A peer-reviewed paper initially approved and praised by a prestigious academic journal was suddenly rescinded without explanation. Its author, one of the world’s top scholars on Ukraine-related issues, had marshaled overwhelming evidence to conclude Maidan protesters were killed by pro-coup snipers.
The massacre by snipers of anti-government activists and police officers in Kiev’s Maidan Square in late February 2014 was a defining moment in the US-orchestrated overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government. The death of 70 protesters triggered an avalanche of international outrage that made President Viktor Yanukovych’s downfall a fait accompli. Yet today these killings remain unsolved.
Enter Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist at the University of Ottawa. For years, he marshaled overwhelming evidence demonstrating that the snipers were not affiliated with Yanukovych’s government, but pro-Maidan operatives firing from protester-occupied buildings.
Though Katchanovski’s groundbreaking work has been studiously ignored by the mainstream media, a scrupulous study he presented on the slaughter in September 2015 and August 2021 and published in 2016 and in 2020 has been cited on over 100 occasions by scholars and experts. As a result of this paper and other pieces of research, he was among the world’s most-referenced political scientists specializing in Ukrainian matters…
Well, it didn’t take that long for the concerns raised in this previous post to become an actual issue. I can also envision the US national security state using this idea to try to discredit any authentic video evidence that an anti-establishment source or outlet might use. – Natylie
U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND, responsible for some of the country’s most secretive military endeavors, is gearing up to conduct internet propaganda and deception campaigns online using deepfake videos, according to federal contracting documents reviewed by The Intercept.
The plans, which also describe hacking internet-connected devices to eavesdrop in order to assess foreign populations’ susceptibility to propaganda, come at a time of intense global debate over technologically sophisticated “disinformation” campaigns, their effectiveness, and the ethics of their use.
While the U.S. government routinely warns against the risk of deepfakes and is openly working to build tools to counter them, the document from Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, represents a nearly unprecedented instance of the American government — or any government — openly signaling its desire to use the highly controversial technology offensively.
SOCOM’s next generation propaganda aspirations are outlined in a procurement document that lists capabilities it’s seeking for the near future and soliciting pitches from outside parties that believe they’re able to build them.
“When it comes to disinformation, the Pentagon should not be fighting fire with fire,” Chris Meserole, head of the Brookings Institution’s Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative, told The Intercept. “At a time when digital propaganda is on the rise globally, the U.S. should be doing everything it can to strengthen democracy by building support for shared notions of truth and reality. Deepfakes do the opposite. By casting doubt on the credibility of all content and information, whether real or synthetic, they ultimately erode the foundation of democracy itself.”
Meserole added, “If deepfakes are going to be leveraged for targeted military and intelligence operations, then their use needs to be subject to review and oversight.”
The pitch document, first published by SOCOM’s Directorate of Science and Technology in 2020, established a wish list of next-generation toys for the 21st century special forces commando, a litany of gadgets and futuristic tools that will help the country’s most elite soldiers more effectively hunt and kill their targets using lasers, robots, holographs, and other sophisticated hardware.
Last October, SOCOM quietly released an updated version of its wish list with a new section: “Advanced technologies for use in Military Information Support Operations (MISO),” a Pentagon euphemism for its global propaganda and deception efforts.
The added paragraph spells out SOCOM’s desire to obtain new and improved means of carrying out “influence operations, digital deception, communication disruption, and disinformation campaigns at the tactical edge and operational levels.” SOCOM is seeking “a next generation capability to collect disparate data through public and open source information streams such as social media, local media, etc. to enable MISO to craft and direct influence operations.”
SOCOM typically fights in the shadows, but its public reputation and global footprint loom large. Comprised of the elite units from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force, SOCOM leads the most sensitive military operations of the world’s most lethal nation.
While American special forces are widely known for splashy exploits like the Navy SEALs’ killing of Osama bin Laden, their history is one of secret missions, subterfuge, sabotage, and disruption campaigns. SOCOM’s “next generation” disinformation ambitions are only part of a long, vast history of deception efforts on the part of the U.S. military and intelligence apparatuses.
Special Operations Command, which is accepting proposals on these capabilities through 2025, did not respond to a request for comment.
THOUGH SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND has for years coordinated foreign “influence operations,” these deception campaigns have come under renewed scrutiny. In December, The Intercept reported that SOCOM had convinced Twitter, in violation of its internal policies, to permit a network of sham accounts that spread phony news items of dubious accuracy, including a claim that the Iranian government was stealing the organs of Afghan civilians. Though the Twitter-based propaganda offensive didn’t use deepfakes, researchers found that Pentagon contractors employed machine learning-generated avatars to lend the fake accounts a degree of realism.
Provocatively, the updated capability document reveals that SOCOM wants to boost these internet deception efforts with the use of “next generation” deepfake videos, an increasingly effective method of generating lifelike digital video forgeries using machine learning. Special forces would use this faked footage to “generate messages and influence operations via non-traditional channels,” the document adds.
While deepfakes have largely remained fodder for entertainment and pornography, the potential for more dire applications is real. At the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a shoddy deepfake of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordering troops to surrender began circulating on social media channels. Ethical considerations aside, the legality of militarized deepfakes in a conflict, which remains an open question, is not addressed in the SOCOM document.
As with foreign governmental “disinformation” campaigns, the U.S. has spent the past several years warning against the potent national security threat represented by deepfakes. The use of deepfakes to deliberately deceive, government authorities warn regularly, could have a deeply destabilizing effect on civilian populations exposed to them.
At the federal level, however, the conversation has revolved exclusively around the menace foreign-made deepfakes might pose to the U.S., not the other way around. Previously reported contracting documents show SOCOM has sought technologies to detect deepfake-augmented internet campaigns, a tactic it now wants to unleash on its own.
Perhaps as provocative as the mention of deepfakes is the section that follows, which notes SOCOM wishes to finely tune its offensive propaganda seemingly by spying on the intended audience through their internet-connected devices.
Described as a “next generation capability to ‘takeover’ Internet of Things (loT) devices for collect [sic] data and information from local populaces to enable breakdown of what messaging might be popular and accepted through sifting of data once received,” the document says that the ability to eavesdrop on propaganda targets “would enable MISO to craft and promote messages that may be more readily received by local populace.” In 2017, WikiLeaks published pilfered CIA files that revealed a roughly similar capability to hijack into household devices.
The technology behind deepfake videos first arrived in 2017, spurred by a combination of cheap, powerful computer hardware and research breakthroughs in machine learning. Deepfake videos are typically made by feeding images of an individual to a computer and using the resultant computerized analysis to essentially paste a highly lifelike simulacrum of that face onto another.
Once the software has been sufficiently trained, its user can crank out realistic fabricated footage of a target saying or doing virtually anything. The technology’s ease of use and increasing accuracy has prompted fears of an era in which the global public can no longer believe what it sees with its own eyes.
Though major social platforms like Facebook have rules against deepfakes, given the inherently fluid and interconnected nature of the internet, Pentagon-disseminated deepfakes might also risk flowing back to the American homeland.
“If it’s a nontraditional media environment, I could imagine the form of manipulation getting pretty far before getting stopped or rebuked by some sort of local authority,” Max Rizzuto, a deepfakes researcher with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told The Intercept. “The capacity for societal harm is certainly there.”
SOCOM’S INTEREST IN deploying deepfake disinformation campaigns follows recent years of international anxiety about forged videos and digital deception from international adversaries. Though there’s scant evidence Russia’s efforts to digitally sway the 2016 election had any meaningful effect, the Pentagon has expressed an interest in redoubling its digital propaganda capabilities, lest it fall behind, with SOCOM taking on a crucial role.
At an April 2018 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Kenneth Tovo of the Army Special Operations Command assured the assembled senators that American special forces were working to close the propaganda gap.
“We have invested fairly heavily in our psy-op operators,” he said, “developing new capabilities, particularly to deal in the digital space, social media analysis and a variety of different tools that have been fielded by SOCOM that allow us to evaluate the social media space, evaluate the cyber domain, see trend analysis, where opinion is moving, and then how to potentially influence that environment with our own products.”
While military propaganda is as old as war itself, deepfakes have frequently been discussed as a sui generis technological danger, the existence of which poses a civilizational threat.
At a 2018 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing discussing the nomination of William Evanina to run the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said of deepfakes, “I believe this is the next wave of attacks against America and Western democracies.” Evanina, in response, reassured Rubio that the U.S. intelligence community was working to counter the threat of deepfakes.
The Pentagon is also reportedly hard at work countering the foreign deepfake threat. According to a 2018 news report, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the military’s tech research division, has spent tens of millions of dollars developing methods to detect deepfaked imagery. Similar efforts are underway throughout the Department of Defense.
In 2019, Rubio and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., wrote 11 American internet companies urging them to draft policies to detect and remove deepfake videos. “If the public can no longer trust recorded events or images,” read the letter, “it will have a corrosive impact on our democracy.”
Nestled within the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 was a directive instructing the Pentagon to complete an “intelligence assessment of the threat posed by foreign government and non-state actors creating or using machine-manipulated media (commonly referred to as ‘deep fakes’),” including “how such media has been used or might be used to conduct information warfare.”
Just a couple years later, American special forces seem to be gearing up to conduct the very same.
“It’s a dangerous technology,” said Rizzuto, the Atlantic Council researcher.
“You can’t moderate this tech the way we approach other sorts of content on the internet,” he said. “Deepfakes as a technology have more in common with conversations around nuclear nonproliferation.”
The ongoing war in Ukraine has been framed in multiple ways by multiple commentators of international affairs. Depending on one’s point of view, it could be characterized as a war between Russia and Ukraine, a proxy war between Russia and NATO, or a proxy war between Russia and a US-backed West. The latter two perspectives anchor the war in the larger context of the gradual deterioration of US-Russia relations since the high point at the end of the Cold War. In this framework, most scholars who adhere to this position perceive the expansion of NATO as a key reason for the deterioration and eventual break-down of ties between Moscow and Washington.
Although this position is amply supported by a substantial body of evidence, there are those who question it on the basis of excluding the agency of Ukraine. By framing the war and its origins entirely within the larger context of US-Russia relations, these individuals contend, “does it not erase or mitigate the independent agency of Ukraine?” Similarly, those who adhere to this argument contend that Ukraine should be able to join NATO if it so freely chooses. The argument is applicable beyond Ukraine and, in different contexts, has been applied to various other former Soviet republics – Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, etc.
The response given to such arguments is usually that, yes, Ukraine (for example) has independent agency, but NATO membership is not, as the historian Stephen F. Cohen used to say, a fraternity or sorority, let alone the American Association of Retired People. Not anyone can join. The membership of the country must enhance the security of the other member states, not imperil it. A similar response, employed by John Mearsheimer, contends that while these countries do have agency, their interests have to take a back seat to the larger aim of averting a cataclysmic nuclear clash between the superpowers. Such was the case with Fidel Castro’s Cuba when it had to relinquish the Soviet missiles from its island as a necessary part of defusing of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
While such arguments are fully valid, an equally compelling response to the agency question, and one that speaks much more directly to the people of the post-Soviet space, is the fact that former Soviet republics like Ukraine are usually compelled into such a difficult geopolitical position by external forces that do not have the interests of the people at heart. Again, this argument applies beyond Ukraine and, in different contexts, extends variously to Armenia, Georgia, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and other ex-Soviet states.
The external forces in these cases are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based out of numerous Western countries, especially the United States. This is not to say that all Western-based NGOs exert some sort of nefarious influence in the region. However, certain NGOs have clearly used (or abused) the goodwill of several post-Soviet governments in order to advance larger geopolitical aims. These include the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Open Society Foundation, the Eurasia Foundation, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the International Republic Institute (IRI), among many others. In the 30-year period since the dissolution of the USSR, such organizations have taken full advantage of the acute socioeconomic conditions that emerged in these countries, with little or no regard for their independent agency, their national histories, or the longstanding economic, cultural, and personal ties that bind them together.
As a result of the loss of jobs, inter-republican economic ties, and the significant disruptions that occurred from haphazard market “reforms,” many citizens of these societies have gravitated toward these NGOs as sources of economic opportunity. Still others have fallen under the sway of the messaging of these organizations, which have a clear geopolitical imperative – to diminish Russia’s political and cultural presence in the post-Soviet space, with the objective of preventing any sort of restoration of economic, political, or person-to-person connections. Another, much more sinister aim, made all too painfully evident by the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine, is the effort on the part of these NGOs, in collusion with the Washington war party, to use these republics as geopolitical bludgeons against Russia, at the terrible expense of their own citizens.
Equipped with substantial budgets and a savvy understanding of soft power and social media, these same NGOs also know the value of marketing. If large majorities of Ukrainians, Armenians, Georgians, and others might have opposed taking an overtly anti-Russian, pro-NATO stance in 1992 or 1998, then these NGOs work constantly to change public opinion, manipulating attitudes and manufacturing consent until the desired results are achieved. These newfound “desires” for NATO are then represented as being just as natural as the Caucasus mountains or the wheat fields of the Ukrainian steppe. To deny NATO, the NGOniks declare, would be to deny the long-awaited wish of the narod of the post-Soviet space to join the Western military alliance and purchase expensive military weaponry.
The historical periods of Khrushchev’s Thaw and Gorbachev’s glasnost underscore the indisputable historical fact that the countries of the former Soviet Union have a rich history of endogenous democratization efforts. Yet, the post-Soviet NGO class represents democratization as only being possible through the “enlightened” influence of the United States and other Western societies. To allow these countries to find their way to democracy independently is considered an anathema, a rejection of “European values,” and indicative of “democratic backsliding,” to use a very demeaning term all too common in the neocolonial lexicon of post-Soviet NGO-speak. This line of thinking is horribly Hobbesian, assuming that without the “civilizing influence” of Washington, these “poor people” would revert to a “natural state” of “barbarism” and “Cyrillic autocracy” (as if use of the Latin alphabet indicates “civilization” and “democracy”).
With the discreet charm of used car salesmen, the representatives of these NGOs also extol markets and hyper-individualistic neoliberal values, while ignoring genuine social concerns like poverty and joblessness. In terms of the historical memory of the Soviet experience, those affiliated with NGOs in former Soviet republics often emphasize the “totalitarian model,” asserting that there were virtually no differences between the various Soviet leaders and their contexts (e.g., that there was “no difference” between Lenin and Stalin, or even Stalin and Gorbachev).
Likewise, the NGO emissaries often represent the October Revolution of 1917 not as a genuine revolution (which it was, as the research of Alexander Rabinowitch and others highlight), but as a “Bolshevik coup.” In this context, they also often downplay the major Soviet-era achievements of these republics, be they artistic, scientific, or economic. Furthermore, these NGOs emphasize the (incorrect) narrative (adopted as truth by the US foreign policy establishment) that the Washington “won” the Cold War and single-handedly defeated the Soviet Union, the dissolution of which they framed as “inevitable.” Yet, as former US ambassador Jack Matlock regularly reminds us, this was simply not the case. However, if one questions these narratives, they are attacked for peddling “Russian disinformation.”
Rather than reflecting the desires of the societies of the post-Soviet space, these Western-based NGOs usually subordinate wishes for genuine independence to the geopolitical objectives of Washington’s war class. In this respect, they only succeed in acting as disruptors, upsetting the ability of countries like Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia from developing genuinely democratic societies and truly independent agency on the international stage. The recent controversy in Georgia over the “foreign agent” bill is vividly illustrative of the roles of these NGOs as “disruptors” preventing these countries from achieving actual independence and democracy. Rather than indicating a “roll-back of democracy” or a “contradiction of European aspirations,” the aim of Tbilisi was to move toward a genuinely independent and transparent democratic society. After all, there is a reason why the “foreign agent” bill was based on the example of FARA in the United States.
Above all, by forcing the post-Soviet states to make a hard geopolitical “civilizational choice” between Russia and the West, these NGOs are being incredibly unfair to the peoples of these societies. In this regard, they deny them the true agency and independence that they genuinely desire, barring them from the right to imbibe in the fruits of both sides as independent actors. Moreover, the professed NGO aspiration of “democratization” has resulted in the opposite intended effect. Across the former Soviet space today, from Russia to Ukraine, one encounters far more illiberal governments than liberal, democratic ones. Indeed, the interference of external organizations into the endogenous political development of these states has led to a greater de-democratization throughout the region.
Perhaps most ironically and tragically, the professed zeal for “democratic enlightenment” has also led to a de-democratization of the United States itself. In the drive to “contain Russia,” the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower once eloquently warned against has now joined forces with corporate interests and a pervasive political culture of righteous conformity to erode the basic liberties upon which the country was founded. The results bode poorly for America’s image abroad and only succeed in setting a bad example for the rest of the world, including the post-Soviet space. Even more alarmingly, they also have the potential to bring humanity perilously close to nuclear catastrophe. If the deafening silence on the journalism of Sy Hersh is any indication of the state of American democracy, then it becomes clear that the chief priority of Washington lawmakers should be fixing democracy at home rather than searching for monsters abroad.
Dr. Pietro A. Shakarian is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Historical Research, National Research University–Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, Russia. He previously worked as a lecturer in history at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan.
Eight out of ten (82%) of Russians consider themselves happy, according to a recent survey conducted by state-owned Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM).
The poll surveyed 1,600 respondents over the age of 18 on March 10. Of those who claim to be happy, 35% say so with conviction.
The happiness index of Russians was 68 points, the same as last March. In October 2022, it was slightly lower – 66 points, the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre experts pointed out.
When asked about the main pillars of happiness, those who say they are happy most often list their family (24%), their own and their family’s health (21%), satisfaction with life in general (20%) and a good job (19%). Children make another 16% happy, and a good financial situation and prosperity, 13%. Living conditions and lack of loneliness were each cited by 8% of respondents, and 6% felt happy because of a healthy personal life.
Among those who feel unhappy, 20% cited the unsatisfactory situation in the country as the reason, and 19% the lack of material resources.
More than 40% of Russians believe that the majority of people around them are happy. One in three (36%) believes that there are about the same number of happy and unhappy people, and 14% notice more unhappy people.
The Social Happiness Index, which shows whether there are mostly happy or unhappy people around respondents, was 57 points in the March measurement. In March 2022, it was 60 points.
The pollsters noted that among those who definitely feel happy, 55% say they are surrounded by happy people, 9% see more unhappy people around them. In contrast, in the group of Russians who definitely feel unhappy, only 7% see more happy people around them, and 58% see more unhappy people around them.
Overall, the poll results indicate a relatively high level of happiness among Russians, with family, health and job satisfaction being the primary sources of happiness for most people. However, there are still a significant number of people who feel unhappy, with unsatisfactory situations in the country and lack of resources being the main reasons cited.
“We have increased our economic sovereignty many times over. After all, what did our enemy count on? That we would collapse in 2-3 weeks or in a month,” Russian president Vladimir Putin said during his visit to the Ulan-Ude Aviation Plant last week.
Is Putin’s gloating justified? Yes … and no.
“Yes and No? No and Yes? But [callous ideologue on the internet] told me [meaningless word salad used to prop up a hopelessly warped view of Russia],” you might be screaming at your screen.
We blame both Anne Applebaum and the 5D Checkmate Wizards for shrouding Russia’s economic realities in an impenetrable fog of vapid slogans and lazy one-liners. Together they have created a mind-melting false binary in which there are apparently only two possibilities for Russia:
Total economic collapse as starving Russians hunt feral cats for sustenance.
A Golden Age of profitable, sanctions-bypassing commerce and comfortable self-sufficiency.
Maybe it’s time to expand our horizons? Yes, probably. We will need at least five blog posts to do this, though.
Where to begin?
Putin said on March 19 that Russia had made great strides towards reducing dependency on foreign imports, so let’s start with import substitution.
Import substitution: Is it urgent now?
On February 15, 2022—nine days before Russian tanks poured into Ukraine—your correspondent asked if Russia was adequately prepared for an inevitable barrage of US-imposed sanctions (which, as historians will confirm, arrived about two weeks later).
We concluded that in vital sectors such as agriculture and energy, Russia had little to worry about (to the point where it was the world’s leading exporter of wheat). In other key areas—particularly electronics and manufacturing—there was definitely room for improvement.
Just to be very clear: Import substitution is different from autarky. There was never a plan to make Russia 100% self-sufficient.
But if Russia’s “trusted western partners” were willing to knee-cap trade agreements at the behest of Washington—like they did in 2014—who knows what else they were capable of? It became a national security issue; a way to safeguard against any future monkey business.
The topic of self-sufficiency predictably took center stage in Russia after the start of the “special military operation,” and the resulting tsunami of sanctions.
Blackpills came from unexpected places.
Anastasia Tatulova, public ombudsman for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Russia, accused officials of presenting a “distorted picture” of Russia’s self-sufficiency. The country’s real sector was almost entirely dependent on imported equipment and components, the business leader said.
