why do we need to know?

Ok so we actually have some confirmation now that this has in fact happened. See https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/reform-figures-see-social-media-engagement-drop-after-strikes-on-russia-data-centres-410517/ for example. But the claim was not previously verified, so I think it was right to push against it in the first instance.

They are getting at least some of their data from David Colon (French disinfo researcher / NATO type, so treat with a grain of salt). Link to the piece: https://worldpolicyhub.com/the-role-of-artificial-intelligence-in-information-warfare/ written for Revue Defense Nationale (2024).

If one reads between the lines, it’s obvious the Russian and Chinese propaganda apparatuses are almost entirely inspired by and based on Western models. According to him, Russia’s whole info-war tradition starts with an American book

“In 1952, Soviet Colonel Anatoly Kitov … found the sole Soviet copy of Cybernetics, published in 1948 by American mathematician Norbert Wiener, a book otherwise removed from Soviet libraries. Unlike Kremlin authorities, who deemed cybernetics a ‘bourgeois pseudoscience,’ Kitov realized that this new science … opened enormous possibilities for machine learning and automation.”

Right out of the gate the author traces the origin of Russia’s entire approach back to a western source. Wiener was American, the book got banned as “bourgeois pseudoscience,” and then the Soviets ended up adopting it anyway. The USSR literally imports the guy…

“Norbert Wiener, whose major works were now translated into Russian, was warmly welcomed in the USSR … Wiener’s cybernetics inspired Soviet scientists, officials, and military leaders, including those who attempted to establish a national computer network, the OGAS … beginning in 1962.”

“Translated into Russian”, “inspired Soviet … military leaders” — the capability is coming from outside, from an American. And notice theres no equivalent claim anywhere that the west copied Russia. It only goes one way here. Russia’s core doctrine gets credited to an American.

“Russian information warfare strategists highly valued what Wiener termed the ‘combat use of information,’ … From a cybernetic perspective, this goal meant promoting entropy—disorder—within the adversary’s informational space, and … negentropy … in their own.”

Even the language of Russian info-war, “combat use of information”, the whole entropy/negentropy thing, gets pinned on Wiener. Which makes Russian strategy look like a applied reading of an American cybernetician instead of some original invention.

He then goes on to explain how China adopted Russia’s model and copied the western playbook for control of social media.

“The cybernetic approach to automated content regulation aims to maintain stability in a regime-favorable information environment … In recent years, other authoritarian regimes, including China’s, have adopted this approach, investing heavily in automated online content control systems to replace their armies of trolls.” .

What set all this off, according to Colon (lol, sorry couldn’t help it), was western-style networked mobilisation. Twitter, Facebook, the Arab Spring. So the read here is reactive imitation. These regimes watched the west use social platforms to move crowds, and then took the same tools and turned them inward on their own people. Whats being copied is a technique of mass influence, not any particular piece of software.

“Vladimir Putin … engages the Kremlin in ‘networked warfare’ against the U.S. and its allies. In 2012 … tasked the state investment fund Rusnano and the Skolkovo research center with heavy AI and nanotechnology investments in Silicon Valley. Concurrently, the Kremlin contracted a dozen Russian ‘political technology’ firms to initiate information manipulation campaigns in the West.”

Three signals pile up in this one. “Networked warfare” is itself a western term that Moscow supposedly adopts. The state funds put money into Silicon Valley to soak up know-how. And then Russia exports its “political technology” right back into the west. Learn it at the source, send it back weaponized.

“Kremlin operators … sought to appropriate American technology. The GRU and FSB pursued the behavioral microtargeting tech from Cambridge Analytica, a U.S. firm … Cambridge Analytica’s lead engineer, Moldovan-born Aleksandr Kogan, was invited to present his work in Saint Petersburg and later contracted by the Russian state … The GRU acquired the American Facebook user data he collected, encompassing millions of profiles.”

It flat out says Russian intelligence appropriated a western firm’s AI-driven psychographic targeting, Cambridge Analytica, imported the lead engineer, and bought up American data to go with it. Behavioral microtargeting is exactly the sort of thing we’re talking about here, a propaganda and mobilisation technique.

“The Kremlin has also closely followed Michal Kosinski, an early researcher in social media-based predictive personality analysis … On July 14, 2017, Kosinski was flown to Moscow to present his research to Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and other officials, impressing Kosinski with their knowledge of his work.”

So the person who pioneered the method gets flown to Moscow to brief the top brass. Throw in Putin’s line about whoever leads in AI dominating the world and the article is basically saying Russia reverse-engineered its approach off western research.

“At that time, China shared Putin’s conviction. President Xi Jinping … investing heavily in Silicon Valley to acquire minority stakes in high-tech U.S. firms. In information warfare, China often draws on Russia’s model but has the advantage of its advanced technology … The 2017 launch of TikTok marked a major step in implementing the ‘Three Warfares’ doctrine (psychological, media, and legal) introduced in 2003.”

First China “draws on Russia’s model” for information warfare, and since that model is itself west-derived, China ends up a second-hand copier of the west (kinda a racist take, but he is French, so…). Second, “investing heavily in Silicon Valley to acquire minority stakes” is just buying access to western tech. Then TikTok shows the copied capability put to work at scale.

“the top 10 generative AI models reproduced Russian disinformation narratives in 32% of cases, citing fake news sites created in Moscow as authoritative sources.”

So what can we conclude from all this? That yes, Russian and Chinese disinfo are an ongoing problem, but also and perhaps more importantly, what it tells us is that Russia and China are basically just copying what the global north was already doing. In other words, all nation states are bastards, and you can’t trust any of them (including the white ones), to ever give you an unbiased take. Don’t take any of it at face value.