Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's missing. We don't know where she is.
Speaker 2: The Russians have her, at the very least, it's quite
Speaker 2: possible the Russians have misled her in some way or another,
Speaker 2: and maybe they tricked her into leaving when it was
Speaker 2: time to record.
Speaker 1: You cheeky boy, don't worry everybody, Jerry's just really on vacation.
Speaker 1: But that was a very clever setup to this episode
Speaker 1: on essentially on Russian propaganda and how you know, I
Speaker 1: think we all knew that, like their propaganda machine was
Speaker 1: big back in the cold worn stuff obviously, but it's
Speaker 1: it's a really big problem now and has been for
Speaker 1: a while, ever since the advent of the Internet and
Speaker 1: especially social media.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because those two things are wide open set up
Speaker 2: for people to distribute misinformation, deliberate misinformation. The Russians are
Speaker 2: far from the only ones that do it. They're just really,
Speaker 2: really good at it, and they've been doing it for
Speaker 2: a long time. They I would guess they were probably
Speaker 2: the first country to really start doing this on like
Speaker 2: a wide scale. But I mean as far back I
Speaker 2: think as twenty ten or at least the two thousand, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but like the twenty tens, at least twenty thirteen at
Speaker 2: the absolute latest. The Internet Research Agency was the first
Speaker 2: kind of famous one that surfaced. And the whole premise
Speaker 2: back then and now is to basically game social media
Speaker 2: and use whatever you can whatever like weaknesses it has
Speaker 2: in like the entire structure of it, to confuse people,
Speaker 2: to sow discord and disinformation and chaos and questioning what
Speaker 2: reality is, getting the media to start using words like
Speaker 2: post truth and stuff like that, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: It might not have a specific aim where it's like
Speaker 2: we want to say, get Trump elected that was part
Speaker 2: of this too, like that was a Russian name as well,
Speaker 2: or we want to stir America up over the border crisis.
Speaker 2: Just creating a climate where people question what's real or
Speaker 2: what's true. That in and of itself is a huge
Speaker 2: triumph for these Russian operations that have been going on
Speaker 2: for more than a decade.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that was one of the things that
Speaker 1: chilled me most was it wasn't like we really need
Speaker 1: to get people to believe this one thing right about Ukraine,
Speaker 1: let's say it's more like, no, let's just so chaos
Speaker 1: in confusion to where you doubt what you're reading and
Speaker 1: you don't know what the truth is anymore. And that's
Speaker 1: just like that feels even scarier, you know.
Speaker 2: It does, because ultimately, eventually most people would be like,
Speaker 2: it's not worth trying to get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm just gonna stop. I'm just not going
Speaker 2: to pay attention anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to care, or I'll just share
Speaker 1: something because like I read.
Speaker 2: It, yes, exactly sometimes on Reddit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good point. All right, So maybe we should jump
Speaker 1: back a little bit and talk about the IRA, not
Speaker 1: the Irish Republican Army, but the Internet Research Agency or
Speaker 1: the Russian troll Farm as it might you might know
Speaker 1: it better, as that was founded in twenty thirteen by
Speaker 1: guy that was a former criminal eventually a successful entrepreneur
Speaker 1: and kind of higher up oligarch in Russia and you know,
Speaker 1: confidant of Vladimir Putin, and he also founded you know,
Speaker 1: Confident up for a while because he also founded the
Speaker 1: Wagner Group, which you may have read about the news,
Speaker 1: the Russian Mercenary organization that would eventually try and Overthrow putin.
Speaker 2: Yes, do you watch the age and see on Prime? No?
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: It is magnificent. Yeah, it's one of the best spy
Speaker 2: shows of recent times.
Speaker 1: I love a spie show.
Speaker 2: You guys liked Black Doves, right, yep. This is at
Speaker 2: least on that caliber, if not higher. Michael Fossbender's in it,
Speaker 2: Richard Gear, Jeffrey Wright, a bunch of other very talented people.
Speaker 2: But it's all like spycraft stuff, and it's it's really
Speaker 2: worth it. They just released their second season and I've
Speaker 2: got three episodes left. I started two days ago, and
Speaker 2: both seasons are well worth watching.
Speaker 1: Okay, I did not watch Black Doves. Actually, I thought
Speaker 1: you were talking about the what's the Gary Eelman show,
Speaker 1: Wild Horses something horses.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I know the one you're talking about.
Speaker 2: You watch that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I watched that one.
Speaker 2: Is it good?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It's really good. I mean Gary Oldman's fantastic Slow Horses.
Speaker 2: Slow Horses. I swear you watch Black Doves because Emily
Speaker 2: said she liked it, the one with she may have
Speaker 2: watched it, bend it like.
Speaker 1: Beckham, Yeah, Kiera Knightley, I didn't. Yeah, I didn't see it.
Speaker 1: May have watched that without me though, because she watched.
Speaker 2: Okay, just watch them, watch them both, but definitely watch
Speaker 2: the agency. It's much more likely to be in your
Speaker 2: wheelhouse if either one of them are going.
Speaker 1: To be all right, Okay, So back to the show.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know I brought that up. They battle essentially
Speaker 2: the Wagner Group, but it's Valhalla in the agency.
Speaker 1: Okay, gotcha, sorry about that. That's okay. Everyone loves a
Speaker 1: good recommendation from either one of us, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also, I want to be clear here, this
Speaker 2: was not brought to you by Prime. We're not trying
Speaker 2: to manipulate you or propagandize you or market to you.
Speaker 2: This is just I watch it on Prime and it's
Speaker 2: on time, and it's so good that I just took
Speaker 2: that time to share that with everybody. That's all exactly
Speaker 2: what it seemed like on face value. And do you
Speaker 2: know why I have to say that.
Speaker 1: Chuck, I don't know, Josh, because of.
Speaker 2: Stuff like this operation that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1: That's right. So the IRA that I spoke of, the
Speaker 1: Internet Research Agency that what they did this is like
Speaker 1: mid twenty tens. They hired a ton of you know,
Speaker 1: young people basically who could speak English and who knew
Speaker 1: a lot about politics to like, hey, why don't you
Speaker 1: start a troll farm, you know, get on board this
Speaker 1: troll farm and just create fake stuff, create fake news stories.
Speaker 1: Although I'm love to even say those words together, fake
Speaker 1: social media posts, YouTube videos. Eventually, you know, as you'll
Speaker 1: see what would become like deep fakes and AI and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But this is before that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: while this was going on, Sputnik and Russia Today or
Speaker 1: RT these are you know, I think legitimate or one point,
Speaker 1: we're legitimate Russian news outlets. Right.
Speaker 2: They were always backed by the Kremlin. Oh well okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I think that they were still they still
Speaker 2: had journalists and stuff like that, but they were trying
Speaker 2: to get the Russian viewpoint across to Western audiences.
Speaker 1: Right, So they started distributing stories around the world, basically,
Speaker 1: like we were saying, trying to get people to like
Speaker 1: to believe whatever they wanted to believe at the time,
Speaker 1: like politically.
Speaker 2: Right, And the twenty sixteen United States election was a
Speaker 2: real big kind of debut. They've been kind of ated already,
Speaker 2: but the twenty sixteen election they really showed just how
Speaker 2: much they could monkey with stuff, or at least the
Speaker 2: potential of them monkeying with stuff. And this is where
Speaker 2: that the allegations of Trump colluding with the Russians, this
Speaker 2: is what they were talking about unproven, by the way,
Speaker 2: to Rachel Maddow's great dismay right Pizzagate. These they didn't
Speaker 2: necessarily come up with these things, but they were able
Speaker 2: to amplify them, yeah, and get people talking about them
Speaker 2: and make people questioning what was what, you know, or
Speaker 2: the Democrats like really keeping child sex slaves in the
Speaker 2: basement of Comet Pizza in DC. Who knows? Maybe you
Speaker 2: should take an assault rifle from North Carolina and go
Speaker 2: find out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So once this start sort of starts coming out,
Speaker 1: and the United States and you know, all over North
Speaker 1: American and Europe started realizing what was going on. In
Speaker 1: February twenty twenty two, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
Speaker 1: there started to be a little bit of action taken.
Speaker 1: The EU banned Russian state media, including Sputnik and RT.
Speaker 1: Other companies Google News dropped them from aggregation service. I
Speaker 1: think Google, Microsoft and Apple all started like pulling their apps.
Speaker 1: So that sort of started happening and then in twenty
Speaker 1: three was when that failed uprising against Putin by the
Speaker 1: Wagner group happened. And the long and short is after
Speaker 1: all this, the IRA finally disbanded, but this work continued
Speaker 1: among other groups.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a good example of the whack a
Speaker 2: mole that the West is playing. The Russian Internet disinformation
Speaker 2: operations have the West on our heels. Clearly, there's basically
Speaker 2: no one who knows what they're talking about with this
Speaker 2: stuff who would disagree with that. The West still has
Speaker 2: not figured out how to do it, aside from piecemeal
Speaker 2: responses like taking Russia Times app off of the Apple market,
Speaker 2: off of the Apple app store, you know, like that's
Speaker 2: the kind of response we have to this. Still, and
Speaker 2: this has been going on for more than a decade.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why it's so hard to
Speaker 2: do anything about it is because they use what the
Speaker 2: Rand Corporation researchers Christopher Paula and Miriam Matthews call a
Speaker 2: fire hose of falsehood, just put everything out there. It's
Speaker 2: not the quality, it's the quantity that they focus on.
Speaker 1: Yeah. For sure, after CRIMEA was annexed in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: and then obviously after the invasion of Ukraine in February
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty two, they really ramped up a lot
Speaker 1: of messaging to try and get you know, sentiment, sometimes
Speaker 1: on their side, but a lot more times like just
Speaker 1: against Ukraine and what was going on. And this eventually
Speaker 1: it would become known as Dappelganger. But to be clear,
Speaker 1: Dappelganger isn't like it wasn't Operation Dappelganger or there's not
Speaker 1: an organization called Dappelganger. It's more of just sort of
Speaker 1: I think the media sort of misread that and labeled
Speaker 1: it that, but it's really just sort of this method
Speaker 1: of doing what they're doing and how they're doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to be specific, it's a way of cloning dummy
Speaker 2: websites that look like actual legitimate websites. The ones some
Speaker 2: of the ones that they targeted were Lamonde and France,
Speaker 2: their website, Washington Post in the US, the Guardian in
Speaker 2: the UK, and they would essentially just take they would
Speaker 2: have the bots start sending links or putting links all
Speaker 2: over the Internet to basically share, right, hey, look at
Speaker 2: this crazy article. Right. The Washington Post actually reported this,
Speaker 2: so it seems like it would be legitimate. Then you
Speaker 2: would click that and it would take you to a
Speaker 2: different series of domains that got smaller and smaller to
Speaker 2: where if you were in the area they were targeting,
Speaker 2: say you were in the United States and you had
Speaker 2: clicked you know, this thing to find out about whatever
Speaker 2: this fake Washington Post thing was saying, it would it
Speaker 2: would take you to this fake website like Washingtonpost dot PM,
Speaker 2: just different enough that like you probably wouldn't notice, but
Speaker 2: it's a different domain name. And the way that they
Speaker 2: were able to get away with this was shell companies
Speaker 2: and using shady kind of hosting services around the world.
Speaker 2: And that that was doppelganger, that technique that they used
Speaker 2: for getting this stuff out. There is no operation like this.
Speaker 2: These these using bots or creating like fake accounts on
Speaker 2: Facebook or whatever. That wasn't dopplgetor that is constant. It's
Speaker 2: so constant and so embedded that there's no name for that.
Speaker 2: Doppelganger was just the technique of the way that they
Speaker 2: use the infrastructure of the Internet to deliver misinformation for
Speaker 2: this short period of time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sort of one of the main companies. And we're
Speaker 1: not going to go through all of these because it's
Speaker 1: a little mind numbing. But there's one called the Social
Speaker 1: Design Agency, which is a pr firm that started up
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, founded by a political consultant who
Speaker 1: had you know, that was their business, so you know,
Speaker 1: they know exactly how to do it, and the Russian
Speaker 1: government all of a sudden was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: we would love to hire you to do like all
Speaker 1: this stuff. It's literally as of I think a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, run by the Kremlin and directed by
Speaker 1: the Putin administration, so they're kind of in the middle
Speaker 1: of most of this doppelganger activity. Yes, and you know,
Speaker 1: like you said, when you go to one of these websites,
Speaker 1: when you click on the link, if you're not paying
Speaker 1: attention to the dot whatever, and you realize it's not
Speaker 1: you know, Washingtonpost dot com. It looks like it, it
Speaker 1: smells like it, it acts like it for the most part.
Speaker 1: So it's really easy to fool people.
Speaker 2: It is. I mean, if you really look closely, and
Speaker 2: you look with a skeptical eye, you'll turn up some stuff.
Speaker 2: I saw. One example is that the US must not
Speaker 2: become the world's gendarme, which is police in French, like
Speaker 2: the Washington Post would not use a phrase like that, right.
Speaker 1: But you have to know that, like I think they
Speaker 1: count on just fire hosing it such where they're like, well,
Speaker 1: who cares if most people don't, If we just get
Speaker 1: this percentage of people, that's great.
Speaker 2: Yes, And even more than that, I feel like going
Speaker 2: to the trouble of actually creating the article on the
Speaker 2: fake website is almost superfluous because so many people on
Speaker 2: the internet just share, Yeah, share, like that headline gotcha? Now,
Speaker 2: I think that this is going on, not even bothering
Speaker 2: to click into this to read the actual article. All
Speaker 2: I need is the headline because it got me juiced up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And of course they're amplifying this through
Speaker 1: the bot farms. Russian social media bots will post links
Speaker 1: and then there are more bots that retweet these links.
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned on the show. I saw a
Speaker 1: picture of a bot farm one not too long ago
Speaker 1: that was in big expose.
Speaker 2: Were they all just doing grass?
Speaker 1: No? That was terrifying. It was like a dude sitting
Speaker 1: at a desk on a computer and there were a
Speaker 1: thousand cell phones connected hardwired to the computer, and then
Speaker 1: there were dozens and dozens of these guys with hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of smartphones wow, connected on a big wall.
Speaker 1: So when you see how it actually works, like literally
Speaker 1: connecting to phones to send this stuff out and amplify it,
Speaker 1: it's just it feels really dystopian and scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel like it's becoming clear that we're going
Speaker 2: to have to abandon the Internet and come up with
Speaker 2: a new one because this one got cooked.
Speaker 1: A creed. Should we take a break? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're going to ruminate that, and I hope we can
Speaker 1: even come back after we ruminate, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 3: I hope.
Speaker 1: All right. So I mentioned after the invasion of Ukraine
Speaker 1: in February twenty twenty two, that's when things really ramped
Speaker 1: up again. They you know, a lot of these ideas
Speaker 1: were really pretty clever. There was a one group that
Speaker 1: launched sort of like a Snopes like site, but a
Speaker 1: fake one, I know, War on Fakes, and it was
Speaker 1: design to discredit Ukraine and support Russia obviously. And then
Speaker 1: another one called are in Reliable Recent News which replace
Speaker 1: reliable Russian news. So on one side you've got something
Speaker 1: that says like, hey, this is reliable news, so this
Speaker 1: is real. On the other side, it's like, hey, we
Speaker 1: root out the fake stuff, but it's fake, so it's
Speaker 1: almost like, you know, it's not almost like they've got
Speaker 1: all their bases covered.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, if you pay too close attention to this,
Speaker 2: you'll start bleeding out of your ear guaranteed.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Doppelganger got its name from the EU's Disinformation Lab. One
Speaker 2: of the disheartening things to me, Chuck was figuring out
Speaker 2: that the people who are tracking this stuff, there's not
Speaker 2: a government agency involved anywhere. These are all like independent
Speaker 2: NGOs that are dedicated to tracking disinformation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting journalists.
Speaker 2: Like these are the people doing the actual work, and
Speaker 2: then seven years later the governments like, oh, we're going
Speaker 2: to have our Department of Justice do something about this.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So where that's where Doppelganger got its name from. I
Speaker 2: think it's basically it suggests that these are or it
Speaker 2: points out like the cloned sites, they're like Dappelgangers of
Speaker 2: the real thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: But that war on Ukraine, after the invasion of Ukraine,
Speaker 2: they really ramped up the misinformation flood that was coming.
Speaker 2: Like they targeted in twenty twenty four and I think
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, their main targets were France, Germany, the US,
Speaker 2: the UK and Ukraine. And essentially what they were trying
Speaker 2: to do was to make the people, the public in
Speaker 2: each of those countries lose support or turn on the
Speaker 2: idea of supporting Ukraine so that Russia could get them
Speaker 2: out of the Ukraine business in Russia could just get
Speaker 2: back to trying to take over Ukraine as best it could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they, you know, they did it in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. Obviously, some ways were just fake articles
Speaker 1: about like, you know, stuff that Ukraine does, or maybe
Speaker 1: a fake article about that whitewashes a Russian atrocity like
Speaker 1: the Buka massacre, like that never happened, right, But cleverly
Speaker 1: they're also going like through celebrities and like faking that,
Speaker 1: you know, Taylor, like a real influential celebrity like Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift or Kim Kardashian, Like fake messages where they're supporting
Speaker 1: or they're criticizing America and Europe for supporting Ukraine. Or
Speaker 1: did you find something about Oprah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you want to read that quote? Go ahead,
Speaker 2: Oprah says supporting Ukrainians is unacceptable. Their actions destroy lives
Speaker 2: in societies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, especially if you're some like young
Speaker 1: person who supports Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian, you're probably
Speaker 1: you know, not even aware that this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: even goes on. All you're thinking is like, well, Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift said, Ukraine deserves what's coming, So that's probably true.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, that's exactly what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1: Or maybe not deserves what's coming, but like America, this
Speaker 1: is what a big sort of angle for them is.
Speaker 1: America first, like, we shouldn't get involved in this. Let
Speaker 1: Ukraine handle it themselves.
Speaker 2: Right, And so that you just hit the nail on
Speaker 2: the head. As far as why Republicans typically get targeted
Speaker 2: with this stuff, it's not because the Trump administration is
Speaker 2: colluding with the Russians. It's because the message that the
Speaker 2: Trump administration and MAGA in general and Republicans by extension,
Speaker 2: are basically basing their platform on. It's like you said,
Speaker 2: America first, focus on domestic issues, get ourselves out of
Speaker 2: foreign affairs, and that goes lockstep with what Putin wants.
Speaker 2: It's like, yes, America, go mess with your own stuff,
Speaker 2: and by pointing out and creating turmoil about all the
Speaker 2: things that are going on in America at any given time.
Speaker 2: It makes it seem even that more urgent to just
Speaker 2: stop giving money to Ukraine when we've got all of
Speaker 2: these middle class white people who need that money too,
Speaker 2: and like tax breaks and stuff like that. That kind
Speaker 2: of messaging that's not necessarily wrong, but is making it
Speaker 2: seem like the American public sentiment is behind that. That's
Speaker 2: the part that's wrong. They're manipulating that to kind of
Speaker 2: try to get the public to swing that way, all
Speaker 2: because they just want to be able to invade Ukraine
Speaker 2: more easily.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They had one project called the Good Old USA Project,
Speaker 1: which one of the SDA founders had come up with
Speaker 1: with some other people, and it targeted voters in six
Speaker 1: swing states during the last election in twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: about just that, like let's not help Ukraine, like why
Speaker 1: are we doing that when we have problems here? And
Speaker 1: they also spent about ten million bucks encouraging right wing
Speaker 1: influencers to get on board with pro Russia opinions. So
Speaker 1: that's why if you've if you've ever been on like
Speaker 1: the comment section of any social media site about anything
Speaker 1: political like this, first of all, we would both encourage
Speaker 1: you to stop doing that because it's just not good
Speaker 1: for your mental health and well being. But if you
Speaker 1: do and you see people saying like, oh yeah, thanks,
Speaker 1: comrade or whatever Russian bought, like, that's that's what they're
Speaker 1: talking about here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to be fair, those right wing influencers, the
Speaker 2: YouTubers that were hired to disseminate Russian propaganda were not
Speaker 2: aware that that's what they were doing. They were hired
Speaker 2: by a front company called Tenant Media. Yeah, they hired
Speaker 2: like six hardcore right wing YouTubers and just basically said, hey,
Speaker 2: let's talk about this kind of thing. But they were
Speaker 2: not aware that they were being paid by the Kremlin.
Speaker 2: They didn't know that. And then once that was exposed,
Speaker 2: that company dissolved in. Those people, well, I guess had
Speaker 2: to eat some crow, I would guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Another thing, if you ever heard, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, George Soros is paying those protesters like that
Speaker 1: by the hour, like paid protesters, paid protesters. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: comes from a fake Washington Post article, like you know,
Speaker 1: from one of these like completely fake cloned websites. That's
Speaker 1: where that comes from. It was right after Israel invaded
Speaker 1: Gaza in spring of twenty twenty four and that there,
Speaker 1: you know, all the protesters were going on, and there
Speaker 1: was a fake Washington Post article that came out about
Speaker 1: the Sorols Foundation and Rockefeller like paying people thirty bucks
Speaker 1: an hour to go protest.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh, well, the one I remember was that the
Speaker 2: Ukrainian government was actually like Nazis. Oh yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 2: really what Russia's doing is liberating the Ukrainian people. I
Speaker 2: remember that one for sure. That definitely came from this
Speaker 2: Doppelganger era.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the weirder ones was Princess Kate when
Speaker 1: she sort of disappeared from the public eye. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know this is before she revealed it was because
Speaker 1: of a cancer diagnosis. But they jumped on that and
Speaker 1: sort of hijacked that with all sorts of weird conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: And again I think that was one just to just
Speaker 1: to create tension and chaos in the UK.
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't remember where I found this, but I
Speaker 2: saw that their involvement in conspiracy theories is topic agnostic.
Speaker 2: They don't care about the subject. Whatever it is that
Speaker 2: will push people's buttons, that will get emotional responses and
Speaker 2: get people worked up, they will get in there and
Speaker 2: amplify it if they if they didn't make it up
Speaker 2: themselves in the first place. Man, they also apparently, according
Speaker 2: to I think the Good Old USA Project, that they
Speaker 2: there was a whole group at the Social Design Agency who, again,
Speaker 2: like you said, seem to be the ones behind this.
Speaker 2: If all of a sudden you start to hear negative
Speaker 2: chatter about stuff, you should know, I'm going to go
Speaker 2: ahead and say it was probably them after this episode
Speaker 2: comes out.
Speaker 1: What's a little worried about that.
Speaker 2: I am hopefully we're still under the radar enough.
Speaker 1: Well, I like to think so.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And if all of a sudden, Chuck and I
Speaker 2: die in a fiery car crash together, it was probably
Speaker 2: the Kremlin.
Speaker 1: I'm not flying anytime soon.
Speaker 2: You have to, although I don't want to say when
Speaker 2: or how. We should probably edit this part out. But
Speaker 2: there was a whole group at the Social Design Agency
Speaker 2: that was their job was to monitor social media posts
Speaker 2: from GOP lawmakers to figure out what was on America's
Speaker 2: mind or what people were worried about or angry about,
Speaker 2: and then they would start making memes and stuff based
Speaker 2: on that and try to create like I guess, mess
Speaker 2: from that, just from like one tweet or something could
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I don't know how much you want
Speaker 1: to get into this nuts and bolt section.
Speaker 2: We kind of already covered it really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets sort of in the weeds, but like
Speaker 1: you sort of mentioned earlier, we just want to be clear.
Speaker 1: It's like they'll use disposable domains that are owned by
Speaker 1: other companies. They will use virtual offices and set up
Speaker 1: shell companies. They'll work with you know in places like
Speaker 1: sometimes at the far reaches of the earth. Well they'll
Speaker 1: set up like some company in Malaysia where you know,
Speaker 1: it's then it goes to another shell company in Lithuania
Speaker 1: and it's just you know, it's also obfuscated. And that's
Speaker 1: the whole point, you know that you don't know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to even trace back to any origin.
Speaker 2: Right, and it's just very decentralized. And then the companies,
Speaker 2: these shell companies are just legitimate enough to provide cover
Speaker 2: for the shady hosting companies to say like, well they're legal.
Speaker 2: There's a UK company, so you know, we don't have
Speaker 2: any obligation to check what they're doing, right, And as
Speaker 2: it gets closer and closer to the actual fake website,
Speaker 2: the companies just get shadier and shadier, and apparently they're
Speaker 2: not the one thing didn't come up with this technique.
Speaker 2: It's fairly common among bad actors. Yeah, like Brad Pitt.
Speaker 2: I guess I.
Speaker 1: Was trying to think of a bad actor. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be mean.
Speaker 2: I think you can be mean to Brad Pitt at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because he's a fine actor. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: a fine piece you know, a piece of what you know?
Speaker 1: Did you see he and Ed Norton at the soccer match?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I heard about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of fun, the old fight club thing.
Speaker 2: What was I gonna say?
Speaker 1: You were gonna say, we're gonna take a break, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think whatever I was saying, just peter it out.
Speaker 2: Didn't matter.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, Josh is gonna Peter back up and
Speaker 1: we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we're back, and we know about Doppelganger. Like
Speaker 2: I said, thanks to journalists and non governmental organizations that
Speaker 2: are dedicated to tracking and fighting disinformation. The first one
Speaker 2: where it came up even before it was called Doppelganger,
Speaker 2: because remember that was the EU's Disinfo Lab that gave
Speaker 2: it that title. But a full year or so before that,
Speaker 2: a German website t online not the thing it does.
Speaker 2: It sounds super fake. They published an article where they
Speaker 2: were like, hey, there's a bunch of new Facebook accounts,
Speaker 2: all of our German women. And the weird thing is
Speaker 2: they all say that they work for Netflix, and even weirder,
Speaker 2: every single one of them seems to be really really
Speaker 2: adamant about Germany not funding you and just leaving Russia alone.
Speaker 1: I'm sure Netflix is like seriously, thanks.
Speaker 2: I know, although Netflix is probably like, hey, any publicity's good.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's a good point. I get this is
Speaker 1: this is not this, But I know you're not on
Speaker 1: social media a lot, but on Instagram I will get
Speaker 1: I will have to block a lot of people that
Speaker 1: come on to follow me because it's clear that it's
Speaker 1: some sort of a some sort of a porn thing. Sure,
Speaker 1: Or I will get a comment from someone on some
Speaker 1: random like I'll leave a comment on some random like
Speaker 1: like Instagram posts that I think is cool or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then someone will comment on that like oh yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: Chuck Brian or whatever, Chuck the podcaster, And then I'll
Speaker 1: look at you like who is this and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's clearly some fake person, and I just I don't
Speaker 1: know what the angle is and I always block it,
Speaker 1: so obviously I don't know, but I wonder what the
Speaker 1: goal is. I got to be separating me from money somehow.
Speaker 2: Somehow, or yeah or yeah, or getting money to somebody
Speaker 2: like an influencer something or to boost whatever thing you
Speaker 2: said was cool.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's very strange, but it's always quite obvious what
Speaker 1: it is because they have like zero posts, uh follow
Speaker 1: a ton of people, no one follows them, and it's
Speaker 1: usually some you know, if I can be frank, it's
Speaker 1: usually some very like well endowed you know woman.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Do you remember there was a period of time
Speaker 2: when AI slop was really starting to gear up, where
Speaker 2: it does not matter what video you were watching on
Speaker 2: like YouTube or whatever. In the search it was like
Speaker 2: a very beautiful woman standing there like Vana White, right
Speaker 2: next to the video screen, like learn all about C
Speaker 2: plus plus coding from me the sixty secretary, you know.
Speaker 2: Like it was all videos were like that for a minute,
Speaker 2: and I was like, God, is this how it's going
Speaker 2: to be from now on? And then it seems to
Speaker 2: have vanished.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know the only reason I bring all
Speaker 1: that up is because it's just sort of backs up
Speaker 1: this thing that we're talking about in this idea that
Speaker 1: I keep edging toward, which is like, God, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just best to get off and away from all of
Speaker 1: that stuff all together. Yes, is really going in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction.
Speaker 2: No, it definitely is. There's this thing called the dead
Speaker 2: Internet theory. Been wanting to do at least the short
Speaker 2: stuff on it, but essentially it says that the Internet
Speaker 2: has become a just a bunch of bots interacting with
Speaker 2: bots trying to gain social media algorithms to make money
Speaker 2: for some dude or whatever country Singapore or something like that, right,
Speaker 2: And some studies have found that perhaps a third of
Speaker 2: accounts on either Instagram or Facebook, probably Facebook, are bots
Speaker 2: a third man, and that it's just gotten so far
Speaker 2: out of hand that we're never going to get it back.
Speaker 2: And also, like those long tail articles where you make
Speaker 2: like five cents but it costs nothing to have an
Speaker 2: AI write and publish that article, those have have pushed
Speaker 2: actual human written, researched articles about any given thing from
Speaker 2: like page one Google search to like page twenty. So
Speaker 2: there's still like no reason to go in and search
Speaker 2: for anything anymore unless you want some AI article broken
Speaker 2: into fifty different small paragraphs or sections that are basically
Speaker 2: repeat themselves over and over again, that's what you have available.
Speaker 2: So it does seem like the Internet is pretty dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've noticed even on Instagram from some sites all
Speaker 1: I can follow, like music sites or whatever, it's sort
Speaker 1: of a dead giveaway. Now if the caption instead of
Speaker 1: being like, you know, led Zeppelin performs at this performance
Speaker 1: and it was awesome, it's now some really long, like
Speaker 1: four paragraph thing with like this detailed history of like
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin was a band and blah blah blah, and
Speaker 1: it's just so obvious AI is doing it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's just it's kind of ruining what I used to
Speaker 1: like about Instagram, along with a lot of other stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you know, these fake busting women. It's like it
Speaker 1: just makes me want to run away. Stop it, run away.
Speaker 2: Something else is going to come along, because there is
Speaker 2: like it's very clear that the Internet, and it's like
Speaker 2: ideally is really great and useful and important and we
Speaker 2: need it. It's just this version of it is no
Speaker 2: longer useful, so we need to figure out a different one.
Speaker 2: And somebody right now it'll.
Speaker 1: Well it just it sucks because I don't like to
Speaker 1: support that company because they're part of Meta, which I
Speaker 1: hate and got off of Facebook. But I do like
Speaker 1: the connection with listeners and be able to chat stuff up.
Speaker 1: So it's, uh yeah, it feels like it's a no
Speaker 1: in situation.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I think what'll probably become is more of an
Speaker 2: emphasis on email maybe again, and then like they'll that'll
Speaker 2: get taken over and then it'll be handwritten letters.
Speaker 1: That'd be great. Speaking of Meta though, in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and this was after that t online group that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: sort of out of this whole thing. Mm hm, that's
Speaker 1: when like Meta and some other higher profile companies started
Speaker 1: saying like, oh, well, like we know this is going on.
Speaker 1: We're going to start removing pages and we're going to
Speaker 1: start deleting this and we're going to take this super
Speaker 1: serious and who knows what's going on on the inside.
Speaker 1: I sound like I'm being cynical, because I probably feel
Speaker 1: like I am. But they have found that like a
Speaker 1: lot of it is coming through ads, and like they're
Speaker 1: not even catching a ninety five percent of undeclared political
Speaker 1: ads aren't being caught in this supposed sweep to clean things.
Speaker 2: Up right, Yeah, because it's not just posts or bots
Speaker 2: creating posts or even commenting, it's buying ads, and so
Speaker 2: Facebook has a huge financial incentive to not root those
Speaker 2: things out because they make tons of cash off of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean they said that they're doing this,
Speaker 2: they're not actually doing it. And that's a good example
Speaker 2: of the whole whack a mole thing too. Is like
Speaker 2: a big company like that trying to police their own
Speaker 2: social media site that's gotten out of their own control.
Speaker 2: That's not a good technique either, although I think all
Speaker 2: of us could probably agree that medic could do way,
Speaker 2: way more than it does. So the finally, in September
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, after this has been identified for two
Speaker 2: full years, the US Department of Justice is like, we're
Speaker 2: going to take charge here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll take care of it.
Speaker 2: Get this. They took down thirty two websites wow, that
Speaker 2: were related to Doppelganger, and they were like, this is
Speaker 2: too risky before a US election, So we're gonna we're
Speaker 2: gonna do We're gonna go the nuclear option and take
Speaker 2: down thirty two websites.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the cynicism is coming through. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: whack a mole didn't even begin to describe it. I'm
Speaker 1: sure like Russia hears the stuff and they're just like
Speaker 1: laughing into their vodka, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well that's the point that a lot of people make,
Speaker 2: is that it might not even be changing people's minds,
Speaker 2: but just the fact that we know it exists makes
Speaker 2: you question everything then, And so you're right, are questioning
Speaker 2: the legitimate stuff too, So you're not learning anything. Everything
Speaker 2: has an angle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now we're seeing of course, and we've talked
Speaker 1: about I think we did a whole episode on deep fakes, right,
Speaker 1: mm hmm, yeah, on deep fake and obviously the advent
Speaker 1: of AI technology, which is now completely taken over already
Speaker 1: where they have, you know, a fake video going up
Speaker 1: where it looks like Joe Biden doing something, or it
Speaker 1: looks like anybody doing something, and they will take you know,
Speaker 1: they try to evade detection, so they'll post a video
Speaker 1: just a little differently in different iterations, like with just
Speaker 1: a few milliseconds trimmed out, so they can't be automatically
Speaker 1: rooted out when like a company builds a system to
Speaker 1: root out this kind of stuff, right, and we're already
Speaker 1: at the point like AI has moved so fast, we're
Speaker 1: already at the point where people all over the place.
Speaker 1: For months now, I have been going like, I don't
Speaker 1: even know if this is real, Like I don't know
Speaker 1: if what I can believe anymore. So like it's working.
Speaker 1: What they're doing is working, right.
Speaker 2: The thing that got me is that they've figured out
Speaker 2: because AI companies train their models on like the Internet
Speaker 2: and specific parts of the Internet, the Russians have figured
Speaker 2: out that they can flood those parts of the Internet
Speaker 2: with misinformation, and that's what the AI is going to
Speaker 2: learn and think is real. So the AI is going
Speaker 2: to just give out bad information or misinformation as well
Speaker 2: because that's what it thinks is true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to go live in a cave right
Speaker 1: after we record.
Speaker 2: This, We'll get into Buddhism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's do that.
Speaker 2: So, like we said, I don't know if we gave
Speaker 2: our a hat tip to Olivia, who really did a
Speaker 2: good exhaustive job on explaining this, But one of the
Speaker 2: things she points out is that it's really unclear whether
Speaker 2: this actually sways opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there have been some studies, right, Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: I mean just anecdotally, I think it does, but maybe
Speaker 2: it's one of those things where like, Okay, if it
Speaker 2: really comes down to somebody saying, do you truly believe that?
Speaker 2: Are you gonna be like yes, then maybe it doesn't
Speaker 2: really sway opinion. But there was a study that looked
Speaker 2: at disinformation efforts by Russian the twenty sixteen US election,
Speaker 2: and it basically found that, like it had almost no
Speaker 2: effect whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they found that one percent of social media users
Speaker 1: got seventy percent of the exposures, so a few people
Speaker 1: getting most of this stuff, but that's still thirty percent
Speaker 1: on the other ninety nine percent. And they also point
Speaker 1: out that like a lot of the people getting exposed
Speaker 1: to this are Republicans because the Russian posts are you know, again,
Speaker 1: they're sort of targeting them about like hey, America first stuff,
Speaker 1: America first stuff, and they already believe that stuff anyway,
Speaker 1: so it's not maybe like they're changing minds, maybe that's
Speaker 1: the point, but they're reinforcing beliefs for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but again, that fire hose or the fire
Speaker 2: hose of misinformation or false information, that's the technique, and
Speaker 2: it seems to be working. The thing that stuck out
Speaker 2: to me was I couldn't find anything about what they're doing. Now,
Speaker 2: it seems like they're still doing much the same because
Speaker 2: it works really, really well and it can just pop
Speaker 2: up anywhere. Like there is a story I found, I
Speaker 2: don't know if you saw it, where a twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: disinformation campaign from Russia actually managed to get real life
Speaker 2: Texans to battle one another, at least verbally. I don't
Speaker 2: think anyone was physically injured over the Islamification of Texas,
Speaker 2: which was just complete bunk made up by the disinformation group.
Speaker 2: And even more than that, they made up the group
Speaker 2: that the protesters joined. They also made up the group
Speaker 2: that the counter protesters joined, So the whole thing was
Speaker 2: totally fat, fabricated and social engineered. So like that works,
Speaker 2: and at the time, these people were not thinking that
Speaker 2: they were being manipulated by Russians, right, They thought it
Speaker 2: was real. So it's going to keep continuing to work,
Speaker 2: so there's no reason for them to stop. I'm curious
Speaker 2: about what the next thing is that they're doing now
Speaker 2: that we're going to find out about three years from now.
Speaker 1: You know, right, yeah, for sure. The other thing that
Speaker 1: sort of would send a chill up your spine is
Speaker 1: like none of this is even secret anymore. Like it's
Speaker 1: out and they know it's out, and they don't care.
Speaker 2: They're in crowd if.
Speaker 1: They're out and proud with their what they call a
Speaker 1: high reach, low impact campaign, which is, like you said, again,
Speaker 1: the fire hose and the volume of content doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter how much people believe it or not, as long
Speaker 1: as you're sowing chaos and getting people to eventually think
Speaker 1: like I don't even know, like maybe I'll just disengage
Speaker 1: altogether because I don't know what's real. When widespread coverage
Speaker 1: of Doppelganger came out, the Russian government was like, awesome,
Speaker 1: let's give more funding to the SDA. And there's even
Speaker 1: a suggestion that SDA deliberately leaked Operation Doppelganger like information
Speaker 1: about that just to get more media coverage about it. Right, man,
Speaker 1: I really do want to go live in a cave
Speaker 1: after this.
Speaker 2: The best suggestion I saw was to fight fire with fire.
Speaker 2: That the whole wackamle thing is never ever going to work,
Speaker 2: and it actually just helps Russia, like you said, just
Speaker 2: by giving it publicity, and that essentially the best thing
Speaker 2: the West could do is to create its own SDA
Speaker 2: and just turn it on Russia that that's basically the
Speaker 2: only option to get them to stop.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a great idea for sure.
Speaker 2: Well, since Chuck and I are jaded, I think it's
Speaker 2: time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: Is beyond jaded, all right, guys, for this is a
Speaker 1: nice light way to end. Guys. For years, my wife
Speaker 1: and I have had an argument over the pronunciation of biopic,
Speaker 1: like when you make a movie about a person like
Speaker 1: a biographical picture. We've both been stubborn to admit defeat.
Speaker 1: She's part of the biopic crowd, but I prefer biopic.
Speaker 1: She of course claims she's right because she's a former
Speaker 1: elementary school teacher and a big study of English lit
Speaker 1: and knows the truth. Blah blah blah. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: until Chuck said biopic in your recent Howard Hughes episode
Speaker 1: that I got the vindication I needed. I don't care
Speaker 1: if Chuck and I are wrong, it doesn't matter. All
Speaker 1: that matters is I know I'm not alone anymore. And
Speaker 1: we'll continue with my pronunciation, and I'll make sure to
Speaker 1: pass this down to my seven and four year old kids.
Speaker 1: That is from Kevin Croyle in North Carolina, and I
Speaker 1: also got a really rude email from a very I
Speaker 1: guess angry person that I said it differently and they
Speaker 1: were like, a goosh, you'd like being wrong. I guess
Speaker 1: it is wrong. I don't even know. I never thought
Speaker 1: about it. But I don't say biography. I say biography,
Speaker 1: so I say biopic and I don't know. That's just
Speaker 1: how it flowed out of my mouth. So I may
Speaker 1: be wrong. I don't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you may be prettrazy.
Speaker 1: You say biopic, right, mm.
Speaker 2: Hmm, but that's just what I've always heard, and I'm
Speaker 2: so used to you saying biopic. Now that's not even
Speaker 2: I think that they're both right. I think you managed
Speaker 2: to wedge it into reality.
Speaker 1: Well maybe someday when someone writes the biography on our lives,
Speaker 1: it'll make it creat to do a biopic. Yeah all right.
Speaker 2: Well, who is that from? The nice one?
Speaker 1: That is from Kevin?
Speaker 2: Thanks Kevin, that was very nice and I'm glad. Do
Speaker 2: you feel vindicated sorry to your wife although she and
Speaker 2: I share the same pronunciation.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, we can all have an arm wrestling match
Speaker 1: one day.
Speaker 2: Or something if you want to be like Kevin and
Speaker 2: write to us about feeling vindicated by me or Chuck
Speaker 2: or Jerry or whoever we want to hear about it,
Speaker 2: Send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you should know the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.