This piece is from 2023, but it is pretty relevant right now.

RFK Jr. has propagated conspiracy theories that threaten public health, national security, and societal cohesion. Here's what else you should know. infoepi.org/posts/2023/07-… In recent years, his website has increasingly developed ties to websites that have either been sanctioned for ties to Russian intelligence or election interference. home.treasury.gov/news/press-rel…

🧵I see the takes saying that the abortion ban explains Iowa, and I agree it does partially. August 2024 is the first total ban in decades. But what else happened that could move even people who wanted a ban?

I'll tell you—Iowa has been unable to recruit OBGYNs. In the last few months, areas that previously had OBGYNs don't. Iowa's Jasper County's sole delivery center, MercyOne Newton, stopped providing labor and delivery services on Oct. 15, forcing expectant mothers to go elsewhere.

The data show that it will not be the only location. Iowa struggles to recruit all types of doctors, not just OBGYNs. In a country where some states threaten prison time if they disagree with your assessment, successful people with money don't choose to go there.

🧵Details from the leaked documents revealing Kremlin efforts to influence EU (and US) elections.
1/29vsquare.org/leaked-files-p… ➡️Launder narratives through famous people

The Social Design Agency (SDA) created stories about Ukrainian children being abducted and having their organs sold. This false information was designed to mirror accusations against Russian officials.
2/29

🧵A circulating post claims that American citizens were involved in a foiled coup plot in the DRC. The proof offered is a passport shown in the post. Multiple indicators suggest that this passport is fake. It, at the very least, raises questions about the allegations. The passport's issue date is 2022, but it looks like the readily available image of a 2007 passport on Wikipedia. Here's an outline of the changes made in 2020. The passport posted on Twitter is missing safety features designed to make forgery difficult. travel.state.gov/content/travel…

🧵The Doppelgänger Operation has responded to votes on U.S. funding for Israel and Ukraine with a clear goal: Undermine trust in the U.S.
infoepi.org/posts/2024/04/… NOTE: This brief will outline the topics in content but will not address the operation’s mechanics because many other researchers have addressed them at length. See 45 titles from 36 sources over 1.6 years here: infoepi.org/posts/2024/04/…

🧵A little humor. This story is true but has been abbreviated for social media. I went home, and we were talking about artificial intelligence. Relatives who are in agriculture were listening to us talk about the AI legislation.
1/4 Their faces grew increasingly horrified as we discussed that celebrities were concerned with protecting themselves from AI impersonation and copyright infringement from models trained on their material.

2/4

🔍InfoEpi Lab Study on X (formerly Twitter): This study analyzed content in three categories: Israel-Hamas, Ukraine, and vaccines. Posts from accounts with top tweets in multiple categories were significantly more negative than average.

BRIEF: infoepi.org/posts/2023/10/… Trio-authors: 37 accounts had high-performance tweets across all three topics, henceforth called trio-authors. While some were relevant experts or community leaders, many were armchair experts with problematic track records. infoepi.org/posts/2023/10/…

A rabbi has invited Musk to Auschwitz so he can fully understand antisemitism.

He says he is well aware of what happened. He says he doesn't need to visit to get it. The rabbi says it would be a strong statement for him to come and to combat antisemitism. Musk says he will think about it but that he is very knowledgeable and it is not like he is "ignorant."

🧵Russia is ramping up its influence campaigns to sway public opinion, according to a declassified U.S. intelligence report.

This article made me want to discuss something adjacent, so I'll summarize the article first.

🎁🔗
nytimes.com/2023/08/25/us/… While Russian intelligence's tactics during the 2016 U.S. election were short-lived, the Federal Security Service (FSB) now leverages allies within seemingly independent organizations for long-term propaganda and relationship-building with emerging leaders.

Russian Intelligence-Connected Websites Offline 🚫: Media outlets tied to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Federal Security Service (FSB), and Main Directorate (GRU/GU) started failing on August 22. I noticed failures in my automated media collection on August 22. Many of these websites appear offline in browsers; however, Geopolitca was still online after my logs say the RSS feed failed on August 22, 2023, at 10:24 p.m.

Caution on this story because people have changed their name to Prigozhin to obfuscate his travels before.

apnews.com/article/ukrain… With that caveat, here's AP: Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a brief armed rebellion against the Russian military earlier this year, was aboard a plane that crashed north of Moscow on Wednesday, killing all 10 people on board, according to Russia’s civil aviation agency.

French authorities have uncovered a digital campaign of information manipulation against France involving Russian actors. These actors, including state entities and entities affiliated with the Russian state, spread false information to deceive the public. france24.com/fr/france/2023… VigiNum, an agency that monitors foreign media manipulation (more on this later), alerted French authorities after it discovered Russian individuals and Russian companies involved in the campaign.

I'll tell you one thing I learned today. Serbia experts are right when they say the EU and the US do not understand its importance or what is happening there. Holy cow. We're in trouble. Seeing some requests for reading material! You guys are the best. Here is what I recommend.

bbc.com/news/world-eur…

In a video from June 6, Oleksandr Talipov vents about mil-bloggers posting that "troops are still on the islands." He says the claims are "fake" and, "I contacted our guys, got everyone off the island. At 3 a.m., there was no one there, no casualties." One possibility is that this video indicates foreknowledge, although I wouldn't draw such a conclusion based solely on this. Transcript here: telegra.ph/Transcript-for…

Seems like Russia was hoping to force PMCs under state authority with this web.archive.org/web/2023061019… And pretty predictably Wagner is like no

1/ I've seen good and bad behavior from NAFO. It's fair to discuss the group's behavior, but this isn't that. It's a thread using an influence technique known as transfer, where you associate an unknown with something an audience knows to influence how they see something. 2/ That's not research. I work or talk with many extremism researchers across the political spectrum, religious communities, and internationally, but I've never heard of him.

🧵 A live thread about what we can learn from today's unsealed indictment. It put U.S. military and human sources at risk. It made the U.S. vulnerable to foreign attack. Allies as well may be vulnerable.

1/ 🧵As you probably have heard, on Tuesday, June 6th, at 2:54 local time (which was 01:54 in Norway), earthquake detection systems in the region picked up some unusual activity. This appears to match with the reports of a blast before the dam collapsing. 2/ The type of signals these systems picked up suggest that an explosion, a disturbance of some kind happened. jordskjelv.no/meldinger/seis…

In the interest of fairness to @tonyannett, a detail that is incorrect is there isn't one fire. There are 431 fires burning throughout Canada. The U.S. is sending firefighters to help.

It's not complicated. Exxon got it in 1988. I'll break it down.

axios.com/2023/06/08/can…

https://twitter.com/Trent_Horn/status/1666592087993720835

When it's cold, water freezes. When it's hot, it melts.

Will do a thread on verifying information in a crisis tomorrow because this is resonating way too much. To prepare for it, remember two things: Provenance and provenance (is this the original version, and how do you know?). If you can remember three things, then: Source--Who created the original piece of content? How do you know? Are they reliable? An effective manipulation tactic is creating the video your target wants to see. If you want to believe what the video shows you will be easier to fool.

When I was little my grandparents used to tell me about their lives under tyrants. If the stories scared me, they would reassure me we were safe now, in the land of the free. I would never need to worry. I would be able to read, worship, move, and speak as I pleased.

https://twitter.com/josephmenn/status/1666131327631118339

As I watch scientists I know and admire being targeted for their work, as I see librarians harassed for carrying books that speak about history, and as I witness leaders abuse their power to intimidate people who expose corruption, I don't feel so free anymore.