In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss foreign malign influence operations during the 2024 US elections. As in 2016 and 2020, these recent elections were also a target of massive disinformation and hacking campaigns originating mostly from Russia and Iran.
1/17
First of all, my opinion is that these influence operations alone didn’t affect the elections so much, that they actually made a difference.
Unlike in 2016, Trump’s win over Harris was clear and these short-term campaigns didn’t really change that much this time.
2/17
Yet, many of these online campaigns attacked both Harris and Walz on various social media platforms. Especially Walz became a big target after his nomination, and many Russian efforts attempted to defame him.
3/17
Many of these fake stories came from Russian propaganda group Storm-1516, an offshoot of late Yevgeny Prigozhin’s infamous Internet Research Agency. The group was discovered in 2023 by Darren Linvill’s team of media forensics researchers at Clemson University.
4/17
The group has a long history of publishing deepfakes and fake whistleblower videos, and the false sexual abuse claim of Tim Walz came from them. Storm-1516 was also behind the fake hit-and-run story about Kamala Harris. Trump’s allies have also spread these claims online,…
5/17
…including people like the Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec & far-right podcaster Candace Owens. Another large X account, “Black Insurrectionist” (who’s actually a white dude named Jason G. Palmer) also spread fake e-mails about this story, eventually nuking their account.
6/17
Another fake video showing a man searching through mail-in ballots from Pennsylvania and ripping up those with a vote for Trump was first posted in Oct 2024 from an account that promotes the QAnon conspiracy theory and has been linked to Storm-1516.
7/17
This smear campaign against Harris/Walz originates from John Mark Dougan, a former Florida cop and now Moscow resident who runs a massive network of AI-generated fake news websites. Dougan’s also behind most of the anti-Zelenskyy campaigns online:
Another Kremlin operation before the elections was of course the case of TENET Media, a Tennessee-based company that received 10 million dollars from Russia through various shell companies. This money was used to pay YouTubers for producing anti-Ukraine content.
9/17
TENET Media paid big influencers like Tim Pool and Benny Johnson to produce and spread pro-Kremlin, anti-Ukraine content through their YouTube channels. All creators involved in this scheme claimed they didn’t know where the money came from.
10/17
In addition, there were several AI-driven botnets amplifying pro-Trump messages on X. Allegedly, many of these networks were shut down AFTER the elections, resulting in a loss of several hundreds or even thousands of followers, as reported by many large X accounts.
11/17
CNN reported on another incident in which American social media influencer @Alphafox78 was paid around 100 USD per post by a Russian, pro-Kremlin propagandist named Semen "AussieCossack" Boikov. Incidentally, Foxy has been quiet during the last few days.
12/17
Both campaigns were also targeted by Iranian hackers. They managed to hack several e-mail accounts of the Trump campaign, but unlike in 2016, most media outlets refused to publish any of the hacked information. Eventually, @kenklippenstein published the JD Vance dossier.
13/17
Like in 2016, spoiler candidate Jill Stein was also heavily promoted, this time to Muslim voters, by both domestic MAGA Republicans and foreign influence campaigns.
Of course, these operations are just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds if not thousands of similar but smaller-scale campaigns that attempt to influence the US voters. X did absolutely nothing to stop them, and anyone drawn to conspiracy theories could even…
15/17
…question the platform’s owners motives for this. Like in 2016 and 2020, foreign influence operations mostly attacked Trump’s adversaries, so there is little to no incentive to try to weed them out before the elections.
16/17
“To the victor belong the spoils”, as they say, and none of this matters anymore now that Musk & Trump managed to win the race. If Trump decides to follow the Project 2025 path, there would be even less money and resources to fight against online disinformation.
17/17
My book titled “Vatnik Soup - The Ultimate Guide to Russian Disinformation” has been published, you can order it here:
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American national security policy professional and the current under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby (@ElbridgeColby). He’s best-known for fighting with cartoon dogs online and for halting military aid to Ukraine.
1/21
Elbridge "Cheese" Colby earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. Before entering government, he worked at top think tanks and in the intelligence community, focusing on nuclear policy and strategic planning.
2/21
Cheese quickly became a key voice for a “China First” strategy, arguing the US must prioritize military buildup in Asia over commitments in Europe or the Middle East. He sees (or saw, rather) Taiwan as the core test of US credibility.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’m going to talk about… Vatnik Soup! As some of you know, we also have a website where you can find every soup ever published. The site also has other useful resources, making it the most comprehensive resource on Russian disinformation & vatniks.
1/15
Unfortunately, Elon has flagged the website as malware, as he might not be very happy about the soups I wrote about him - so far, they have garnered over 60 million views on X/Twitter.
The “freedom of speech” spokesperson doesn’t seem too keen on free speech, after all.
2/15
The heart & soul of the website is of course the soups page. There you can find all 360+ soups, which can be sorted chronologically, by popularity, etc. You can also search for soups by title or even in the soup text:
In today’s Wumao Soup, I’ll introduce how and where the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda and influence operations work. Due to China’s massive population and advances in AI, CCP-aligned online content has become increasingly visible.
1/20
Like Russia’s troll farms, China has its own troll army: the “50 Cent Party” or “Wumao” refers to state-linked online commentators who are reportedly paid ¥0.50 per post to steer discussions away from criticism and amplify CCP narratives on social media.
2/20
Back in 2017, a research paper estimated that the Wumao produced almost 500 million fabricated comments annually to distract readers and shift topics. In that sense, Wumao operates very similarly to the Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” model:
In today’s Vatnik Soup and the “Degenerate Russia” series, I’ll show you the brutal reality of Russian war crimes, in particular the horrific tortures and sexual abuses of children, women and men.
Buckle up, this one is not for the faint-hearted.
1/24
For over a decade now and as part of their “firehose of falsehood” propaganda strategy, Russia has been spreading false narratives targeted at right-wing/conservative audiences, portraying russia as a bastion of Christian, traditional,family values.
In the previous “degenerate Russia” series we discussed Russia’s insanely high divorce rates, rampant domestic violence, high murder rates, thriving neo-Nazi culture, corruption of the Orthodox Church, and their massive demographic problem:
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll explore how Russia is working with Iran, and how the recent Israel–US strikes on Iran could affect the war in Ukraine. Iran has been one of Russia’s key allies in their genocidal war, but in reality the partnership is deeply one-sided.
1/21
Historically, Russia/USSR has been involved in numerous wars in the Middle East, invading Afghanistan for nearly a decade and desperately trying to keep Syria’s authoritarian leader, al-Assad, in power before his eventual downfall.
2/21
While initially supportive of Israel, the Soviet Union quickly pivoted to backing its enemies, fueling antisemitism, terrorism, and chaos in an already tense region. At times, this meant near-open war, like when Soviet Air Force MiG-21s were shot down by Israel over Egypt.
In today’s Vatnik Soup REBREW, I’ll re-introduce a Latvian politician and former MEP, Tatjana Ždanoka. She’s best-known for her history in the Communist Party of Latvia, for her pro-Russian politics in the country, and her connections to Russian intelligence.
1/22
Based on Ždanoka’s speeches and social media posts, she has a deep hatred towards the people of Latvia. The reason for this can only be speculated, but part of it could be due to her paternal family being killed by the Latvian Auxiliary Police,…
2/22
…a paramilitary force supported by the Nazis, during the early 1940s. Ždanoka became politically active in the late 80s. She was one of the leaders of Interfront, a political party that supported Latvia remaining part of the USSR.