How the Kremlin has changed tactics from its 2016 election strategy

The recent U.S. indictment of two employees of Russian state media network RT underscores a significant shift in the Kremlin’s tactics to influence the U.S. election since 2016, current and former U.S. officials told CNN.

Rather than relying on fake accounts and made-up online personas, the current efforts alleged in this week’s indictment involve working with real American influencers who attempt to push Russian narratives to American audiences, particularly with the goal of undermining support for Ukraine.

The indictment accuses RT employees of secretly funneling nearly $10 million into a Tennessee-based company that hired prominent right-wing commentators who produced content on hot-button political issues, including Russia’s war with Ukraine. The influencers say they had no knowledge of any Russian involvement in the media company, which CNN identified as Tenet Media, and that they controlled their own content.

“Buying authentic influencers is a much better use of funds than creating fake personas because they attract their own trusted audience and are, you know, real,” said Renee DiResta, an expert in online influencer marketing, in a social media post.

Prosecutors say that with the closure of its U.S. offices in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, RT resorted to more covert operations to spread its messages.

The shift shows that Russia’s best way to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine may be to use influential American voices that bypass mainstream media outlets and criticize aid to Kiev, the sources said.

“The Russians have diversified much more than the 2016 model,” said Chris Krebs, a former head of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “It’s unclear what the real impact is, at least from a tactical perspective. In my opinion, they’re not changing specific behaviors or decisions, like the outcome of a single election,” Krebs said. “But it’s much more likely that the Russians’ efforts are burning a longer fuse, and we don’t fully understand the real damage they’ve done.”

“It’s night and day”

The shift in Russian tactics also shows a keen understanding of the fractured media landscape in the U.S. Whereas in 2016 Russian intelligence prioritized leaking hacked information to mainstream news outlets, it is now going directly to a different corner of conservative media, where individual podcasters are reaching audiences that rival those of traditional newspapers.

As a result, Russia no longer needs to organize hacking and information leak operations, as it did with great success in 2016, when Russian intelligence officers stole a series of emails from Democratic officials and passed them on to Wikileaks.

According to Michael van Landingham, a former CIA official who assessed Russia’s actions in 2016, the Russians believed that the American media would view WikiLeaks as a relatively credible source of information.

“But now, in the absence of an ongoing hacking and leak campaign, Russia has returned to its age-old tactic of encouraging public opinion that aligns with the Russian message,” van Landingham said.

AI has also made it easier for Russian (and other) intelligence agencies to impersonate Americans online using fake photos and biographies.

“It’s like night and day,” said Emerson Brooking, a senior research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. Compared with 2016, this time “Russian actors have demonstrated a much more sophisticated understanding of the U.S. information environment,” Brooking said.

It’s also unclear how useful hacking and leak operations will be in 2024. Journalists are more sensitive to foreign influence efforts, and at least one known operation to influence this year’s election had questionable results.

Iran carried out its own hack and leak this summer, stealing documents from the Trump campaign and sending them to multiple major news organizations, CNN previously reported. But there has been little news about the contents of the stolen documents, in part because they were unremarkable.

“It’s mostly a scam”

The Justice Department also seized dozens of fake news sites Wednesday that other Russian companies used to closely mimic the look and feel of Fox News and the Washington Post. The Russian companies used ChatGPT, a popular AI tool, to write some of their content, according to an FBI affidavit.

According to the statement, internal project documents from one of the Russian companies propose attacking American voters in six key states with disinformation, raising topics such as the “risk of white Americans losing their jobs” and the alleged threat of crime from “Ukrainian immigrants.”

“They were obsessed with influence and had clear goals,” Brooking said.

But measuring the impact and effectiveness of Russia’s influence efforts is difficult. Influencers employed by Tenet Media, including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, say they were victims of the alleged Russian scheme. They had millions of followers to whom they spread their views long before RT employees invested in Tenet Media, according to the indictment.

“I’m skeptical that this operation would result in someone being preached to who hasn’t already been converted,” Gavin Wilde, a former National Security Council official who focused on Russia, told CNN.

“It’s basically a cycle of fraud,” said Jason Kikta, a former U.S. Cyber ​​Command official who now works for security firm Automox. “Russian money allows them to expand into an ideologically minded population to continue their fraud, while the Russians can claim some fantasy success in their government in terms of budget and career advancement.”

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