How Russia Shapes What the World Thinks

10:39Josh Clark:But this work continued among other groups.

10:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah, this is a good example of the whack-a-mole that the West is playing. The Russian internet disinformation operations have the West on our heels, clearly. There's basically no one who knows what they're talking about with this stuff who would disagree with that. The West still has not figured out how to do it, aside from piecemeal responses like taking Russia Times app off of the Apple market, off of the Apple App Store, you know? Like, that's the kind of response we have to this still. And this has been going on for more than a decade. And one of the reasons why it's so hard to do anything about it is because they use what the RAND Corporation researchers Christopher Paula and Miriam Matthews call a firehose of falsehood.

11:29Chuck Bryant:Just put everything out there. It's not the quality, it's the quantity that they focus on.

11:36Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. Sure. After Crimea was annexed in 2014, and then obviously after the invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, they really ramped up a lot of messaging to try and get, you know, sentiment, sometimes on their side, but a lot more times like just against Ukraine and what was going on. and this eventually would become known as Doppelganger. But to be clear, Doppelganger isn't like, it wasn't Operation Doppelganger or there's not an organization called Doppelganger. It's more of just sort of, I think the media sort of misread that and labeled it that, but it's really just sort of this method of doing what they're doing and how they're doing it.

12:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah, to be specific, it's a way of cloning dummy websites that look like actual legitimate websites. Some of the ones that they targeted were Le Monde in France, their website, Washington Post in the U.S., The Guardian in the U.K., and they would essentially just take, they would have their bots start sending links or putting links all over the Internet to basically share, right? Hey, look at this crazy article, right? The Washington Post actually reported this, so it seems like it would be legitimate. and you would click that and it would take you to a different series of domains that got smaller and smaller to where if you were in the area they were targeting say you were in the United States and you had clicked you know this thing to find out about whatever this fake Washington Post thing was saying it would it would take you to this fake website like WashingtonPost.pm just different enough that that like you probably wouldn't notice but it's a different domain name and the way that they were able to get away with this was through shell companies and using shady kind of hosting services around the world and that that was doppelganger the that technique that they used for getting this stuff out there is no operation like like this these these using bots or creating like fake accounts on Facebook or whatever.

13:50Chuck Bryant:That wasn't Doppelganger. That is constant. It's so constant and so embedded that there's no name for that. Doppelganger was just the technique of the way that they use the infrastructure of the internet to deliver misinformation for this short period of time.

14:05Josh Clark:Yeah, sort of one of the main companies, and we're not going to go through all of these because it's a little mind-numbing, but there's one called the Social Design Agency, which is a PR firm that started up in 2022 founded by a political consultant who had, you know, that was their business. So, you know, they know exactly how to do it. And the Russian government all of a sudden was like, wait a minute, we would love to hire you to do like all this stuff. It's literally as of, I think, a couple of years ago run by the Kremlin and directed by the Putin administration. So they're kind of in the middle of most of this doppelganger activity.

14:45Josh Clark:Yes. And, you know, like you said, when you go to one of these websites, when you click on the link, if you're not paying attention to the dot whatever and you realize it's not, you know, Washington Post dot com, it looks like it. It smells like it. It acts like it for the most part. So it's really easy to fool people.

15:03Chuck Bryant:It is. I mean, if you really look closely and you look with a skeptical eye, you'll turn up some stuff. I saw one example is that the U.S. must not become the world's gendarme, which is police in French. Like the Washington Post would not use a phrase like that, right?

15:21Josh Clark:Yeah, but you have to know that. Like, I think they count on just fire hosing it such where they're like, well, who cares if most people don't? If we just get this percentage of people, that's great.

15:30Chuck Bryant:Yes. And even more than that, I feel like going to the trouble of actually creating the article on the fake website is almost superfluous because so many people on the Internet just share that share. Like that headline, gotcha. Now I think that this is going on. Not even bothering to click into this to read the actual article. All I need is the headline because it got me juiced up.

15:56Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And, of course, they're amplifying this through the bot farms. Russian social media bots will post links, and then there are more bots that retweet these links. I think I mentioned on the show I saw a picture of a bot farm not too long ago that was a big expose. Were they all chewing grass? No, man, it was terrifying. It was like a dude sitting at a desk on a computer, and there were 1 ,000 cell phones connected, hardwired to the computer, And then there were dozens and dozens of these guys with hundreds and hundreds of smartphones connected on a big wall. So when you see how it actually works, like literally connecting to phones to send this stuff out and amplify it, it's just it feels really dystopian and like scary.

16:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I feel like it's becoming clear that we're going to have to abandon the Internet and come up with a new one because this one got cooked.

16:50Josh Clark:Agreed. Should we take a break?

16:52Chuck Bryant:Mm hmm.

16:53Josh Clark:All right. Well, we're going to ruminate that. And I hope we can even come back after we ruminate. But we'll be right back. I hope.

17:15Chuck Bryant:we've all done it tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose and sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong?

17:33Josh Clark:That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

17:52Chuck Bryant:Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to Actually understand them, because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

18:11Chuck Bryant:You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next, unless something starts to feel off. because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

18:27Josh Clark:That's right. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction, signals moving between the gut, the brain, and the immune system, a constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeartRuby Studio. It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden. Eating Interrupted explores everything from food allergies and intolerance and why they seem to be on the rise to how digestion changes as we age and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition.

18:55Chuck Bryant:Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

19:16Josh Clark:Hey, everyone. If you've ever wanted to feel what it's like inside an episode of a show you love, hang with podcast hosts beyond the mic, or swap screens for sunsets with curious, like-minded people, then Stuff at Sea is your kind of voyage.

19:29Chuck Bryant:That's right. Stuff at Sea is a five-night, culture-soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. Sailing round trip on October 2nd to 7th, 2026, from New York City to Bermuda, this voyage drops you straight into the iHeart Podcast Stuff universe.

19:45Josh Clark:On top of the adults-only experience you already love, you'll get live podcast episode recordings, behind-the-scenes sessions, themed activations, and more unmissable onboard moments.

19:54Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and there's overnight stays in Bermuda, so there's no rush. Just long, sun-drenched days to explore or do absolutely nothing at all. And back on board, Curiosity sparks connection through conversations, experiences, and a lineup designed to keep things as thought-provoking as they are unforgettable.

20:11Josh Clark:Stuff at Sea is part of the new specialty sailing collection that transforms beloved podcasts into immersive at-sea experiences exclusively with Virgin Voyages. Expect more stories, more hosts, and more ways to experience the voices that you love.

20:25Chuck Bryant:Book now at virginvoyages.com slash stuff.

20:41All right.

20:42Josh Clark:So I mentioned after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, that's when things really ramped up again. And they, you know, a lot of these ideas were really pretty clever. There was one group that launched sort of like a Snopes-like site, but a fake one. I know. Called War on Fakes. And it was designed to discredit Ukraine and support Russia, obviously. And then another one called RRN, Reliable Recent News, which replaced Reliable Russian News. So on one side, you've got something that says like, hey, this is reliable news. So this is real. On the other side, it's like, hey, we root out the fake stuff, but it's fake.

21:24Josh Clark:So it's almost like, you know, it's not almost like they've got all their bases covered.

21:28Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I mean, if you pay too close attention to this, you'll start bleeding out of your ear. Guaranteed.

21:34Josh Clark:Yeah.

21:35Chuck Bryant:Doppelganger got its name from the EU's disinformation lab. One of the disheartening things to me, Chuck, was figuring out that the people who are tracking this stuff, there's not a government agency involved anywhere. These are all like independent NGOs that are dedicated to tracking disinformation.

21:56Josh Clark:Yeah, it's interesting.

21:57Chuck Bryant:Journalists like these are the people doing the actual work. And then seven years later, the government's like, oh, we're going to have our Department of Justice do something about this.

22:07Josh Clark:Right. Right.

22:08Chuck Bryant:So that's where that's where doppelganger got its name from. I think it it's basically it suggests that these are or it points out that like the cloned sites, they're like doppelgangers of the real thing. Yeah, exactly. um but the that war on ukraine after the invasion of ukraine they really ramped up the misinformation um flood that was coming like they targeted in 2024 um and i think 2023 the their main targets were france germany the u.s the uk and ukraine and essentially what they were trying to do was to make the people, the public in each of those countries lose support or turn on the idea of supporting Ukraine so that Russia could get them out of the Ukraine business and Russia could just get back to trying to take over Ukraine as best it could.

23:03Yeah.

23:04Josh Clark:And they, you know, they did it in a lot of ways. Obviously, some ways were just fake articles about like, you know, stuff that Ukraine does, or maybe a fake article about that whitewashes a Russian atrocity like the Buka massacre, like that never happened. But cleverly, they're also going like through celebrities and like faking that, you know, Taylor, like a real influential celebrity like Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian, like fake messages where they're supporting or they're criticizing America and Europe for supporting Ukraine. Or didn't you find something about Oprah?

23:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Do you want to read that quote?

23:44Josh Clark:Go ahead.

23:45Chuck Bryant:Oprah says, supporting Ukrainians is unacceptable. Their actions destroy lives and societies. Yeah.

23:52Josh Clark:So, you know, especially if you're some like young person who supports Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian, you're probably, you know, not even aware that this kind of stuff even goes on. All you're thinking is like, well, Taylor Swift said Ukraine deserves what's coming. So that's probably true.

24:08Chuck Bryant:That's exactly right. That's exactly what they're trying to do.

24:11Josh Clark:Or maybe not deserves what's coming. But like America, this is a big sort of angle for them is America first. Like we shouldn't get involved in this. Let Ukraine handle it themselves.

24:22Chuck Bryant:Right. And so that is you just hit the nail on the head as far as why Republicans typically get targeted with this stuff. It's not because the Trump administration is colluding with the Russians. It's because the message that the Trump administration and MAGA in general and Republicans by extension are basically basing their platform on is, like you said, America first. Focus on domestic issues. Get ourselves out of foreign affairs. And that goes lockstep with what Putin wants. It's like, yes, America, go mess with your own stuff. And by pointing out and creating turmoil about all the things that are going on in America at any given time, it makes it seem even that more urgent to just stop giving money to Ukraine when we've got all of these middle class white people who need that money, too, and like tax breaks and stuff like that.

25:20Chuck Bryant:That kind of messaging that's not necessarily wrong, but is making it seem like the American public sentiment is behind that. That's the part that's wrong. They're manipulating that to kind of try to get the public to swing that way, all because they just want to be able to invade Ukraine more easily.

25:39Josh Clark:Yeah, they had one project called the Good Old USA Project, which one of the SDA founders had come up with with some other people. And it targeted voters in six swing states during the last election in 2024 about just that. Like, let's not help Ukraine. Like, why are we doing that when we have problems here? And they also spent about 10 million bucks encouraging right wing influencers to get on board with pro-Russia opinions. So that's why if you've ever been on, like, the comment section of any social media site about anything political like this, first of all, we would both encourage you to stop doing that because it's just not good for your mental health and well-being.

26:23Josh Clark:But if you do and you see people saying, like, oh, yeah, thanks, comrade, or whatever Russian bot, like, that's what they're talking about here. Yeah.

26:31Chuck Bryant:And to be fair, those right wing influencers, the YouTubers that were hired to disseminate Russian propaganda, were not aware that that's what they were doing. They were hired by a front company called Tenet Media. Yeah. And they hired like six hardcore right wing YouTubers and just basically said, hey, let's talk about this kind of thing. But they were not aware that they were being paid by the Kremlin. They didn't know that. And then once that was exposed, that company dissolved in those people. Well, I guess had to eat some crow, I would guess.

27:04Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. Another thing, if you ever heard, you know, you know, George Soros is paying those protesters like that by the hour, like paid protesters, paid protesters. That comes from a fake Washington Post article, like, you know, from one of these like completely fake cloned websites. That's where that comes from. It was right after Israel invaded Gaza in spring of 2024. And, you know, all the protests were going on. And there was a fake Washington Post article that came out about the Soros Foundation and Rockefeller like paying people 30 bucks an hour to go protest.

27:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah. The one I remember was that the Ukrainian government was actually like Nazis. Oh, yeah, yeah. And really what Russia's doing is liberating the Ukrainian people. I remember that one for sure. That definitely came from this doppelganger era.

27:59Josh Clark:Yeah, one of the weirder ones was Princess Kate when she sort of disappeared from the public eye. Yeah. And, you know, this is before she revealed it was because of a cancer diagnosis. But they jumped on that and sort of hijacked that with all sorts of weird conspiracy theories. And again, I think that was one just to just to create tension and chaos in the UK.

28:20Chuck Bryant:Yes. I don't remember where I found this, but I saw that their their involvement in conspiracy theories is topic agnostic. They don't care about the subject, whatever it is that will push people's buttons, that will get emotional responses and get people worked up. they will get in there and amplify it if they didn't make it up themselves in the first place.

28:40Josh Clark:Man, scary.

28:40Chuck Bryant:They also apparently, according to, I think, the good old USA project, that there was a whole group at the social design agency who, again, like you said, seemed to be the ones behind this. If all of a sudden you start to hear negative chatter about stuff you should know, I'm going to go ahead and say it was probably them after this episode comes out. I was a little worried about that.

29:06Josh Clark:I am.

29:07Chuck Bryant:Hopefully we're still under the radar enough.

29:10Josh Clark:Well, I like to think so.

29:13Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and if all of a sudden Chuck and I die in a fiery car crash together, it was probably the Kremlin.

29:18Josh Clark:I'm not flying anytime soon.

29:21Chuck Bryant:You have to. Although I don't want to say when or how. We should probably edit this part out. But there was a whole group at the Social Design Agency that was, their job was to monitor social media posts from GOP lawmakers. to figure out what was on America's mind or what people were worried about or angry about. And then they would start making memes and stuff based on that and try to create, like, I guess, mess from that. Just from, like, one tweet or something could do it.

29:49Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. I don't know how much you want to get into this nuts and bolts section.

29:55Chuck Bryant:We kind of already covered it, really.

29:57Josh Clark:Yeah, it gets sort of in the weeds. But like you sort of mentioned earlier, we just want to be clear. It's like they'll use disposable domains that are owned by other companies. They will use virtual offices and set up shell companies. They'll work with, you know, in places like sometimes at the far reaches of the earth. Well, they'll set up like some company in Malaysia where, you know, then it goes to another shell company in Lithuania. And it's just, you know, it's also obfuscated. And that's the whole point, you know, that you don't know. it's hard to even trace back to any origin.

30:33Chuck Bryant:Right. And it's just very decentralized. And then the companies, these shell companies, are just legitimate enough to provide cover for the shady hosting companies to say, like, well, they're illegal. It's a UK company. So, you know, we don't have any obligation to check what they're doing, right? And as it gets closer and closer to the actual fake website, the companies just get shadier and shadier. And apparently they're not the ones, they didn't come up with this technique. It's fairly common among bad actors.

31:08Josh Clark:Yeah.

31:09Chuck Bryant:Like Brad Pitt, I guess.

31:12Josh Clark:I was trying to think of a bad actor. I didn't want to be mean.

31:16Chuck Bryant:I think you can be mean to Brad Pitt at this point.

31:18Josh Clark:Oh, yeah, because he's a fine actor. Yeah. And a fine piece, you know.

31:25Chuck Bryant:A piece of what? you know.

31:27Josh Clark:S or A. Did you see he and Ed Norton at the soccer match?

31:32Chuck Bryant:No, I heard about it.

31:33Josh Clark:Yeah, it was kind of fun. The old fight club thing.

31:36Chuck Bryant:What was I going to say?

31:38Josh Clark:You were going to say we're going to take a break, right?

31:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I think whatever I was saying just petered out. Didn't matter.

31:43Josh Clark:All right. Well, Josh is going to peter back up and we'll be back right after this.

32:05Chuck Bryant:We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong?

32:23Josh Clark:That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

32:41Chuck Bryant:Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

33:00Chuck Bryant:You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

33:16Josh Clark:That's right. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction, signals moving between the gut, the brain, and the immune system, a constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeartRuby Studio. It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden. Eating Interrupted explores everything from food allergies and intolerance and why they seem to be on the rise to how digestion changes as we age and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition.

33:44Chuck Bryant:Through personal stories and expert insight, Listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

34:16Josh Clark:Stuff at Sea is your kind of voyage.

34:18Chuck Bryant:That's right. Stuff at Sea is a five-night, culture-soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. Sailing round trip on October 2nd to 7th, 2026 from New York City to Bermuda, this voyage drops you straight into the iHeart Podcast Stuff universe.

34:34Josh Clark:On top of the adults-only experience you already love, you'll get live podcast episode recordings, behind-the-scenes sessions, themed activations, and more unmissable onboard moments.

34:44Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and there's overnight stays in Bermuda, so there's no rush. Just long, sun-drenched days to explore or do absolutely nothing at all. And back on board, Curiosity sparks connection through conversations, experiences, and a lineup designed to keep things as thought-provoking as they are unforgettable.

35:01Josh Clark:Stuff at Sea is part of the new specialty sailing collection that transforms beloved podcasts into immersive at-sea experiences exclusively with Virgin Voyages. Expect more stories, more hosts, and more ways to experience the voices that you love.

35:15Chuck Bryant:Book now at virginvoyages.com slash stuff.

35:31Chuck Bryant:Okay, so we're back. And we know about Doppelganger, like I said, thanks to journalists and non-governmental organizations that are dedicated to tracking and fighting disinformation. The first one where it came up, even before it was called Doppelganger, because remember that was the EU's disinfo lab that gave it that title. But a full year or so before that, a German website, T-Online. That sounds fake. It does. It sounds super fake. They published an article where they were like, hey, there's a bunch of new Facebook accounts. All of them are German women. And the weird thing is they all say that they work for Netflix.

36:13Chuck Bryant:And even weirder, every single one of them seems to be really, really adamant about Germany not funding Ukraine and just leaving Russia alone.

36:24Josh Clark:I'm sure Netflix is like, seriously?

36:26Chuck Bryant:Thanks. I know. Although Netflix is probably like, hey, any publicity is good publicity.

36:31Josh Clark:That's a good point. I get this is this is not this, but I know you're not on social media a lot, but on Instagram, I will get I'll have to block a lot of people that come on to follow me because it's clear that it's some sort of a some sort of a porn thing. Sure. Or I will get a comment from someone on some random, like I'll leave a comment on some random like Instagram post that I think is cool or whatever. And then someone will comment on that like, oh, yeah, totally. Chuck Brian or whatever. Chuck the podcaster. And then I'll look. I'll be like, who is this? And it's, you know, it's clearly some fake person.

37:13Josh Clark:And I just I don't know what the angle is. And I always block it. So obviously I don't know. But I wonder what the goal is. it's got to be separating me from money somehow.

37:25Chuck Bryant:Somehow or yeah, or yeah, or getting money to somebody like an influencer or something or to boost whatever thing you said was cool.

37:32Josh Clark:Maybe it's very strange, but it's always quite obvious what it is because they have like zero posts, follow a ton of people, no one follows them. And it's usually some, you know, if I can be frank, it's usually some very like well endowed, you know, woman.

37:51Chuck Bryant:Yeah, do you remember there was a period of time when AI Slop was really starting to gear up where it does not matter what video you were watching on YouTube or whatever in the search, it was like a very beautiful woman standing there like Vanna White next to the video screen, like, learn all about C++ coding from me, the sexy secretary, you know? Like, it was all videos were like that for a minute. And I was like, God, is this how it's going to be from now on? And then it seems to have vanished.

38:24Josh Clark:Yeah. And, you know, the only reason I bring all that up is because it's just sort of backs up this thing that we're talking about. And this idea that I keep edging toward, which is like, God, maybe it's just best to get off and away from all of that stuff altogether. Yeah. Because it's really going in the wrong direction.

38:42Chuck Bryant:No, it definitely is. There's this thing called the dead Internet theory. I've been wanting to do at least the short stuff on it. But essentially it says that the internet has become just a bunch of bots interacting with bots trying to game social media algorithms to make money for some dude in whatever country, Singapore or something like that, right? And some studies have found that perhaps a third of accounts on either Instagram or Facebook, probably Facebook, are bots, a third. Yeah, man. And that it's just gotten so far out of hand that we're never going to get it back. And also like those long tail articles where you make like five cents, but it costs nothing to have an AI write and publish that article.

39:25Chuck Bryant:Those have have pushed actual human written researched articles about any given thing from like page one Google search to like page 20. So there's no reason to go in and search for anything anymore unless you want some AI article broken into 50 different small paragraphs or sections that basically repeat themselves over and over again. That's what you have available. So it does seem like the Internet is pretty dead.

39:54Josh Clark:Yeah, I've noticed even on Instagram from some sites I like and follow, like music sites or whatever, it's sort of a dead giveaway now. if the caption, instead of being like, you know, Led Zeppelin performs at this performance and it was awesome. Right. It's now some really long, like, four-paragraph thing with, like, this detailed history of, like, Led Zeppelin was abandoned, blah, blah, blah. And it's just so obvious AI is doing it. Yeah. And it's just, it's kind of ruining what I used to like about Instagram along with a lot of other stuff. Yeah. Like, you know, these fake busty women. It's like, it just makes me want to run away and stop at all.

40:28Josh Clark:Run.

40:28Chuck Bryant:Run away. Something else is going to come along because there is, like, It's very clear that the Internet ideally is really great and useful and important, and we need it. It's just this version of it is no longer useful, so we need to figure out a different one. And somebody will. I know. It'll come soon.

40:45Josh Clark:It sucks because I don't like to support that company because they're a part of Meta, which I hate and got off of Facebook. But I do like the connection with listeners and be able to chat stuff up. So it's, yeah, it feels like it's a no-win situation sometimes.

41:01Chuck Bryant:I think what it will probably become is more of an emphasis on email.

41:05Josh Clark:Maybe.

41:06Chuck Bryant:Again. And then, like, that'll get taken over, and then it'll be handwritten letters.

41:12Josh Clark:That'd be great. Speaking of Meta, though, in 2022, and this was after that T-Online group that you mentioned sort of out of this whole thing, that's when, like, Meta and some other higher-profile companies started saying, like, oh, well, we know this is going on. We're going to start removing pages, and we're going to start deleting this, and we're going to take this super serious. And who knows what's going on on the inside. I sound like I'm being cynical because I probably feel like I am, but they have found that a lot of it is coming through ads, and they're not even catching 95 % of undeclared political ads aren't being caught in this supposed sweep to clean things up.

41:54Chuck Bryant:Right. Yeah, because it's not just posts. or bots creating posts or even commenting. It's buying ads. And so Facebook has a huge financial incentive to not root those things out because they make tons of cash off of it. So yeah, I mean, they said that they're doing this. They're not actually doing it. And that's a good example of the whole whack-a-mole thing too is like a big company like that trying to police their own social media site that's gotten out of their own control. That's not a good technique either, although I think all of us could probably agree that Medicaid do way, way more than it does.

42:34Chuck Bryant:So finally, in September 2024, after this has been identified for two full years, the U.S. Department of Justice is like, we're going to take charge here.

42:44Josh Clark:Yeah, we'll take care of it.

42:45Chuck Bryant:Get this. They took down 32 websites. That were related to Doppelganger. and they were like, this is too risky before a U.S. election. So we're going to go the nuclear option and take down 32 websites.

43:06Josh Clark:Yeah, I think the cynicism is coming through. I mean, whack-a-mole doesn't even begin to describe it. I'm sure like Russia hears this stuff and they're just like laughing into their vodka, you know.

43:16Chuck Bryant:Yeah, well, that's the point that a lot of people make is that it might not even be changing people's minds, but just the fact that we know it exists makes you question everything then. And so you are questioning the legitimate stuff, too. So you're not learning anything. Everything has an angle.

43:36Josh Clark:Yeah. And now we're seeing, of course, and we've talked about I think we did a whole episode on deep fakes, right? Yeah. Yeah, on deepfake and obviously the advent of AI technology, which is now completely taken over already, where they have, you know, a fake video going up where it looks like Joe Biden doing something or it looks like anybody doing something. And they will take, you know, they try to evade detection. So they'll post a video just a little differently in different iterations, like with just a few milliseconds trimmed out. So they can't be automatically rooted out when like a company builds a system to root out this kind of stuff.

44:10Josh Clark:Right. And we're already at the point, like, AI has moved so fast. We're already at the point where people all over the place, for months now, have been going, like, I don't even know if this is real. Like, I don't know what I can believe anymore. So, like, it's working. What they're doing is working.

44:26Chuck Bryant:Right. The thing that got me is that they figured out because AI companies train their models on, like, the Internet and specific parts of the Internet, The Russians have figured out that they can flood those parts of the Internet with misinformation. And that's what the AI is going to learn and think is real. So the AI is going to just give out bad information or misinformation as well because that's what it thinks is true.

44:56Josh Clark:Yeah. I'm going to go live in a cave right after we record this.

45:01Chuck Bryant:I'll join you. How does that sound? We'll get into Buddhism.

45:04Josh Clark:Yeah, let's do that.

45:05Chuck Bryant:So, like we said, I don't know if we gave a hat tip to Livia, who really did a good, exhaustive job on explaining this. But one of the things she points out is that it's really unclear whether this actually sways opinion.

45:22Josh Clark:Yeah. There have been some studies, right?

45:24Chuck Bryant:Yeah. But, I mean, just anecdotally, I think it does. But maybe it's one of those things where, like, okay, if it really comes down to somebody saying, do you truly believe that? Are you going to be like, yes? Then maybe it doesn't really sway opinion. But there was a study that looked at disinformation efforts by Russia in the 2016 U.S. election. And it basically found that, like, it had almost no effect whatsoever.

45:50Josh Clark:Yeah, they found that 1 % of social media users got 70 % of the exposures. So a few people getting most of this stuff. But that's still 30 % on the other 99%. Mm-hmm. And they also point out that, like, a lot of the people getting exposed to this are Republicans because the Russian Post are, you know, again, they're sort of targeting them about, like, hey, America first stuff, America first stuff. And they already believe that stuff anyway. So it's not maybe like they're changing minds. Maybe that's the point. But they're reinforcing beliefs for sure.

46:25Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Yeah. But again, that fire hose or the fire hose of misinformation or false information, that's the technique and it seems to be working. The thing that stuck out to me was I couldn't find anything about what they're doing now. It seems like they're still doing much the same because it works really, really well and it can just pop up anywhere. Like there is a story I found, I don't know if you saw it, where a 2016 disinformation campaign from Russia actually managed to get real life Texans to battle one another, at least verbally. I don't think anyone was physically injured over the Islamification of Texas, which was just complete bunk made up by this disinformation group.

47:13Chuck Bryant:And even more than that, they made up the group that the protesters joined. They also made up the group that the counter protesters joined. So the whole thing was totally fabricated and social engineered. So, like, that works. And at the time, these people were not thinking that they were being manipulated by Russians, right? They thought it was real. So it's going to keep continuing to work. So there's no reason for them to stop. I'm curious about what the next thing is that they're doing now that we're going to find out about three years from now, you know?

47:43Josh Clark:Right. Yeah, for sure. the other thing that sort of would send a chill up your spine is like none of this is even secret anymore. Like it's out and they know it's out and they don't care. They're out and proud. They're out and proud with their what they call a high reach, low impact campaign, which is like you said, again, the fire hose and the volume of content doesn't really matter how much people believe it or not. As long as you're sowing chaos and getting people to eventually think like, I don't even know, like maybe I'll just disengage altogether. because I don't know what's real. When widespread coverage of Doppelganger came out, the Russian government was like, awesome, let's give more funding to the SDA.

48:26Josh Clark:And there's even a suggestion that SDA deliberately leaked Operation Doppelganger, like information about that, just to get more media coverage about it. Right. Man, I really do want to go live in a cave after this.

48:41Chuck Bryant:The best suggestion I saw was to fight fire with fire, that the whole whack-a-mole thing is never, ever going to work. And it actually just helps Russia, like you said, just by giving it publicity. And that essentially the best thing the West could do is to create its own SDA and just turn it on Russia. That that's basically the only option to get them to stop.

49:05Josh Clark:That sounds like a great idea.

49:06Chuck Bryant:For sure. well since Chuck and I are jaded I think it's time for listener mail

49:16Josh Clark:this is beyond jaded alright guys this is a nice light way to end guys for years my wife and I have had an argument over the pronunciation of B-I-O-P-I-C like when you make a movie about a person like a biographical picture we've both been stubborn to admit defeat she's part of the biopic crowd, but I prefer biopic. Right. She, of course, claims she's right because she's a former elementary school teacher and a big study of English Lit and knows the truth, blah, blah, blah. But it wasn't until Chuck said biopic in your recent Howard Hughes episode that I got the vindication I needed. Yeah. I don't care if Chuck and I are wrong.

49:54Josh Clark:It doesn't matter. All that matters is I know I'm not alone anymore and will continue with my pronunciation. And I'll make sure to pass this down to my seven and four-year-old kids. That is from Kevin Croyle in North Carolina. And I also got a really rude email from a very, I guess, angry person that I said it differently. And they were like, I guess you like being wrong. I guess it is wrong. I don't even know. I never thought about it. But I don't say biography. I say biography. True. So I say biopic. And I don't know. That's just how it flowed out of my mouth. So I may be wrong. I don't care.

50:28Josh Clark:Yeah. You may be crazy. What do you say? You say biopic, right?

50:31Chuck Bryant:Mm-hmm. But that's just what I've always heard. And I'm so used to you saying biopic now. It's not even, I think that they're both right. I think you managed to wedge it into reality.

50:41Josh Clark:Well, maybe someday when someone writes the biography on our lives, it will be turned into a biopic.

50:50Chuck Bryant:All right. Well, who is that from, the nice one? That is from Kevin. Thanks, Kevin. That was very nice. And I'm glad you feel vindicated. Sorry to your wife. although she and I share the same pronunciation. Okay?

51:03Josh Clark:Yeah, we can all have an arm wrestling match one day or something.

51:07Chuck Bryant:If you want to be like Kevin and write to us about feeling vindicated by me or Chuck or Jerry or whoever, we want to hear about it. Send it off to StuffPodcasts at iHeartRadio.com.

51:21Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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