Russian Election Meddling & Fake News - Nina Jankowicz - #210

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, comrades. Welcome back to Modern Wisdom. My guest today is Nina Jankowicz, and we're talking about Russia's election meddling and their fake news, misinformation, disinformation campaign, which I just thought was like a internet rumor, and turns out is this hugely sophisticated campaign, which has been going on for years and years, and is utilizing local actors and citizens of individual countries to cause all sorts of havoc. This really did blow my mind. So yeah, get ready for this one. But for now, it's time to find out about Russia's misinformation bot farm psycho internet war. Nina Jankowicz.
Is Russia listening to this podcast?

**Nina Jankowicz** (1:06)
Oh, wow, probably. Oh, fuck.
You know, I sent a couple of copies of my book to friends and journalists in Moscow, and they never arrived. So I only assume that they're at least listening to some of the podcast appearances I've made.

**Chris Williamson** (1:24)
Bloody hell. So where do we start? Let's lay the land for people who don't know what the IRA is or think that the IRA is like the terrorist cell in Ireland.

**Nina Jankowicz** (1:37)
Yeah, I get that a lot.

**Chris Williamson** (1:39)
What do you mean the IRA? Are they getting involved? They were quite militant. I didn't think they would get involved in Internet troll. So let's... Bot Farms and Russia. What's going on at the moment?

**Nina Jankowicz** (1:49)
Sure. Well, at the moment, nothing is very different from what it was in 2016 There are nations that are interfering. Russia is one of them. It uses a variety of tactics to do this, including this Internet research Agency, which is this infamous troll farm that exists in St. Petersburg, Russia. It's headed up by an oligarch, Prigozhin is his last name, who also owns some catering companies, and he also does fake army people for hire that he sent to the Central African Republic and a bunch of other places. But he's known as Putin's chef because of his catering businesses. Then he also set up this troll farm where they have a couple hundred people working, and we know this thanks to great reporting from Russians and folks who were whistleblowers at the IRA. And basically their job is to influence the discourse of a bunch of countries. Two main targets have been, of course, the United states and Ukraine, especially after the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 And Ukraine was kind of the IRA's laboratory. That's where they tested a lot of the tactics. And at the same time, we're trying them out. Here in the United states, we know that they bought $100,000 worth of Facebook ads in 2016 That kind of was able to slip under the rug, but we've gotten a little bit wiser, I hope. At least the social media firms are looking for that sort of manipulation. But Russia doesn't stop, right? We've given them no real cost. We've imposed no cost to make them really disengage from this activity.
Certainly, the UK hasn't either. The Russia report just came out last week, and we learned that the UK government has dropped the ball on this issue. As a result, bad actors, be they Russia or China or Iran or Venezuela, they are manipulating our discourse using the loopholes in the fabric of the internet and social media and exploiting our very openness and democracy, which I think it's one of our weaknesses. It's both our strength and our weakness. The fact that we are open and transparent means that they can get in the discourse. The fact that we have the First Amendment here in the United states and we want to value freedom of speech and of expression. We're very hesitant to touch any of that kind of pernicious, spurious content that might be online. And as a result, we are seeing our own societal fishers turned on their heads and manipulated in order to drive us against one another and decrease engagement in the democratic process. And we're only 98 days away from an election right now here in the states.

**Chris Williamson** (4:25)
Fucking hell.
It's just, it doesn't sound good. The synopsis is it doesn't sound very good. Okay, so we have professional catfish, fake news, bot farm, disinformation, misinformation, that is far more sophisticated than anyone could have imagined, coming out of a country that looks like it's only just discovered the wheel, but actually is crazy sophisticated, and also plays to the fact that it feels like this sort of backwards bludgeoning fool is kind of like tumbling through the world circuit and actually is really, really adept at this stuff. It's happening from multiple different countries. The how is varied, and we're going to get into that. The what is nuanced, and we're going to get into that. And the result is fractured society, people not believing in diplomacy and democracy, and increasing pulls to either end, which tear at the fabric of the middle.