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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

Salaries for American electricians working on the construction of artificial intelligence data centers reach new heights, going up to $300,000 per year, competing with those of Wall Street bankers, due to strong demand amid a shortage of skilled labor. #Électriciens #DataCenters #Salaires (translated)

Several appeals have been filed before the administrative court of appeal in Paris by a collective of associations, including France Nature Environnement, against the construction project of the largest data center in Europe in Seine-et-Marne, estimated at 50 billion euros. #CentreDeDonnées #Environnement #SeineEtMarne (translated)

Johann Soufi wrote that the Nobel Peace Prize 2026 had been awarded to Navi Pillay, who chaired the UN commission of inquiry that concluded that genocide had occurred in Gaza. He presented this award as recognition of the role of international law in building peace and as a setback for Pillay's detractors. https://t.co/5NKbeBt0MZ #NobelDeLaPaix #DroitInternational #Paix (translated)

The author said they had commemorated the 1,000 Jewish men, women and children who, 85 years earlier, left the Bubny platforms on the first deportation transport. The author added that they had visited the construction site of the Center of Memory and Dialogue with Minister Golan May, Amir Weissbrod and Robert Rehak. https://t.co/SYu99znDCj #HolocaustRemembrance #Memory #Dialogue #CZ

Dividend King criticized an amendment which, according to him, would propose extending the duration of the Exit Tax to 15 years, compared to the current two or five years. He explained that this provision allowed the French state to tax the unrealized capital gains of certain taxpayers leaving the country, even if they had not sold their securities. According to his description, the taxation could be canceled if the securities were held for two or five years, depending on their value, but would become payable in the event of a sale before the end of the period. He also indicated that financial guarantees could be required depending on the destination country. Dividend King believed that a 15-year period would prevent taxpayers from selling without the French taxation on capital gains accumulated before their departure and could be contrary to European law. He added that the individuals concerned would still have to declare these capital gains to the French tax authorities, even after ten years of living and paying taxes in another country. He presented the amendment as a signal encouraging people to leave France before being subject to the Exit Tax and claimed that socialism ultimately erects barriers to prevent people from leaving. #ExitTax #Fiscalité #Expatriation (translated)

The author argued that the proposal would add another layer of housing hardship and said alternatives included confronting corporate landlords, reinstating an eviction ban and investing in a state construction company. They ended with a rhetorical question about what else could be expected.

The author described a fictional scene in which alien beings attacked an oil tycoons’ complex in Moscow at 9:00 a.m., before a large spaceship demolished the construction with fireballs. The post promoted it as a new book. https://t.co/iZoZHq1Btx #scifi #fantasy #amreading #scifi #fantasy #amreading #RU

The Belgian federation Febeliec advocates for the construction of new nuclear power plants, emphasizing that the industry would benefit more from the lower electricity prices that would result, while the challenges related to nuclear waste and the financing of subsidies continue to fuel the debate. #Nucléaire #Énergie #Belgique (translated)

The Belgian industry, represented by Febeliec, is calling on the Arizona government to prepare for the construction of new nuclear power plants, considered essential to ensure the country's electricity supply by 2050, and more competitive than distant offshore wind turbines. #Nucléaire #Énergie #Belgique (translated)

The account Les Mileistes Français reported that Javier Milei had received the award for the best economist of the year the day before, presented by the Paris Economic Forum. According to the account, he explained that his concern for the mechanisms of growth led him to study economics. In his speech, Milei stated that upon taking office, 70% of children were living below the poverty line, including 27% in extreme poverty, in an agricultural country that, according to him, could feed 500 million people. He declared that this rate had since decreased to 45% and that millions of children had been lifted out of poverty. However, he described the situation as still terrible, while presenting the ongoing evolution as the most beautiful in Argentine history. The account reported that Milei thanked several economists, including Philippe Aghion, who was present in the room, Robert Lucas Jr., as well as Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard. He also praised his ministerial team and his close associates. According to the account, he became emotional and paused while thanking them. #Économie #Argentine #Croissance (translated)

"The construction of new facilities cannot be a relevant response: given the current rate of growth of overpopulation, it would be necessary, to absorb it, to put a prison center into operation every six weeks. The General Controller of places of deprivation of liberty, Dominique Simonnot, regretted the absence of a 'national scale measure' to curb prison overpopulation, in an opinion published in the Official Journal at the beginning of July." #SurpopulationCarcérale #PrisonsFrance #Justice (translated)