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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

High-ranking officials from the US and Russia have discussed the supply of Russian gas to Europe, involving Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, in negotiations related to the Nord Stream pipeline project and trade relations between the two countries. #NordStream #Rusia #SUA (translated)

The author questioned why photos of suspects were often made unrecognizable and stated that the boy had forfeited his right to privacy after the first blow. She also made a reference to his skin color. She referred to a report about a boy who allegedly struck a conductor multiple times in the face after a ticket inspection. https://t.co/RjoLw6e0mI #geweld #veiligheid #treinen (translated)

Antoine Léaument indicated that with the help of Sarah Fraincart, they had identified the vehicle registration and its time of circulation. He added that he was making a report to the public prosecutor for endangering the life of others, pursuant to article 223-1 of the penal code. #SécuritéRoutière #Droit #Justice (translated)

Antoine Léaument indicated that, thanks to Sarah Fraincart, he had identified the registration of the vehicle as well as the time it had been in circulation. He said he would report to the public prosecutor for endangering the life of others, invoking article 223-1 of the criminal code. #SécuritéRoutière #Droit #Signalement (translated)

Jim Ferguson wrote that Cristela Georgescu had told reporters her husband, Călin Georgescu, had not cheated but had been wronged. Ferguson said she was distressed that photographs of their children had appeared as part of the investigation and believed the case against her husband had been planned long in advance. According to Ferguson, Cristela Georgescu believed the truth would emerge if the investigation were handled by a fair and independent justice system, and maintained that her husband was innocent. Ferguson also argued that the detention and investigation of a former presidential candidate, and measures that his family considered politically motivated, warranted international scrutiny. https://t.co/s1RQfa1Uhh #Justiție #Inocent #Transparență (translated)

In Hasselt, an ethyloborne will be installed in a public parking lot to prevent drunk drivers from getting behind the wheel, by allowing them to blow into a breathalyzer test before leaving, an initiative considered a first in Belgium. #Éthyloborne #SécuritéRoutière #AlcoolAuVolant (translated)

New road safety measures in Belgium, such as zero tolerance for alcohol among novice drivers and the use of cameras to detect the use of phones while driving, have been announced during the national road safety conference to hold all road users accountable. #SécuritéRoutière #ToléranceZéro #ComportementResponsable (translated)

Luc Auffret reported that an important spontaneous demonstration of high school students and university students had taken place in the streets of Paris. He also noted that a bus driver had honked in a sign of solidarity. #Paris #6octobre #BlocusLycées https://t.co/YzUJxz6SUt #Paris #Manifestation #Éducation (translated)

Antoine Léaument requested Laurent Nuñez to ensure that the driver of the vehicle quickly stopped working as a police officer. He described this person as a major source of insecurity and believed that they did not belong in the police force. #Sécurité #Police #Injustice (translated)

The government's decision to generalize the temporary suspension of licenses in case of phone use while driving has sparked mixed reactions among drivers, some considering it necessary due to the increase in road accidents. #PermisDeConduire #SécuritéRoutière #TéléphoneAuVolant (translated)

The French government is extending the suspension of the driver's license for using a phone while driving to the entire country in order to combat road insecurity, emphasizing the responsibility of average drivers. #SécuritéRoutière #PermisDeConduire #TéléphoneAuVolant (translated)

Antoine Léaument denounced the behavior mentioned as shameful and told Laurent Nuñez that the driver and his accomplice were easily identifiable thanks to the vehicle used. He asked him if he intended to take action and urged him to intervene quickly to restore order in what he called the "forces of disorder." #Honte #Sécurité #OrdrePublic (translated)