merely collaborating with it. At the centre of the structure was “Mia Clark”, a fictitious identity reportedly used to manage social-media activity and communicate with staff. According to OpenAI, the available evidence indicates that employees working for SRC in Latin America were probably unaware that the organisation was being directed by Russian actors. They interviewed experts, conducted research and wrote papers in what appears to have been good faith. The deception therefore existed primarily at the organisational level: much of the work was real, but the identity and strategic purpose of the institution commissioning it were not. OpenAI This is one reason Dark Clark differs from the familiar model of a troll farm. A reader encountering an SRC paper might be looking at research genuinely written by a Latin American employee based on genuine interviews. The manipulation lies further upstream, in who built the institution, selected its direction and controlled its infrastructure. From forged emails to real events The operation also appears to have attempted something more ambitious than online persuasion: inducing real people to produce events that could later be turned into propaganda. In May 2026, according to the operators’ internal reports, they created an email address impersonating Lima’s regional education authorities and instructed schools to organise activities about Ukraine for a cultural-diversity event. The instructions included references to Stepan Bandera, whose historical legacy remains particularly contentious in Poland and parts of Eastern Europe. The operators claimed that some schools complied, replied to the false address and sent photographs of the events. OpenAI could not independently verify every claim contained in the operators’ reports. It did, however, find Peruvian reporting matching the story, followed by publications in Poland and an English-language outlet in Hungary. Some coverage included comments from a Polish MEP calling for people displaying what he described as anti-Polish attitudes to be declared persona non grata. OpenAI therefore concluded that the fabricated starting point appears to have entered genuine political debate across national borders. The mechanism is unusually effective because the final photographs need not themselves be fabricated. If people can be tricked into staging a real event on the basis of a forged instruction, the operation creates authentic visual evidence of something that was artificially initiated. The same method in Ecuador and Bolivia Dark Clark’s internal reports describe similar efforts elsewhere. In Ecuador, the operators claimed they used a fake education email to encourage schools to stage ceremonies involving President Daniel Noboa and Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater. Ecuadorian media subsequently covered a matching controversy, and the country’s education minister issued a detailed denial. Other Ecuador-focused material included fabricated audio attributed to Ukraine’s consul and a false television report alleging that Noboa’s government was recruiting Ecuadorians to fight in Ukraine. Local fact-checker Lupa found that the supposed Teleamazonas report had never been broadcast, that images had been taken from Instagram, that the audio was AI-generated and that a company named in a supposed recruitment contract did not exist in Ecuador’s corporate registry. In Bolivia, an internal report described a fake audio recording supposedly made by an employee of state water company EPSAS during anti-government protests. It claimed that water supplies to La Paz would be cut and a state of emergency declared. The allegation produced a fact-check and an official denial. OpenAI says the operators explicitly described their objective as worsening the political crisis surrounding the demonstrations. Possible links to the post-Wagner influence machine Dark Clark did not emerge in a vacuum. The operators repeatedly asked ChatGPT about Politology and La Compania, names associated in previous investigations with the Russian influence apparatus that developed from structures once connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin. Forbidden Stories and its partners obtained 1,431 pages of internal documents describing a network known as “The Company”, which they reported had grown to almost 100 operatives and was conducting influence projects across roughly 30 Global South countries. Their investigation found that the organisation moved under the supervision of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, after Prigozhin’s death. Its documented budget for ten months of activity in 2024 was approximately €7.3 million. Two older Argentina campaigns claimed in Dark Clark’s internal reports — a false story about Javier Milei buying Cartier collars for his dogs and the staging of anti-Milei graffiti — had already been independently attributed by investigative journalists to Politology/La Compania. That is significant corroboration, but it is not enough to prove that every Dark Clark activity was run by the same organisational structure. AI was the back office, not the mastermind Perhaps the most important finding concerns artificial intelligence itself. In most documented cases, the Russians were not using ChatGPT to generate the propaganda seen by the public. Their principal use was administrative: drafting reports for an unknown superior, summarising operations, translating material and recording the supposed success of campaigns. Those reports also expose a weakness in the operators’ own measurement. OpenAI found instances in which they tried to claim credit for developments they had probably not caused, suggesting that they were not only attempting to manipulate Latin American audiences but also presenting an inflated picture of their effectiveness to whoever was supervising them. Dark Clark nevertheless broke further into the real world than any influence operation OpenAI had previously disrupted. Under the Brookings framework, Category Five means that an operation has escaped its original network and been amplified by high-profile individuals such as politicians. Dark Clark crossed that threshold because fabricated narratives appear to have provoked governmental denials, mainstream reporting and political comment in several countries. Its most important innovation was therefore not a particularly convincing deepfake. It was the construction of a partly genuine institution around a concealed foreign controller. The research could be real. The employees could be real. The interviews could be real. What was false was who they were ultimately working for. Sources OpenAI — Disrupting AI-enabled “false front” operations https://openai.com/index/disrupting-ai-enabled-false-front-operations/ Forbidden Stories — Propaganda Machine: Russia’s foreign influence strategy across three continents https://forbiddenstories.org/propaganda-machine-secret-documents-reveal-russias-foreign-influence-strategy-across-three-continents/ Forbidden Stories — Ghost Journalists, Cash and Kremlin Scripts: Argentina https://forbiddenstories.org/ghost-journalists-cash-and-kremlin-scripts-how-russian-operatives-tried-to-influence-argentinian-media/ openDemocracy — Russian influence operation in Bolivia https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/russia-bolivia-south-america-putin-evo-morales-wagner-prigozhin-covert-operations-propaganda-disinformation-foreign-interference/ Lupa Media — Fake Teleamazonas report about recruiting Ecuadorians for Ukraine https://lupa.com.ec/verificaciones/noboa-mercenarios-ucrania-ecuador/ Brookings Institution — The Breakout Scale https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-breakout-scale-measuring-the-impact-of-influence-operations/ Keywords: #DISINFORMED #Episode17 #OperationDarkClark #DarkClark #Russia #LatinAmerica #RussianInfluence #RussianDisinformation #Disinformation #InformationWarfare #InfluenceOperations #ForeignInterference #FIMI #FalseFront #FrontOrganisation #FakeInstitution #SocialResearchCenter #SRC #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #ChatGPT #OpenAI #NarrativeManipulation #SourceLaundering #InstitutionalManipulation #ForgedDocuments #FakeAudio #PoliticalInfluence #CovertInfluence #Peru #Ecuador #Bolivia #Argentina #Ukraine #Politology #LaCompania #TheCompany #SVR #WagnerLegacy #PropagandaMachine #GlobalSouth #BreakoutScale #OSINT #MediaManipulation #WRLD

BTS ARMY Colombia said that when watching the farewell videos of BTS in Colombia again, they noticed that the first fireworks were yellow, blue, and red, like the Colombian flag. The account suggested it could be a coincidence and joked that the audience was looking for signs everywhere after what they experienced. They also highlighted the farewell and described Colombia as "the country of dawns." #BTS_WORLDTOUR #BTS_ARIRANG #BTS #BogotáRecibeABTS #ARMYColombia #BTS #ARMYColombia #BogotáRecibeABTS (translated)

Pedro Sánchez presents himself as a dog without a master at a rally in Dos Hermanas, where he intensifies his criticism of the right while emphasizing housing policy as the social banner of the PSOE ahead of the general elections on November 29. #PedroSánchez #PSOE #Vivienda (translated)

Juan Cruz Alvarez wrote that Lindblad had made a solo spin and circled the opposite way, something that, as he pointed out, would normally have warranted an immediate black flag. He added that he apparently escaped a penalty, as in Baku, where he claimed Lindblad took his teammate out of the race and was not investigated. #F1 #Lindblad #Motorsport (translated)

The author stated that the flags waved by the insurgency in France allowed for the deduction of who their members were and what they sought, and maintained that the same would happen in Belgium, Germany, and Spain. https://t.co/GB8yVLn472 #Insurgencia #Francia #Europa #FR #BE #DE #ES (translated)

The author stated that Iker Jiménez and Carmen Porter had sponsored the anniversary of OKDiario, which he described as a pseudomedia outlet and linked to the far-right Eduardo Inda. According to what he wrote, the event, in which there was discussion about ETA and the flag of Spain was displayed, was funded with public money from the government and municipalities in the Balearic Islands governed by the PP. https://t.co/ebSsMAYItb #OKDiario #España #ETA #ES #BL (translated)

The author wrote that Max Verstappen did not receive a penalty for overtaking Lewis Hamilton under yellow flag. According to his publication, the stewards considered that the overtaking was unintentional due to the significant speed difference between them. He added that Verstappen was 70 km/h slower than on the previous lap and still overtook Hamilton. (translated)

Fernando Tornello reported that Max Verstappen achieved the best time at the end of the session and would start from pole in the Sprint race in Singapore, although he was under investigation for a possible infringement under yellow flags. He added that George Russell finished second, followed by Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri, and that Franco Colapinto improved and finished 11th, just 0.094 behind Pierre Gasly in Q2. #F1 #Verstappen #Singapur (translated)

Nachez stated that the onboard cameras were not working, that Fernando Alonso had spent the entire session without radio communication, and that Gabriel Bortoleto had not gotten to see the checkered flag. He also pointed out that the overtaking mode had suddenly been disabled in the middle of the session and questioned what had happened. #F1 #Alonso #GP (translated)

Abelardo De La Espriella said he was continuing, along with the Metropolitan Police of Barranquilla, the investigation into the installation of a flag and cylinders referring to the ELN in Barranquilla and Soledad. He reported that the Police, in coordination with the Prosecutor's Office, captured during a raid alias Kleiver, a member of Los Costeños, who had an outstanding arrest warrant for qualified and aggravated theft. According to De La Espriella, the investigation identified him as the driver of the vehicle used to transport the items. De La Espriella pointed out that the first items were found early in the morning in Ciudadela 20 de Julio, in Barranquilla, and that hours later they found two more cylinders in a parking lot near the Soledad Transportation Terminal. He added that the inspected items did not contain explosives. He affirmed that the operation was ongoing to locate the vehicle and another person who, according to the investigation, participated in the events. He also said that General Sandra Liliana Rodríguez was leading the verifications. De La Espriella maintained that the State should act in a coordinated manner, together with the Public Force, the Prosecutor's Office, and the judiciary, against those he described as narcoterrorists. He said that, while he was president, he would not allow Colombians to be intimidated and that such acts would have a firm response. #Barranquilla #FuerzaPública #Justicia (translated)

mmadrigal stated that, in his opinion, much of the hatred and misinformation was financed with public money, which ended up in the hands of media he described as pseudomedia and elected officials. He added that, as he wrote, the only known merit of the latter was to close bars and spread hatred while sheltering under flags. #Desinformación #Odio #MediosDeComunicación (translated)