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Opinion|Operation Infektion: A three-part video series on Russian disinformation

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-meddling-disinformation-fake-news-elections.html
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Opinion


OPERATION INFEKTION: A THREE-PART VIDEO SERIES ON RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION

Russian Disinformation: From Cold War to Kanye

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By Adam B. Ellick and Adam Westbrook

 * Nov. 12, 2018

WATCH: This is a three-part film series. Scroll down and click to play any
episode.

Russia’s meddling in the United States’ elections is not a hoax. It’s the
culmination of Moscow’s decades-long campaign to tear the West apart. “Operation
InfeKtion” reveals the ways in which one of the Soviets’ central tactics — the
promulgation of lies about America — continues today, from Pizzagate to George
Soros conspiracies. Meet the KGB spies who conceived this virus and the American
truth squads who tried — and are still trying — to fight it. Countries from
Pakistan to Brazil are now debating reality, and in Vladimir Putin’s greatest
triumph, Americans are using Russia’s playbook against one another without the
faintest clue.





EPISODE 1


MEET THE KGB SPIES WHO INVENTED FAKE NEWS

We reveal how one of the biggest fake news stories ever concocted — the 1984
AIDS-is-a-biological-weapon hoax — went viral in the pre-internet era. Meet the
KGB operatives who invented it and the “truth squad” that quashed it. For a bit.


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transcript

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MEET THE KGB SPIES WHO INVENTED FAKE NEWS

WE REVEAL HOW ONE OF THE BIGGEST FAKE NEWS STORIES EVER CONCOCTED — THE 1984
AIDS-IS-A-BIOLOGICAL-WEAPON HOAX — WENT VIRAL IN THE PRE-INTERNET ERA. MEET THE
KGB CONS WHO INVENTED IT, AND THE “TRUTH SQUAD” THAT QUASHED IT. FOR A BIT.

[music] This is a story about a guy and a term he likes to think he invented.
“Really, the word — I think one of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with
is ‘fake.’ I guess other people use it, perhaps, over the years. But I’ve never
noticed it.” It’s only been around for a few years. But you’re probably as sick
of it as we are. Well, the thing is, fake news is actually really old. It’s just
that, once, it went by a very different name. [ding] [non-English speech]
Because really, this story is about a virus, a virus created decades ago by a
government to slowly and methodically destroy its enemies — [water sloshing] —
from the inside. But it’s not a biological virus. It’s more like a political
one. And chances are, you’ve already been infected. [music] If you don’t know
who to trust anymore, this might be the thing that’s making you feel that way.
If you feel exhausted by the news, this could be why. And if you’re sick of it
all and you just want to stop caring, then we really need to talk. Ready?
[music] O.K., so to start, let’s go back to July, 1983 and all the way over
here: New Delhi, India. This is when a remarkable story appears in a newspaper
called “The Patriot.” It claims the H.I.V. virus was secretly created by U.S.
government scientists as a weapon to kill African-Americans and gay people. It
even names a facility, Fort Detrick in Maryland, where the virus was supposed to
have been concocted. It’s a crazy allegation printed in a small newspaper — no
big deal, right? But fast forward just a couple of years, and look what’s
happening. The story is spreading all over Africa. The scientific report’s even
published by two East German biologists who say they can prove AIDS is made in
the U.S.A. All these articles are from just a few months at the end of 1986. And
then, somehow, it ends up here. [drums beating] “A Soviet military publication
claims the virus that causes AIDS leaked from a U.S. Army laboratory conducting
experiments in biological warfare.” That’s Dan Rather reading a fake news story
to millions of unwitting Americans on national TV. But don’t be too hard on Dan.
This was one of the greatest cons ever carried out on the global scale. And
we’re going to show you how it was pulled off. [music] But first, let me
introduce you to a few authentic grifters. Stashed away on some old videotapes,
we found interviews with a bunch of ex-spies. This guy, Ladislav Bittman. This
guy, Stanislav Levchenko, and this guy, Yuri Bezmenov. They all worked for the
KGB during the Cold War before defecting to the U.S. And it’s thanks to them
that we know so much about one of the KGB’s most secretive departments. “Only
about 15% of time, money and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other
85 percent is a slow process, which we call either ideological subversion or
active measures, [speaking Russian] in the language of the KGB.” So “active
measures,” it’s a euphemism for, well, bullshit — but not just any bullshit, the
most strategic, masterful, toxic bullshit you could possibly imagine, made with
one goal. “To change the perception of reality of every American to such an
extent that, despite of their abundance of information, no one is able to come
to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their
families, their community, and their country.” “Within the KGB is a department
that specializes in planting false stories and forged documents.” We know it was
run from Department A right at the top of the KGB. And it had a
multimillion-dollar budget. “At least 15,000 people, who, in the Soviet Union
and outside of the Soviet Union, are involved in that kind of actions on a
regular, daily basis.” You heard that right — 15,000 people. That’s more than
the entire staff at the State Department after 9/11. Now these days, KGB
defectors who are still breathing are a little hard to come by. But we tracked
down one to a small town in Massachusetts. “Well, my original name was Ladislav
Bittman.” These days, he goes by Larry Martin. He’s 87 years old. “It’s a
collage — “ He likes to paint. “ — with Putin. And he was boasting about his
riches.” And of course, he has a girlfriend down in Florida. “Hello!” “Hello,
hello. I am still busy.” But back in the day, he was a director at one of the
most legendary active measures outposts reporting to Moscow. And when it comes
to bullshit, Larry’s done it all. His first ever con — “It was an operation to
establish a whorehouse in Germany.” That was to catch politicians in
compromising situations. And once, he even planted a treasure chest of Nazi
papers at the bottom of a lake. “Now original Nazi documents.” That was to stir
up anti-German sentiments. Larry’s expertise, though, was a special kind of
bullshit, something called — “Disinformation. Basically, it means deliberately
distorted information that is secretly leaked into the communication process in
order to deceive and manipulate.” [dinging] All right. Just to avoid any
confusion, let’s pause here quickly to unpack all these different flavors of
bullshit. Now at the top, you’ve got your active measures, right? These are
basically any kind of covert operations against another country short of
starting a war. This includes forgeries and even kidnappings. But disinformation
was the heart and soul of it for the KGB. You might be thinking, that’s just a
fancy word for propaganda. But it’s not. Propaganda tries to convince us to
believe something. Disinformation is a highly organized attempt to deceive us
into believing it. Today, everyone calls this fake news. But that’s become such
a loaded term — no thanks to this guy — that it’s basically useless. Anyway,
we’ll get on to him later. All right, [dinging] let’s get back to it.
Disinformation — it was such a big deal that every KGB agent was required to
spend 25 percent of their time coming up with ideas for false stories. And in a
year-end review — yes, KGB agents had year-end reviews, too — every agent was
evaluated on — “How many proposals for disinformation operations he submitted.”
“You’ve gotten to be fairly good at this when you were Czech intelligence,
didn’t you?” “Unfortunately, I have to admit, yes.” Just how good were these
guys? Well, that rumor that the C.I.A. shot J.F.K., the story about how the
C.I.A. tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II, and the one about rich Americans
buying poor kids from Latin America to harvest their organs — but as the first
cases of AIDS spread fear around the world, the KGB saw an opportunity for their
biggest con yet. [clicking] All right, so let’s go back to 1983. And we’re going
to show you what really happened here. So remember this story started with an
article in The Patriot newspaper? “‘AIDS, the deadly mysterious disease which
has caused havoc in the U.S. is believed to be the result of the Pentagon’s
experiments to develop new and dangerous biological weapons.’ There’s the crux
of the crap.” It’s time you met Kathleen Bailey and Todd Leventhal. They were
part of a U.S. government team that first pieced this story together back in the
’80s. [ding] “This is just the perfect example of a very effective
disinformation campaign.” Well, almost perfect. There are some obvious grammar
mistakes here, which tip off experts like Kathleen. Like, in English we’d say
flu virus, not the virus flu. “So it’s written by a non-native English speaker.
And it probably was written by a Russian-language speaker.” “They said, oh, the
Indian newspaper, The Patriot — which we knew the KGB used this as an English
language newspaper as a way to get stories out.” This was a classic Soviet
tactic. Oleg Kalugin is another ex-KGB agent we found. He told us, they’d always
try and place the story — “ — in a third-world country — ” — somewhere like — “
— say, in India, Thailand — ” — where journalists could be easily tricked or
bribed. “So that gave the story acceptability when nobody was searching about
the origin.” [music] The KGB let this story go quiet for a couple of years after
India. But with AIDS still making scary headlines in ’85, they revived it, this
time in a prominent Moscow newspaper. And the source for this story? You guessed
it. [ding] It’s brilliant, really. They’ve repeated the story but concealed
their hand, distancing themselves from the lie they started. So we’re now into
1986. And the KGB want to add gravitas to this lie. So they look around for a
scientist, a human face, someone who could back up the lie with data. And no
joke — this is the dude they found. This is Dr. Jakob Segal. Remember I said the
reports had two authors? Well, here comes the co-author now. It’s his wife,
Lilli. Believe it or not, these two wrote that report that claim to have
evidence AIDS was created in a U.S. government lab. “This scientific
gobbledygook — and you know, read this stuff, and who can understand it? But it
purports to be proof.” The thing is, it worked. The KGB made sure the Segal
report was read by journalists all over Africa. And they kept on pushing it
until it went, well, viral. [ding] It’s appeared in 200 reports in 80 countries.
Even The Daily Express in London runs with it. And finally, on March 30, 1987,
the KGB hits the jackpot. “A Soviet military publication [echoing] claims the
virus that causes AIDS leaked.” This campaign had a KGB code name. They called
it, Operation Infection. “Good afternoon. I would like to begin the introduction
to this report by stating that the U.S. image abroad is damaged. And U.S.
foreign policy is complicated by disinformation. Wow. Huh. That’s a half a
lifetime ago. This was handed out at a demonstration. I was so angry that they
accused the United States of creating the AIDS virus, because I knew how
effective that was going to be as a tool against us. And it angered me deeply.
And it empowered me. It motivated me. It fired me up. I was pissed.” [music]
Operation Infection, one of the most audacious and successful fake news stories
ever created — and for America, the impact was toxic. “Foreign governments
actually believed that the U.S. was creating this biological warfare agent. For
them to think that damages their view of the United States not only as a
culture, but it taints all of our policies. It’s in the back of their minds
every time they discuss anything with us.” Now with so much at stake, you might
be wondering what the U.S. response to this was. Well, you’re watching it. “The
primary origin of disinformation about the United States abroad is the Soviet
Union.” Kathleen and Todd were both part of something called the Active Measures
Working Group. Nicknamed Truth Squads, it was a team that tracked and tried to
expose Soviet disinformation. “Everybody was working part time on the issue.”
“It was not funded lavishly.” “We all sat around a table once every week or two.
And those who could volunteer their time to come in did.” Yup, that’s right. In
the face of thousands of KGB agents with a multimillion-dollar budget, we had
some part-time workers propping up poster boards on C-SPAN. “I see that it
wasn’t very well attended. And I remember that now that I see this. But it did
have an impact.” They didn’t have the budget or the time. But they were
motivated by truth and did what they could, responding to the fire hose of
falsehoods, calling them out, one lie at a time. “So they were working at this
day, after day, after day. I think we were kept busy just knocking these things
down.” But repeated exposure didn’t just lead to a couple of article
corrections. Kathleen’s report exposing and debunking Operation Infection made
its way right to the top of the Kremlin into the hands of Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev himself. Secretary of State George Shultz was in the room when Gorby
read it. “And you’re spreading all this bum dope about AIDS and the United
States pushing it. And I said, come on. So we had a good, heated exchange. And
there’s nothing wrong with that.” And days later, Gorbachev did the unthinkable.
He bowed to pressure, apologized to President Ronald Reagan, and promised to
stop spreading the fake AIDS story. “When we in the Active Measures Working
Group heard about Gorbachev having read the reports — that’s cool. That is
really cool. He couldn’t deny what we put in the report. And he didn’t deny it.”
“Yet, it was the military who prevented the hard-line coup from succeeding.”
“And then came the year 1989, 1990, when the Communist regime collapsed. Nobody
believed that the Russians would continue using this weapon in future.” “Our
government’s view was, problem solved.” As the Soviet Union was collapsing, Todd
wrote this final report for Congress, a warning that would fall on deaf ears.
“The formidable Soviet active measures and disinformation apparatus, which has
manipulated world opinion for decades, has disintegrated. But many large
fragments of their apparatus continue to exist and function, for the most part
now under Russian, rather than Soviet sponsorship.” Don’t forget. KGB agents
spent 25% of their time creating disinformation. And that was true of the entire
agency during the Cold War, including a young agent from St. Petersburg who
enrolled into the KGB in 1975 and who would one day go on to greater things.
[music]

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Meet the KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News

By Adam B. Ellick, Adam Westbrook and Jonah M. Kessel

15:37Meet the KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News

We reveal how one of the biggest fake news stories ever concocted — the 1984
AIDS-is-a-biological-weapon hoax — went viral in the pre-Internet era. Meet the
KGB cons who invented it, and the “truth squad” that quashed it. For a
bit.CreditCredit...The New York Times

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EPISODE 2


THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS OF FAKE NEWS

The Pizzagate playbook: same tactics, new technologies. How the seven rules of
Soviet disinformation are being used to create today’s fake news stories.


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THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS OF FAKE NEWS

THE PIZZAGATE PLAYBOOK: SAME TACTICS, NEW TECHNOLOGIES. HOW THE SEVEN RULES OF
SOVIET DISINFORMATION ARE BEING USED TO CREATE TODAY’S FAKE NEWS STORIES. PIZZA
ANYONE?

“Co-exist!” May 21st, 2016 in Houston, Tex. This is an anti-Islam protest
outside a mosque in the heart of downtown. “Our neighbors were slaughtered by
these — ” And literally across the street, a counter-rally. “Pack it up!” “Take
it home!” But not a single person here — on either side of the street — realizes
they’ve been duped. They’ve been brought here — same place, same time — by two
separate Facebook events, posts which we now know both came from the same
source, thousands of miles outside Texas, in Russia. - [non-English speech] Cold
War-style “active measures” in the American heartland in 2016. The same
techniques, the same origin. Even the same perpetrators. “The military who
prevented the hard-line coup from succeeding.” When the Soviet Union fell in
1991, pretty much everyone assumed that its disinformation apparatus died too.
“Our government’s view was problem solved. No more active measures. No more
disinformation.” It also meant the end of Vladimir Putin’s KGB career. But
within a decade, he was back, first as head of the renamed KGB — the FSB — and
not long after, as the president. “Putin is a child of the KGB. He spent years
in the KGB being evaluated every year according to the active measures and
disinformation he produced.” As soon as he took office, Putin got right to work.
His first few years were spent testing disinformation inside Russia on Russians.
But then he took it overseas, launching Russia Today, a global English-language
news channel. It was soon available in millions of American homes with a
memorable slogan and familiar faces. “I’ve been hearing about it. I’ve been
reading about it.” Conflicts with Georgia, and then the Ukraine, gave Putin a
chance to practice disinformation on a bigger stage, and he also started funding
something called the Internet Research Agency, slowly putting his pieces into
place. But Putin isn’t sowing all this chaos just for fun. All along, he’s had a
single goal. See, in terms of population and G.D.P., Russia is actually a pretty
small country, especially when compared to a unified Western world. But Putin
knows that if he can pit the West against itself and break up our alliances,
Russia is suddenly much more powerful and can take on other countries one by
one. He’s trying to reshape the world order in his favor, and disinformation is
one of his favorite tools. Now, to do this he’s using a carefully crafted game
plan — a playbook of sorts — that he deploys again and again. “It’s magnificent
in its conception.” “That playbook is designed to achieve a change in the
behavior, perception and viewpoints of foreign audiences and governments.” Both
Todd Leventhal and Kathleen Bailey fought Moscow’s disinformation more than 30
years ago for the U.S. government. “They are good.” And if you thought
convincing millions of people that the U.S. government created AIDS as a
biological weapon was audacious, wait til you see what they’re up to today. But
first, we need to take a super-quick timeout here, because there’s an awkward
question you might be asking yourself. “Have we ever tried to meddle in other
countries’ elections?” “Hmm.” Yes, America is no stranger to interfering in
other countries. “The U.S. has attempted to influence elections around the world
for years.” But when it comes to disinformation, Russia is in a class by itself,
with unmatched scale and sophistication. And unlike the U.S., with its myriad of
investigations, Russia does it without even a shred of public or historical
accountability. “We must never allow the end to justify the means.” O.K.? Time
in. Now, do you remember Pizzagate, the one about Hillary Clinton running a
child sex ring from the basement of a pizza parlor? It was everywhere just a few
weeks before the 2016 election, and even inspired a believer to turn up at the
restaurant with a gun. “A shooting in a D.C. pizza restaurant that was tied to a
fake news story — ” But that whole story was a classic Soviet-style con,
straight out of the playbook. “Look, there’s the playbook, and it’s been a
playbook that’s been around for a very long time.” “And so they’re using that
tool box in order to try and get what they want.” “So it’s a textbook thing that
they’ve known about for 20, 30 years and actually taught as part of their
tradecraft.” So this is textbook, tool box, playbook thing, whatever you want to
call it, the experts we spoke to kept talking about it on these terms. Ed Lucas
has studied Russia for decades. First as a journalist and now as a
disinformation analyst. Dr. Claire Wardle is an authority on internet
verification at Harvard. She’s been tracking online lies since 2008. And this is
Clint Watts, former F.B.I. and military. He’s been shouting from the rooftops
about disinformation for years. With the help of our experts, not to mention our
spies and our detectives, we’ve reverse engineered the seven commandments of
Russian disinformation, a time-tested, step-by-step recipe to creating the
perfect fake news story. So rule No. 1, look for cracks in the target society,
social divisions you can exploit and wedge open. “They look for economic,
social, demographic, linguistic, regional, ethnic, any source of division.” “And
how can we actually emphasize those divisions and actually make people lose
trust in one another.” “So it’s like being a doctor. You have to understand a
patient. Oh, he’s got a bad knee. He’s got a sore hip. He’s got a disease that
causes weakness here. But instead of trying to make it better, we try to make
everything worse.” Rule 2, create a big, bold lie, something so outrageous no
one could possibly believe it was made up. “Also, so egregious that if they
could get people to believe it, it would be totally damning.” Rule No. 3, wrap
that lie around a kernel of truth. “Propaganda is most effective when there’s a
little bit of truth in it.” “The most successful operations of that kind contain
some truthful element so that the disinformation is eventually accepted as a
whole.” Rule 4, conceal your hands, making it seem like the story came from
somewhere else. “Nobody was searching about the origin, how it started, who
published the story first. This was, of course, a method then repeated again and
again.” Rule No. 5, find yourself a useful idiot. “Useful idiots are essentially
people they would identify who unwittingly will take the Kremlin’s message and
push it into the target audience, the foreign population they want to reach.”
“They were idiots in that they didn’t see what was obvious, and they were very
useful.” And what happens when those pesky truth-seekers try and debunk your
fake story? Well, Rule 6 has you covered. “Deny, deny, deny. Even if the truth
is obvious, yet deny, deny, deny.” “They will bluster their way out of things,
because they’ve realized that our attention span is quite short.” And finally —
and this is a really important one- play the long game. “Russia’s willing to
play a long game, put large resources into things that may not bear fruit for
many years to come.” “The accumulation of these operations over a long period of
time will result in a major political impact.” “And if you think about it as a
drip on a rock, today the drip doesn’t have any impact. If that drip hits for a
long period of time — years — there will be a hole in the rock. And they know
that.” These seven simple rules were a powerful weapon for the KGB, and they
applied them again and again and again. But then something came along which
changed the game entirely. “The internet has brought anonymity, ubiquity and
immediacy in combinations that we didn’t have in the era of telex machines, and
shortwave radio, and rotary printing presses.” “During the time of my
involvement, one operation can reach maybe 100,000 people if the paper had a
nice circulation. Now that’s ridiculous.” And with the internet’s help, Russia
has scored some big wins. The explosion at the Louisiana chemical plant that was
caused by ISIS. The deadly phosphorous leak in American Falls, Idaho, and the
list goes on and on. There’s the claim MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian fighter
jets. The thousands of Americans who supposedly petitioned to return Alaska to
Russia. There’s the queen warning of a third world war. The Syrian massacre that
never happened. Sweden adopting the Islamic State flag. A made-up attack on a
U.S. Air Force base. Roy Moore, Brexit, immigration. And in stories that will
sound eerily familiar, there’s the claims the U.S. was behind the Ebola outbreak
and the Zika virus. From Black Lives Matter, to the gun lobby, wherever there’s
been a division in society, Russia has used disinformation to pry it open,
sowing chaos across the political spectrum. And now that you know the rules of
the playbook, you can see how effective a weapon it really is. Pizza, anyone? To
understand what really happened here, we need to go back to March 19, 2016, and
just here, actually, Washington, D.C. This is the time and the place where
hackers got into the Gmail account of Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta.
“So the Podesta emails were the information, the power, the Pizzagate
conspiracy.” And you can guess who was behind the hacking of those emails. “Tied
to the Russian intelligence services.” Big surprise. In fact, we now know the
hacker worked directly for the G.R.U., Russia’s C.I.A. The divisive 2016
election was the perfect crack to wedge open with disinformation and, well, the
lies don’t get much bigger than a presidential candidate running a child sex
ring from the basement of a pizza parlor. The playbook says you should mix
little bits of truth into your lie and John Podesta’s emails provided loads of
factual details to weave into the story. Comet Pizza’s a real place, and there
were emails between Podesta and the restaurant’s owner. Rule 4 says you need a
way to conceal your hand. Well, six months later — “WikiLeaks posted more than
2,000 additional emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta.”
Using WikiLeaks was a genius idea, helping to keep its hackers in the shadows.
Meanwhile, Russia continues to push the story with fringe social media accounts,
all run from the Internet Research Agency. “Over 50,000 accounts communicated
automatically and in synchronization we’ve never seen in the history of social
media.” Meanwhile, there were no shortage of useful idiots who were duped into
backing up the lie. “Pizzagate is real. The question is, how real is it? What is
it? Something’s going on. Something’s being covered up.” Now, the story should
be laughably easy to debunk. For a start, the pizza restaurant in question
doesn’t even have a basement. But there’s a rule for that. “Deny, deny, deny.”
So when intelligence exposed Russia’s WikiLeaks connection, WikiLeaks and RT
knew exactly what to do. “We can say that the Russian government is not the
source.” “Despite there being no evidence to prove this, Isn’t it nice to have
your own TV channel? “If I had to rewrite RT’s slogan, it’d be question more,
answer less.” “80 percent of their coverage is actually excellent coverage. And
because 80 percent of the time they’re doing quality journalism, when 20 percent
of the time they’re not, then it enables people to say, well, no, look at this.
We are journalists. We have policies. We know what we’re doing.” With days to go
before the election, the story had taken on a life of its own, the magnificent
long game beginning to pay off. That said, even Russia couldn’t have imagined
what came next. “A shooting in a D.C. pizza restaurant — ” Two insane lies, 30
years apart. One story took six years to take hold, the other barely six months.
But they both share the same DNA, the same unmistakable trace of active measures
and the same goal, to shift the world’s balance of power by turning Western
countries on themselves. We’re at war, and we’ve got absolutely no idea. “Those
were Russians.” “They were not Russians. I don’t go with the Russians.” And
we’re facing a sophisticated weapon designed to bring down democracies from the
inside, just as the KGB envisioned all those years ago. “Fighting war on the
battlefield is the most stupid and primitive way of fighting a war. The highest
art of warfare is not to fight at all, but to subvert anything of value in your
enemy’s country, anything. Put white against black, old against young, I don’t
know, wealth against poor, and so on. Doesn’t matter. As long as it disturbs
society, as long as it cuts the moral fiber of a nation, it’s good.” “The virus
that causes AIDS leaked.” “An assault rifle targeting a Washington, D.C. spot —
” “And then you just take this country when everything is subverted, when the
country’s disoriented and confused. When it is demoralized and then
destabilized, then the crisis will come.”

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14:16




The Seven Commandments of Fake News

By Adam B. Ellick, Adam Westbrook and Jonah M. Kessel

14:16The Seven Commandments of Fake News

The Pizzagate playbook: Same tactics, new technologies. How the seven rules of
Soviet disinformation are being used to create today’s fake news stories. Pizza
anyone?CreditCredit...The New York Times



EPISODE 3


THE WORLDWIDE WAR ON TRUTH

Governments from Pakistan to Mexico to Washington are woefully unequipped to
combat disinformation warfare. Eastern European countries living in Russia’s
shadow can teach us how to start fighting back, but only if our politicians
decide to stop profiting from these tactics and fight them instead.



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THE WORLDWIDE WAR ON TRUTH

GOVERNMENTS FROM PAKISTAN TO MEXICO TO WASHINGTON ARE WOEFULLY UNEQUIPPED TO
COMBAT DISINFORMATION WARFARE. EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES LIVING IN RUSSIA’S
SHADOW CAN TEACH US HOW TO START FIGHTING BACK, BUT ONLY IF OUR POLITICIANS
DECIDE TO STOP PROFITING FROM THESE TACTICS AND FIGHT THEM INSTEAD.

[buzzing] [static] [laughter] It’s time to fight back against disinformation.
But these are the people leading the charge. “Can you please explain to us the
difference between a bot and a troll?” “Is Twitter the same as what you do?”
“You can look at a lot of gray hair and realize that my technology capabilities
are very shallow.” Not very encouraging, is it? But this isn’t the first time
the U.S. government has been asleep at the wheel on this. “Mr. Allen, how can we
compete with this Communist propaganda?” You know now that Russia has been
attacking the U.S. like this since the ’50s, but did you know that for the first
30 years of that, no one in the U.S. government took it seriously? “There was
not a very high awareness of disinformation or “active measures.” So there was a
tendency to want to keep the waters smooth.” “They use all the means of
communication.” The thinking went, if you respond to a fake story, you dignify
it. “I don’t think we grasped it intellectually.” Then, in 1980, a new cowboy
rode into town. [pow] “Ronald Reagan — his point of view was we ought to be
bold. We ought to tell the truth.” [dramatic chords] “Truth ought to be put
front and center, and that if somebody were speaking the opposite, we ought to
expose it.” “Get up!” “Presidents are very important.” “To the danger of
espionage is added active measures, designed to subvert and deceive, to
disinform the public opinion upon which our democracies are built.” Reagan
created the Active Measures Working Group. You know, that government truth
squad, which Kathleen Bailey led from 1985 to ’87. “I came at the problem
believing that I could grab the tiger by the tail and whirl it over my head. I
was going to win.” They brought down the AIDS myth — Operation Infection, one of
the greatest disinformation campaigns ever created. Proof that the best defense
against disinformation is exposing it. Well, actually, it’s not that simple. “ —
and I know the government administer AIDS — ” Decades later, surveys have found
that millions of Americans still believe AIDS was cooked up by the U.S.
government. The lie lives on in our music, on TV — “My parents believe the
government created H.I.V. in a lab, and the C.I.A. spread it in the prisons to
kill blacks and gays.” — in comics, on YouTube, even in churches. “ — weaponize
pathogens to hit selected groups of humans.” Fighting disinformation, it’s like
a nightmarish game of whack-a-mole. No matter what you do, the lies just keep
popping up — “ — biochemists create ethnospecific epidemics, injecting the
public in clinics, then when — ” — all of which makes us wonder, do we really
stand a chance against disinformation? Or is this a virus that can never be
cured? “It ain’t little green monkeys, it’s little white honkies, crossing
bovine leukemia — “ [music] Mark Twain once said, “A lie is halfway around the
world before the truth has even got its boots on.” [ding] Except even that’s a
lie. That quote’s been attributed to loads of people. But whoever said it was
right. We know now empirically that lies do have an unfair advantage over the
truth, spreading further and faster, gaining traction every time they’re
repeated. “Repetition is part of the game, and the more a bad story is repeated
— repeated, repeated, repeated — the more real it becomes to everyone.” But
Twain’s “around the world” part is also true. This is a global problem. In Iran,
the government’s deploying their own version of the Soviet playbook, calling
their operation “nefak” which is Farsi for “discord.” Myanmar’s been brewing up
endless conspiracy theories to justify ethnic cleansing. And in Pakistan, the
establishment sees C.I.A. plots everywhere. That last one even ensnared one of
our own journalists here at The New York Times — an experience that was so
upsetting to him, it led him to make the film you’re watching right now. Isn’t
that right, Adam? “That’s right. I was living in Pakistan. Al Qaeda accused me
of being part of a C.I.A. anti-Islam plot. See, conspiracy theories are kind of
like a national sport over there. And even today, I still get blasted on Twitter
for being either a C.I.A. spy or a dead terrorist.” Wait. A dead terrorist? “One
of the country’s most popular TV talk show hosts accused me of being one of the
attackers in a school massacre that murdered dozens of children. Here I am,
dead, in the Pakistani press. But this stuff is kind of normal over there. I
mean, it happens all the time. What I never imagined is that we’d be seeing this
kind of toxic disinformation here at home in the States.” So is there anything
we can do? “I think so. I also used to live in Eastern Europe.” [polka music]
“Estonia, Ukraine — they lag behind us in many things. But when it comes to
fighting disinformation, there’s so much we can learn from them.” For instance,
if you turn on the TV in Latvia on a Sunday night, you’ll see this. A prime-time
show all about Russian lies. In the same slot where we’d be watching “American
Idol,” folks in Riga are tuning in to watch the latest disinformation be
systematically described, debunked and destroyed. It’s not just Latvia. Ukraine
has a bilingual stop-fake-news show broadcast by dozens of TV stations.
“Disinformation never stops, and neither do we. Welcome to “Stop Fake,” the
place where — ” The Czech government monitors disinformation as a form of
terrorism. Lithuania has thousands of volunteer cyber-warriors — they call them
elves — who relentlessly troll the Russian trolls. And in Estonia, there’s a
kind of digital national guard — thousands of volunteers who, among other
things, fight disinformation. “The countries that have been exposed to this the
longest are the best at dealing with it. They see things we don’t see. They
smell things we don’t smell.” Meanwhile back here, we’re just learning the hard
way what happens when we don’t fight back. “The Pizzagate conspiracy — no
journalist was going to actively debunk that because they didn’t think that
anybody truly believed that. We now know that they did, and actually it seems
that we should have done more coverage during the election that there was a
rumor circulating, and let’s debunk it.” So this is the prescription, right?
Fact-checking. Media literacy. Engaged citizens rallying around good journalism
to create a culture of critical thinking. [buzzer] Ah, who are we kidding? Media
literacy is great and all, but we need something way stronger. And for that,
we’ve got to talk about the responsibility of this guy. “Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, YouTube — they were designed primarily by a group of quite young
people, mostly men, on the West Coast of the U.S., in Silicon Valley.” “I think
there’s a lot of people who went into the tech industry because they were very,
very good at tech, not because they were good at civics or political science.”
“And they really believed that they were building technology that would connect
the world and would actually be a positive force in society.” Well, naivety
eventually morphed into flat-out denial. “Do you solemnly swear to tell the
truth — ” The platforms have spent years shamefully ignoring information
warfare. “The ads and posts we are here today to discuss — ” “ — the number of
accounts we could link to Russia — ” “ — relatively limited.” “ — comparatively
small — “ “We’re a very small fraction of the overall content on Facebook.”
“There’s still a level of astonishing, kind of political and cultural illiteracy
where they think connecting people is good.” So what exactly are they supposed
to be doing? Well, there’s no silver bullet, but there are a ton of ideas for
things they could be doing, from improving transparency — “ — about who’s paying
for posts.” — to fighting anonymity — “Is there a real person behind this
account? Is there a real person behind this platform?” — to helping us know
whether we can trust what we’re reading — “ — a nutritional label on sources in
your Google Search findings — “ — and getting serious about punishing violators.
“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big
mistake. And it was my mistake, and I’m sorry.” Now, companies like Facebook
have recently been taking some baby steps along these lines — [ticking] — but
don’t get your hopes up. Social media platforms are dependent on the emotional
hyperpartisan stories that make great disinformation. The bottom line — [cash
register] — their business models are riddled with perverse incentives. “If I am
Twitter, and I have shareholders to keep happy, and I have to go back to my
shareholders and tell them how many active monthly users I have, and the truth
is that 22 percent of them are not human, I don’t actually want to tell my
shareholders that. I want to give them a lovely big number that means that we
still have value and that we still make money.” And that’s the problem — asking
just isn’t enough. We’ve got to force the platforms to change. And that means
regulation. That’s right. It’s time for Uncle Sam to get in the game. [sirens]
The problem is, Uncle Sam knows how to mobilize when we get attacked like this,
but when the warfare is digital, well, you know — “There are days when I wonder
if the Facebook friends is a little misstated. It doesn’t seem like I have those
every single day.” “How many data categories do you store — does Facebook
store?” “Senator, can you clarify what you mean by data categories?” These are
the people who are supposed to be protecting you from information warfare. “Do
you store any?” “Senator, I’m not actually sure what that is referring to.”
“Yeah. So I’ve testified five times to the Senate, either about terrorism or
Russian active measures. There is a very diverse level of understanding of
social media.” “ — have people say, well, yeah, because my 13-year-old son, you
should see how he uses it.” “Now, my son, Charlie, who’s 13, is dedicated to
Instagram, so — ” “I feel very fortunate that I have not had to go to the House
to testify. I think it would be a giant waste of time.” “ — to disinform the
public opinion upon which our democracies are built.” History tells us that the
fight against disinformation starts with strong leadership. And I’ve got to to
tell you, we’ve been let down on this for a long time. Now, I’m not talking
about him just yet. I’m talking about him. “Americans and Russians share common
interests that form a basis for cooperation.” “It was really hard to get the
Obama administration to take Russia seriously as an issue.” “We could have
looked at sanctions earlier. We could have talked about measured
cyber-counterattacks, or even diplomatic negotiations. But that didn’t really
happen. The Obama administration kind of got played into a box by recognizing it
too late.” Obama actually signed an executive order to counter foreign
disinformation, but he was so obsessed with the threat from ISIS, its mandate
only covered terror groups. State actors, like Russia, were free to carry on
unimpeded. To his credit, Trump actually reversed this, and some people in his
administration are talking tough. “Russia is known for its disinformation
campaigns.” But the higher up you go, let’s just say, the less enthusiasm there
is. “The point is, if it’s their intention to interfere, they’re going to find
ways to do that. We can take steps we can take, but this is something that once
they decide they’re going to do it, it’s very difficult to pre-empt it.” So what
has been done? Well, Congress put aside $120 million to fund our defense against
disinformation. The Trump administration sat on it silently for 18 months. And
when they did release it, they gave just a third of it. Not much of a
counterstrike, is it? I mean, where’s the urgency here? These Russian attacks
were first plotted way back in early 2014, and we’re only now coming to grips
with them. “We are still playing catch-up from a long way behind. We are looking
in the rearview mirror, getting less bad at working out what Russia just did to
us. We’re still not looking through the windshield, find out what’s happening
right now and what’s going to be happening next.” This is one of the great
unsolved policy questions of our time. A functioning government would at least
come together to publish full detailed reports of all these attacks. [drumroll]
But the problem isn’t just our lackluster government. It’s actually much scarier
than that, because now the threat is coming from inside the White House. It’s
finally time to meet President Disinformation. [dramatic music] Donald Trump is
a one-man wrecking crew for the truth, and he knows all the moves. First,
there’s Trump the denier. And when it comes to disinformation, he even denies
we’re being attacked. “And if it is Russia, which is probably not. Nobody knows
who it is.” Never mind what his own officials say. “ — that information,
manipulation, outright lies — ” “ — literally upped their game to the point
where it’s having a significant impact.” Then there’s Trump the useful idiot.
This is a man who’s never met a conspiracy theory he wouldn’t tweet. “Why
doesn’t he show his birth certificate? You look at what’s happening last night
in Sweden — Sweden! The same person votes many times. You’ve probably heard
about that. They always like to say, oh, that’s a conspiracy theory. Not a
conspiracy theory, folks.” We also know he shared stories originally planted by
the Kremlin. I mean, not even the KGB could have dreamt up a useful idiot as
prominent and powerful as Trump and his administration. And then there’s Trump
the disinformation natural. He doesn’t just regurgitate this stuff, he invents
his own. “It was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan. I said,
wait a minute. There’s a lot of wiretapping being talked about. We’ve signed
more bills — and I’m talking about through the legislature — than any president.
ICE, they actually liberate towns. They liberate towns. We have become an energy
exporter for the first time ever just recently.” [cheering] It’s weird, but this
is somehow worse than the Cold War. Back then it was just us versus them. But
now it’s us versus them, and us versus us. [sad music] Here’s the thing about
democracies — they can’t function unless we all agree on a basic set of facts.
We can’t debate anything — health care, immigration, gun control — unless we’re
aligned — left and right — about what is actually true. Disinformation pollutes
those waters, confusing us, so we end up debating facts instead of discovering
solutions. And as we spiral downwards together, our adversaries applaud from
behind the curtain. And here’s the kicker. The things that make democracy good,
living in an open society with a free press and political diversity, those are
the things — weirdly — that make us vulnerable. Any country with an
authoritarian leader and limited freedom of speech, they’re the ones with the
advantage right now, which kind of raises the question that maybe only history
can answer. Can the good guys ever win? “You absolutely never win. Never.” “This
problem is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.” “The next few
years are going to be worse than the last few years.” “And they will continue
using it, regardless of what we say here in the discussion, regardless of the
outcome of the discussion and investigation.” “But we will not always be losers
in this game. There will be victories here and there. It’s only when we quit the
game, quit trying to expose them, that we lose. As long as we can expose them,
they’re losing.” It’s like an exhausting never-ending game of whack-a-mole that
we’ve got no choice but to play. We’ve got to find disinformation as best we
can, whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head. [ringing] We’re in this for
the long haul, whether we like it or not. “This was the largest audience to ever
witness an inauguration, period.” “ — in the mysterious murder of former D.N.C.
staffer Seth Rich.” “And they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green
massacre.” “ — who apparently was assassinated at 4 in the morning.” “The
president still strongly feels that there was a large amount of voter fraud.”
“The 9/11 hijackers are alive and well.” “People who are behaving like actors.”
“The murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years.” “You had
the NATO base in Turkey being under attack by terrorists.” “This is the greatest
overreach and the greatest abuse of power — ” “This video that you linked to
appears to be a hoax.” “All we did was put out what he had on his internet.”
[thump]

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17:27




The Worldwide War on Truth

By Adam B. Ellick, Adam Westbrook and Jonah M. Kessel

17:27The Worldwide War on Truth

Governments from Pakistan to Mexico to Washington are woefully unequipped to
combat disinformation warfare. Eastern European countries living in Russia’s
shadow can teach us how to start fighting back, but only if our politicians
decide to stop profiting from these tactics and fight them instead.
Directors Adam B. Ellick Adam Westbrook Andrew Blackwell
Director of Photography Jonah M. Kessel
Executive Producer Adam B. Ellick
Assistant Producer Leah Varjacques
Editors Adam Westbrook Jonah M. Kessel
Animators Erica Gorochow Tom McCarten
Research Director Dahlia Kozlowsky
Design and Development Jessia Ma Aaron Byrd
Jump to Episode: one two three

Adam Ellick and John Sipher, a former C.I.A. station chief, answered questions
about Russian disinformation in a Reddit Ask Me Anything.








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