joe bodnar

Pro-Russia Information Operations Leverage Russian Drone Incursions into Polish Airspace | Google Cloud Blog Pro-Russia information operations promoting narratives related to the incursion of Russian drones into Polish airspace.

This Google blog begs the question: How can an organization with all the world's data provide such an incomplete view of Russian IOs? cloud.google.com/blog/topics/...

Think about all the personal data that Saudi Arabia could gobble up with this acquisition

CISA has fallen.

TikTok says it removed a network of more than a quarter million accounts targeting Moldovans with content meant to promote pro-Russia candidates.

That's an absolutely insane number. It'd be great to get more than three sentences on this op. www.tiktok.com/transparency...

This is why Russian ops have created 700 million stories about Zelensky misusing US funding for Ukraine

Sanctioned Russian actor linked to new media outlet targeting Moldova REST is linked to the Russian threat actor Rybar, which targets EU countries, along with Moldova.

I know several people who had some evidence linking REST to Rybar, but the DFR Lab provides definitive proof here.

Really amazing domain analysis. dfrlab.org/2025/09/23/s...

The amount of Russian interference in Moldova is staggering.

Moldova's election faces AI-driven disinformation from Russia Moldovans are facing a wave of AI-driven disinformation ahead of a crucial parliamentary election on Sunday

“Google said in a statement […] “On YouTube, as part of our proactive coverage for the 2025 Moldova elections, we have terminated more than 1,000 channels since June 2024 for being part of coordinated influence operations targeting Moldova.””

How Russian-funded fake news network aims to disrupt European election - BBC investigation An undercover reporter discovers a network is offering to pay for social media posts undermining Moldova’s ruling party.

Great reporting from the BBC. They uncovered a pro-Russia op paying Moldovans to post disinfo.

The DFR Lab apparently did some digging and found a TikTok network linked to the op that's gained 55M views.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Foreign disinformation about Charlie Kirk's killing seeks to widen US divisions Russia moved quickly to exploit conservative activist Charlie Kirk's shooting death at a Utah college, with groups linked to the Kremlin spreading false and misleading claims that experts say are desi...

As someone from Georgia, it’s very cool to see my name in the AJC, even if they’re republishing an AP article.

I’ll take it!
www.ajc.com/news/2025/09...

CopyCop Deepens Its Playbook with New Websites and Targets CopyCop expands Russian influence ops with 300+ fake websites targeting the US, France, Canada & more—using AI, deepfakes, and GRU-backed infrastructure.

Oh, come on, what an awesome find: "Frames from Dougan’s interview with French media show a Python script calling Ollama (via a function named restart_ollama()), an LLM inference framework used to run local or self-hosted LLMs."
www.recordedfuture.com/research/cop...

X post by Milo Yiannopoulos: "28 pilots have been suspended or fired so far after I made their airlines aware of gruesome remarks made about Charlie Kirk’s death. Of the big three, Delta has the biggest problem by far; United the smallest."

Hard to think of a more on-the-nose encapsulation of how far the online speech wars have swung in the year of our lord 2025 than major U.S. corporations racing to fire people whose tweets offended Milo Yiannopoulos

There’s no fires left for adversaries to set. We’re already burning everything. Best they can do is toss small amounts of kindling that may not even take.

Russian state media seems to have more impact. I've clocked around 500 state media X posts about Kirk, which have gained more than 100K likes and 30K retweets.

The Utah governor's claim that Russian bots are exploiting Kirk's death seems true but overblown.

I've seen limited activity from operations like Overload, Undercut, Doppelganger. Pravda published 100+ articles. A few dozen Copy Cop sites posing as local outlets published 90 articles. Nothing viral

Pretty interesting to see a 1516 video break out so long after it was seeded. Just spotted a Newsmax correspondent amplifying it.

There's a small, apparently coordinated network of X accounts attacking Rubio and defending Venezuela:

Denmark summons US envoy over suspected influence operations in Greenland Denmark's foreign minister has summoned the top U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen over intelligence reports alleging covert influence operations by U.S. citizens in Greenland that aimed to whip up opposition to Danish rule, the ministry said on Wednesday.

So we’re doing this now, huh?
www.reuters.com/world/europe...

Even more emails from Russia's disinformation campaign, with continued targeting of Moldova, and lots of mimicking of Newsguard. I still suspect the volume of videos and images targeting Moldova is an attempt to get the election results called into question because of the interference.

Been out for a couple days and see Operation Overload migrated to YouTube. The videos I've seen have less than 50 views. The op keeps expanding and keeps being ignored.

Senate Probe Uncovers Allegations of Widespread Abuse in ICE Custody Led by US senator Jon Ossoff, the investigation cites hundreds of reports since January, including accounts of miscarriages, child neglect, and sexual abuse at ICE detention centers in dozens of state...

A United States Senate investigation has identified more than 500 credible reports of human rights abuses in US immigration detention since January, including alarming allegations of mistreatment of pregnant women and children.

Corporate needs you to find the differences between Russia's Foreign Ministry and a Storm-1516 influencer

Dozens of TikTok accounts use AI avatars of real journalists to spread fake news The platform’s Spanish-language misinformation problem led me to a Brazilian marketplace for monetized TikTok accounts

New on @indicator.media: I found 88 TikTok accounts using AI avatars of real journalists to spread clickbaity misinformation in Spanish. Together they had 1.7 million followers and many times that in video views.

China Turns to A.I. in Information Warfare

Interesting to see leaked docs from a company that claims to be revolutionizing Chinese info ops with AI. Less interesting to see the NYT take those claims at face value.

I've seen no evidence AI has meaningfully improved info ops.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/u...

Odd that this story doesn't mention Galloway's work for Russian and Iranian propaganda outlets. It also doesn't mention how often Bridgen promotes pro-Kremlin lines.

Those two former MPs weren't duped. They spread this type of content intentionally.

Archiving sites have been giving me absolute hell. I wonder how much malicious content is going undocumented, at least in public repositories, because there's no easy, quick way to do so.

Tulsi Gabbard & reposted Roger Stone - @RogerJStoneJr • Jul 25 President Trump and I couldn't be prouder of Tulsi Gabbard. This is a moment of real courage. / @DNIGabbard has delivered the receipts — indisputable, stone-cold proof that Barack Obama orchestrated a coup attempt against President Trump.

Longtime Trump associate Roger Stone said he's likely the unnamed individual in the Justice Department's election hacking indictment who communicated with the persona "Guccifer 2.0." According to the indictment, the Russian intelligence arm GRU posed as the persona of Guccifer 2.0 and used it to leak hacked records belonging to Democrats. Stone said on CNN Friday night he is "probably" the person referred to in the indictment. The indictment says that on Aug. 15 and Sept. 9 of 2016, Russian intelligence officers posing as Guccifer "wrote a person who was in regular contact with senior members" of the Trump campaign, and included language that matched Twitter direct messages Stone had previously released. Stone has argued in the past that the Russian government was not behind the persona. "Earlier today before I had a chance to read this extensive document, I wasn't sure," Stone said on CNN. "But I certainly acknowledge that I was in touch with Trump campaign officials, and I have testified under oath to the House Intelligence Committee that I certainly had a 24-word exchange with the persona Guccifer 2.0 over Twitter direct messages. Any objective person who will read that exchange, which is included in the indictment, will see that based on content, context and timing, it's benign, it's innocuous. So in retrospect, I think I probably am the person referred to."

DNI Tulsi Gabbard retweets Roger Stone praising her on Alex Jones. (Read that sentence, IC ppl in Five Eyes)

Roger Stone was in direct contact w/the GRU hackers who dropped the Clinton emails, just to be clear. He knows full well whose campaign Russia reached out to. These people are brazen liars.

Is this the first time they've straight up impersonated an outlet and its writers? I feel like it is.

I know they've created sites with names similar to real outlets and stolen journalists' identities before. But this level of impersonation feels new.

Z-Alliance and NoName057(16) are now using an APT28 logo in videos purporting to show them hacking critical infrastructure.

Very fancy.