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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

Research by Estonian scientists shows that the long-term durability of paper depends on the degradation of its components and the level of moisture, highlighting that even dry paper can conceal hidden risks of hydrolysis and enzymatic degradation. #kodukontor #raimoülavere #hübriidtöö (translated)

The post marked October as European Cybersecurity Month and said a Eurobarometer survey showed that three in four EU employees had encountered suspicious emails, messages or links at work in the six months before the survey. It called for awareness to be turned into action. https://t.co/RBYO7eToKZ #Cybersecurity #EUCybersecurityMonth #StaySafeOnline #EU

Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport: four people have been charged after the dismantling of a cocaine trafficking operation. Employees of a security agency reportedly provided badges to the traffickers. https://t.co/ml2h6vgmqG https://t.co/c4EdXuVGlD #Drogues #Trafic #Sécurité (translated)

Le directeur de la tour Eiffel, Patrick Branco Ruivo, a annoncé son départ prévu à la fin de l'année, suite à une polémique sur l'éviction d'employées pendant la visite d'une délégation hindoue, révélant des dysfonctionnements dans l'organisation des visites protocolaires. #TourEiffel #Départ #ÉgalitéDesSexes

Sanctions are pointless if they are not enforced When the EU announces sanctions, we should ask a simple question: what will actually change? An investigation by iStories and CORRECTIV shows why this matters. Two employees of the Russian propaganda outlet Izvestia, Vitaly https://t.co/paqDQX67IR #Sanctions #EU #Propaganda #RU

Told ya. D2 continues and the Destiny franchise has a future. Sony cleaned house, got rid of most Bungie employees, rehiring some as contractors, reducing cost. Most of Destiny will now be developed by AI. Less bugs, new game engine, more content, better cut scenes. Congrats. #Destiny2 #Bungie #GameDevelopment #Nospecificcountrycodescanbeidentifiedinthetweetprovided.

Deux ex-employées de Julio Iglesias ont accusé le chanteur d'agressions sexuelles en 2021 et demandent à la justice espagnole d'enquêter pour garantir leurs droits, après qu'une première plainte a été classée par le tribunal espagnol. #JulioIglesias #AgressionSexuelle #DroitsDesFemmes

Selon @Cdenquete, Laurent Nunez a diffusé à la presse des fausses informations à propos de la garde à vue de Rima Hassan, violant ainsi le secret de l'instruction. Cette nouvelle affaire démontre la gravité des pratiques employées par des membres du gouvernement contre la https://t.co/ch1JmtBfjM #LaurentNunez #faussesinformations #gouvernement #FR

Media report: Americans buy house for Jørgen Wæver — he denies the claim Jørgen Wæver Johansen is now responding to Weekendavisen’s report about the purchase of a property involving his American business partners. According to Weekendavisen, Jørgen Wæver Johansen’s American business partners have spent DKK 5.4 million on buying a new property for him. Last year, the American company Greenland Development Partners acquired a stake in Greenland Water Bank, a company owned by Jørgen Wæver Johansen and Svend Hardenberg. Weekendavisen reports that it has obtained the payment receipt for the property transaction, showing that the American company transferred USD 823,000 from its address in New York to the former owner. However, in a written response to KNR, Jørgen Wæver Johansen denies that the Americans bought the property. According to Sermitsiaq, the deed lists Jørgen Wæver Johansen’s company, Inuit Properties Greenland, as the owner. He owns 100 percent of the company. Wæver Johansen told KNR that the property is a commercial investment. It is widely known that Nuuk faces a shortage of accommodation during the summer months. Jørgen Wæver Johansen says the investment in the property is a response to that situation. “The purpose is simple: to ensure that our employees and business partners have access to safe and reliable accommodation when they are working in Nuuk,” Jørgen Wæver Johansen wrote to KNR. Foreign nationals wishing to purchase property in Greenland require an exemption from the Greenlandic government unless they have lived and paid taxes in Greenland for at least two years. Jørgen Wæver Johansen told KNR that he is personally liable for the property. “The investment is structured on ordinary commercial terms through a combination of equity and secured, interest-bearing loans that must be repaid. I have assumed both the debt and the business risk.” “The property will be operated commercially, including for short-term stays. Investing in necessary capacity where demand clearly exceeds supply is exactly the kind of practical investment Greenland needs.” He also notes that his business relationship with the American company Greenland Development Partners is already well known. —KNR #Ejendom #Grønland #Investering

What do you do when you hear from employees at @AnthropicAI that we may be facing extinction in a few years? You write about it, of course. Personally, I'm pissed off about all those yoghurt cartons I rinsed. Here's my piece: https://t.co/y3U9ldVOYt #AI #Extinction #AnthropicAI #Nospecificcountrycodesarementionedinthetweet.

Une note du Sénat révèle les méthodes employées par des hackers pour pirater les données personnelles de 600 000 individus en exploitant des identifiants volés, soulignant les insuffisances en cybersécurité au sein de la Direction générale des finances publiques. #Piratage #Cybersécurité #Sénat