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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

Gustavo Petro said that he spoke with the Ecuadorian lawyer Washington Andrade and was surprised to hear the names of officials from Ecuador's judiciary who, he claimed, were seeking to promote international proceedings against him through lies and pressure on victims of persecution. https://t.co/X6ybPMbeZj #Ecuador #Justicia #DerechosHumanos (translated)

Ecuador has carried out a police operation that has resulted in the arrest of 21 people, including a key financier of a drug trafficking network, following the seizure of 13 tons of cocaine that links the country's most wanted trafficker with a police inspector detained in Madrid. #Narcotráfico #Cocaína #Ecuador (translated)

Daniel Noboa Azin stated that the authorities had captured Jackson Felipe Zambrano, whom he described as one of the main financiers of alias Pipo. According to him, the network was hiding shipments valued at USD 1.765 billion among exports and was allocating the money to weapons, hitmen, and acts of violence against Ecuadorian families. Noboa indicated that the National Police led the operation in Ecuador along with Europol and authorities from Spain, Belgium, Portugal, and the Netherlands. He added that the Gran Fénix–Cantabria operation resulted in 21 arrests and 23 searches, and asserted that those who fired, financed, or hid behind companies would be held accountable by justice. #Justicia #Ecuador #Seguridad (translated)

An Ecuadorian judge has acquitted 32 crew members of boats that were bombed by the United States in the Pacific Ocean of charges of 'criminal conspiracy' with drug traffickers, as no drugs or weapons were found and the lawyers indicate that the evidence only contained family photos. #Ecuador #drugs #rechtszaak (translated)

A Ecuadorian court has acquitted 32 sailors of involvement in a criminal organization, as no evidence was found for their participation in illegal activities, following the bombing by the US of their ships in the Pacific Ocean. #Ecuador #drugsbestrijding #mensenrechten (translated)

BTS ARMY Colombia reported that the two performances of BTS at the Nemesio Camacho El Campín stadium brought together more than 100,000 people and generated nearly $99 billion for Bogotá, with an impact on accommodation, gastronomy, commerce, and transportation. According to the publication, 18.4% of attendees came from other countries, mainly Ecuador, Mexico, Venezuela, and Central America, while 25% of the tickets were purchased by people from other regions of Colombia. In total, about 43% of the audience came from outside Bogotá. Flight bookings to the city increased by 46.6% compared to the same period last year, the account added. The publication quoted the District Secretary of Government, Gustavo Quintero, who highlighted the contribution of such events to the economy, employment, tourism, and the international positioning of Bogotá, as well as their role in strengthening the sense of belonging. It also noted that during the two days, a security, mobility, risk management, and public space operation was coordinated. The Secretariats of Government, Security and Mobility, IDIGER, IPES, DADEP, the Metropolitan Police of Bogotá, and the Local Mayor's Office of Teusaquillo participated. The information was attributed to the District Secretary of Government. https://t.co/E9mkt0cmh8 #BogotáRecibeABTS #ARMYColombia #BTS #Bogotá #Economía (translated)

Agustín Antonetti stated that, according to information published that day by The New York Times, the United States had moved MQ-9 Reaper drones to Latin America, especially to Colombia and Ecuador. He described them as attack drones that the U.S. military used to employ in hunting operations and cited among previous cases the elimination of Soleimani in Iran and Ayman al-Zawahiri, whom he identified as Bin Laden's successor. Antonetti argued that the deployment indicated that one or more high-profile figures could soon be pursued on the continent. #Drones #EstadosUnidos #Seguridad (translated)

The author said they visited Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in November 2018, five months before his arrest, and that their communications were cut off for two days. They wrote that no one believed them at the time. A year later, they said, it emerged that people at the embassy had been spied on and that their phone had been secretly opened. https://t.co/nEOFnn5lsW #JulianAssange #EcuadorianEmbassy #Surveillance #EC #US