Thread by @P_Kallioniemi

In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce how the Elon’s Election Interference Machine™ (EIM) works. Since Musk & his broligarch allies won the presidency for Trump, they’ve now harnessed the machine to interfere in European elections, including the ones in Germany & Romania.

1/23

At this point it is clear why Elon bought Twitter – his grand plan was to promote “free speech absolutism” (which, of course, doesn’t even exist on the platform) and tweak the algorithms so that they allow him to promote political parties that align with his worldview.

2/23

First, let’s talk about “freedom of speech” that the Trump administration, especially Musk and VP Vance constantly rant about. Incidentally, they only blame the EU for “limiting free speech”, and there’s a good reason for this: they are driving for political change.

3/23

Have you noticed how when Vance and Musk talk about “freedom of speech”, they only refer to social media? It’s because when you look at other media, they’re actually MUCH worse than the EU (Press Freedom Index). Musk and Trump have sued people and companies for tens of…

4/23

…millions of dollars, just because they criticized either Trump or Elon and/or his companies. Elon’s DOGE has also fired anyone who criticizes their activities or publicly decries the organization’s legality. The reason why they attack “traditional media” is…

5/23

…simple: they know they can’t control it. Experienced investigative journalists and editors-in-chief can’t usually be bought, which is why Trump has attacked “left-leaning” media since 2015. The goal is to remove its legitimacy but also decrease its influence.

6/23

The Trump team understands the power of social media, and this was easy to realize when you looked at the people at the first row at Trump’s inauguration – Zuck, Elon and Bezos (Amazon owns Twitch). This is also why Trump is looking for a potential US buyer for TikTok.

7/23

And today, Elon has turned X/Twitter into the EIM. Let me tell you how it works: by far, the biggest account on X belongs to its owner, Elon Musk. With almost 220 million followers, he can make or break any account on the platform, and he’s already helped…

8/23

… several pro-Trump accounts (@inevitableWest, @stillgray, @KanekoaTheGreat, just to mention a few) grow into massive pro-Trump influence operations. But that’s not everything he can do – he can also drive massive amounts of ad share revenue to these people…

9/23

…by re-tweeting them and commenting on their posts. This massive increase of income has also been evident with Elon’s love interests, who have reported monthly payments of up to 20,000 USD. In other words, EIM can provide its targets both visibility and money.

10/23

EIM also aims to make X extremely biased, and focuses on promoting and growing those accounts that support the Trump administration and Elon’s DOGE. The “freedom of speech absolutist” Musk isn’t afraid to silence and censor accounts that speak against his actions.

11/23

Musk is ready and willing to use censorship when the requests come from countries like Turkey and India. He’s removed a BBC documentary about India’s Modi, and banned accounts of critical journalists in India. Elon also enabled censorship before the elections in Turkey.

12/23

By growing and promoting pro-Trump accounts, EIM “collects” large social media superspreader accounts that then fully support Trump’s and Musk’s policies. Because these accounts quickly garner a large following, they are also promoted to any new user joining the platform.

13/23

This way Elon has created a very effective echo chamber, where dissenting voices are present but rarely heard. By removing academic’s access to analytics tools and hiding likes, any kind of manipulation and inorganic activity is extremely difficult to detect.

14/23

And now that the Trump administration seems to have allied with Russia, the two can cooperate and perform massive-scale influence operations that use both automated systems and large social media accounts to promote pro-US/pro-Russia messages.

15/23

In Germany, both Vance and Musk have shown their support for the most pro-Kremlin party, AfD. The party’s leader, Alice Weidel, recently called for lifting of sanctions against Russia, and one of their employees even helped the FSB to stop or slow military aid to Ukraine.

16/23

It’s now safe to say that Trump administration’s goals align with AfD’s, otherwise both Musk and Vance wouldn’t be pushing for their victory so aggressively. Germany is the biggest economy in Europe so it would be beneficial to have them along in this unholy alliance.

17/23

So far, Elon has been campaigning massively for AfD, even organizing Twitter Spaces with Alice Weidel and speaking remotely at their campaign event. Today, AfD still polls firmly at 20%, and other parties are very hesitant to work with them, so this plan probably fails.

18/23

In the UK, Elon has been promoting Reform UK party. For a while, he promoted the party leader Nigel Farage and even allegedly planned on donating up to £100 million to get him elected as the Prime Minister. Their relationship went sour after Farage failed to root for…

19/23

…football hooligan/career criminal Tommy Robinson. Elon, along with his Dubai cronies quickly turned against Farage, who is now supporting Ukraine’s membership in NATO. After this, EIM was turned on to support @RupertLowe10:

20/23

Next step is to try and influence the presidential elections in Romania, where the first round of elections was annulled due to alleged influence campaign from Russia. In 2026 they’ll do the same in Hungary, where Orbán has been losing steam lately.

21/23

Meanwhile, the Trump administration ramps up their own censorship efforts – whether it’s banning journalists who refuse to use their made up terminology, or outright banning use of specific words in government projects.

But at least you can still praise Hitler on X!

22/23

To conclude, here’s a short reminder on how MEI works:

1) get rid of “traditional media” with lawsuits and threats
2) remove all guardrails & safety measures
3) promote and fund Elon's allies, silence enemies
4) play the algorithm
5) blame resistance as censorship

23/23

The 2nd edition of “Vatnik Soup — The Ultimate Guide to Russian Disinformation” is officially out!

You can order your copy here:

kleart.eu/webshop/p/vatn…