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Vassilis Papandreou wrote that in the homeland there were many things that caused laughter and sadness and with which people joked, perhaps because there were no alternatives. He added that fascism, neo-Nazis, and their representatives, which he claimed were becoming part of the prevailing trend again, were not among these. #φασισμός #νεοναζί #κοινωνία (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

The commentator compared the Kołodziejczak case to the Southern Hospital affair. He wrote that journalists from major media suddenly declared disbelief and waited for the events to unfold, while simultaneously suggesting that the matter should not be discussed. He described it as a sad cabaret that, in his opinion, demonstrates the realities of Polish mainstream media. #media #Polska #dziennikarstwo (translated)

The commentator assessed that the journalistic mainstream has hit rock bottom. He criticized Andrzej Stankiewicz and Kamil Dziubka for discussing what gift Karol Nawrocki should give during his visit to the Philippines. As he wrote, among the proposals were used underwear, a photo of a cleaned tattoo, and a parade of "ring mates," including Great BU. The author called it a disgraceful standard of an environment he described as "motorized." #dziennikarstwo #media #Filipiny (translated)

The commentator wrote that Dominika Długosz "woke up after 30 hours." He accused her of lacking information in her post that Michał Kołodziejczak was a member of the Civic Coalition, that Donald Tusk supported his political career, and that Kołodziejczak served as deputy minister in Tusk's government. The author ironically commented on the objectivity of the mainstream media. #Polityka #Dziennikarstwo #KoalicjaObywatelska (translated)

Snicklink wrote that right-wing politics have now become mainstream and the bonus of being an outsider is over. Governments across half of Europe have now involved right-wing parties; there is hardly a way in which the AfD will not soon be part of the government or come to power. He characterized the political battle as won. Debates about the right to say certain things, "wokeness," and gendering were classified by Snicklink as themes of the year 2023 that are only still resonating. How politics will develop regarding mass migration and deportations remains to be seen. He also expressed doubts about whether the euphoric declarations of freedom of speech would actually apply to all opinions. If it were only about being able to express one's own views freely, in his estimation, that would not be freedom of speech but rather a renewed insistence on one's own opinion as the only permissible position. Snicklink described this as another transition of overlapping cycles and stated that he does not know how it will proceed. #Politik #Meinungsfreiheit #Rechtspopulismus (translated)

The writer claimed that Marco Rubio's speech about the decline of the Western world was silenced by Swedish mainstream media. They wrote that nationalism had become a dirty word used by the left to scare people whom the writer described as easily frightened. Furthermore, the writer stated that Europe was tearing down monuments, teaching children to be ashamed of their history, and relinquishing sovereignty to global actors. #nationalism #svenskpolitik #EU #SE (translated)

The commentator described the exchange between Robert Mazurek and Szczęśniak regarding Dawid K. According to the post, Szczęśniak said that Dawid K. considered himself above the law and was counting on the protection of political patrons, but she did not name them, emphasizing that she wouldn't speculate. Mazurek asked who supported the young activist's career and then stated that if it were about a PiS politician, patrons would be sought more broadly. The author accused that in the case of Donald Tusk's people, such connections remain unexplained. #polityka #dziennikarstwo #debata (translated)

Petr Švec questioned whether Radka Denemarková's speech represented courage. He wrote that she spoke at an event that he labeled a symbol of liberal mainstream, in front of an audience with similar views and repeated what he considered the common positions of this group. He considered the expression of opinions that could lead a person to lose their social standing or result in public rejection or media criticism as true courage. He added that these would also be topics that people like Denemarková, in his opinion, associate with lower classes and social status. He labeled her appearance as standard conformism. #odvaha #konformismus #kritika (translated)

The post criticised RTÉ News for not mentioning what the author claimed was the deliberate killing of many of the 1,200 people killed on October 7 by the Israeli regime. The author also argued that mainstream media’s failure to speak truth to power undermined the prospects for peace worldwide. #MediaBias #Peace #IsraelPalestine #IL

Bart Nijman wrote that Dutch media in 2015 portrayed participants in the Ukrainian referendum, including GeenPeil, as antidemocratic and pro-Putin. Nevertheless, he called the referendum a great success. In 2017, according to him, newspapers and parts of the NPO tried to boycott GeenStijl but were unsuccessful. He also accused the media of labeling critics of Greta Thunberg as climate deniers in 2019 and of presenting support for Black Lives Matter as a civic duty in 2020, while according to him, Zwarte Piet was pressured with unfounded accusations of racism. During the coronavirus pandemic, according to Nijman, the media shielded criticism of the measures and labeled those who deviated as irrational. He argued that this permanently damaged the credibility of the press and trust in its fairness and objectivity. From 2021, he stated that media opposed the farmers' movement with reporting on nitrogen that journalists did not understand sufficiently, and starting in 2022, labeled critics of Ukrainian accession to the EU or NATO's contribution to the escalation as pro-Putin. Nijman wrote that after October 7, 2023, many media condemned Israel and Jews in general and based reporting on genocide and starvation on lies. According to him, the media concealed the reasons for Hamas' attack and subordinated facts to information from NGOs, including Oxfam. He also claimed that journalists who disagreed were not offering enough public dissent, partly because they had to save for a mandatory heat pump in 2028. Furthermore, Nijman accused the media of shifting their own problems onto disinformation and Elon Musk and of leaving X for their own, small online environment. According to him, DPG, RTL, and the NPO imposed standards that many Dutch people did not conform to. He wrote that readers should hate the mainstream media even more and asserted that the free press had again chosen the wrong side on October 7. #Media #Nederland #VrijePers (translated)

Jotam Confino wrote that the other day he had photographed a father and daughter in Tel Aviv, as they looked at pictures of the victims of the massacre on October 7 and fallen soldiers. The image made him think about how difficult it must be for a parent to explain to their daughter what had happened that day, and what he described as the subsequent wave of antisemitism. Confino wrote that the massacre had been celebrated by millions around the world, including in Denmark, and that civilians had been executed, kidnapped, tortured, raped, burned, and beheaded. He claimed that the event had triggered the largest wave of hatred against Jews since World War II, and that Hamas was planning attacks against Jews in Europe, while Islamists and the extreme left demonstrated with Hamas flags, including in Copenhagen. He further wrote that Western professors praised the massacre, and that educators at Copenhagen University wished for the destruction of Israel's military. He described Israel as the safest place for a girl of Jewish background to grow up, despite wars and terrorist attacks, and wrote that one day she would have to serve mandatory military service. He also mentioned that Jews were being killed in Sydney, that synagogues were attacked and subjected to demonstrations, and that it had become common to declare oneself anti-Zionist. According to Confino, memorial services for the victims required extensive police protection due to demonstrators. In conclusion, he wrote that he had great respect for parents who could explain to children how cruel the world could be without taking away their hope. He was not sure that he himself would be able to handle that task. #Israel #Antisemitisme #Fremtid (translated)

The writer stated that they had been interviewed by Melina Hebelius at Riks about the riots in France. They claimed that Swedish mainstream media reported as falsely about the events as it, according to the writer, had misrepresented similar unrest in Sweden, and argued that people with common sense knew who was destroying the country. https://t.co/mP4iy10Xh9 #Frankrike #kaos #sverigepolitik #FR #SE (translated)