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We have infected many Internet cafés with our Remote Controller System. The on-site agent informs us which establishment the target is about to enter, and we get to work, having already infected all the devices inside," Safir recounted. #tecnooppressione #sorveglianza #dirittiumani (translated)

Slovenia condemned the Houthi attacks on Riyadh airport, describing the Houthis as Iranian proxies and the assaults on civilians and critical civilian infrastructure as unacceptable. It said it stood in solidarity with Saudi Arabia. #Slovenia #SaudiArabia #HouthiAttacks #SL #IR #SA

The author condemned what they described as a deadly Houthi attack on Riyadh International Airport, expressed sympathy for the victims and their families, and said they stood in solidarity with Saudi Arabia and its people. They said attacks targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure were unacceptable. #SaudiArabia #HouthiAttacks #Solidarity #SA

The author said Romania had strongly condemned what it described as the Houthis’ latest deliberate and indiscriminate targeting of Riyadh’s international airport. The author also expressed sorrow over the loss of innocent lives and extended condolences and sympathy to the families of those who died. #Romania #Houthi #Condemnation #RO #SA

The author wrote that Romania had strongly condemned what they described as the Houthis’ deliberate and indiscriminate targeting of Riyadh’s international airport. They deplored the loss of innocent lives and expressed condolences to the families of those killed. #Romania #Houthi #Condolences #RO #SA

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 author called on Japan to expand PAC-3 production for Ukraine and other countries, describing the goal as making the country a “Patriot arsenal of democracy”. They set targets of 200 interceptors in 2027, 300 in 2028 and 500 a year by 2029, and called for a second production line and expanded seeker production. https://t.co/eAHTQJmOby #Japan #Ukraine #Defense #JP #UA

The author condemned what they described as indiscriminate attacks on civilians by the Houthi group, citing incidents at airports in Saudi Arabia. They said Saudi Arabia deserved solidarity and support in defending its territory and protecting its citizens. #SaudiArabia #StopTerrorism #Solidarity #SA

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the strike by "the terrorist Houthis" took "numerous innocent lives, including an American citizen," and UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was "deeply shocked" by the "lethal attack by the Houthis," calling it a clearly civilian target; Saudi officials say initial assessments point to a ballistic missile. #Rijad #Hutisti #napad (translated)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the strike by "the terrorist Houthis" took "numerous innocent lives, including an American citizen," and UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was "deeply shocked" by the "lethal attack by the Houthis," calling it a clearly civilian target; Saudi officials say initial assessments point to a ballistic missile. #Rijad #Hutisti #napad (translated)

The author said the Foreign Affairs Council was due to adopt on Monday what they described as its largest-ever sanctions package, targeting 1,600 individuals and entities linked to Russia’s military-industrial complex. They said support for Ukraine would continue and pressure on Russia would be maintained to end its war. #Sanctions #Ukraine #Russia #RU #UA

The author said Russia was waging a genocidal war in Europe and helping Iran target US assets while being rewarded with diesel deals. They warned that those seeking short-term domestic political gains would eventually pay a much higher price. #UkraineWar #Geopolitics #HumanRights #RU #IR #US

The post said nearly 240 million people depended on humanitarian aid to survive, while aid workers were being targeted, funding was shrinking and access was increasingly blocked. It identified protection, performance and partnership as three priorities for stronger, faster and more effective humanitarian action.