99. Putin's Secret Army: Trump, Wagner And Russia (Ep 2)

16:17David:They were getting the school menu, I think. So what are they doing? I mean, the initial targets of all this trolling are close to home. And I think that's worth saying because we think of it interfering abroad. But actually, the first target is at home. The Kremlin sees itself as engaged in a kind of political warfare with the West. The West is trying to stir up protests in Russia and in its neighborhood, and their job is to stop that. So, you know, the idea is you control the information space to prevent the CIA through the Internet, which Putin says the Internet is a CIA project, undermining the grip on power.

16:53David:The aim is domestic stability. So you're going to get Twitter accounts supporting the government narrative, supporting Russian culture. Interestingly, lots of focus on going after Alexei Navalny, who's just starting out as a kind of blogger and someone who's going on YouTube doing videos about corruption in Russia. and a lot of the kind of trolls seem to be going after him. He's pointing out corruption in the defense ministry and these videos are going to get watched by millions. Now, of course, we know eventually he's going to get imprisoned, hunted down and everyone assumes killed by the Kremlin.

17:32David:But, you know, this issue of corruption is obviously very sensitive in Russia. And so the trolls are kind of unleashed to go after him, kind of discredit him because they kind of know that's a weak spot.

17:44Gordon:But then I guess around early 2014, as Russia takes Crimea, little green men going into Ukraine, you get this kind of hybrid war where the Russians have started to kind of set their sights on destabilizing Ukraine as a political project. Those tools get turned abroad for the first time.

18:06David:Yeah, that's right. And I think that's the interesting moment. Starts domestic, then you get the Ukraine crisis. And we'll do a bit more about Ukraine crisis, you know, as we look at the mercenary group as we come on to that. But it's a big moment, a kind of big break with the West. They're worried about Western sanctions and what the West might be doing. So it starts to expand the foreign desks. There's a bit of it which is obviously into Ukraine itself, but they're also trying to press certain narratives into Western media, into European media, about what's happening in Ukraine and about attacking the idea that Russia has somehow invaded or trying to take parts of Ukraine and trying to push back against the possibility of sanctions and the narrative that Russia's the aggressor here.

18:53David:So that's the next shift as it starts to move abroad. But then crucially, it's going to start turning its focus not just to Europe, but to the United States. Because now we're into 2014, but already they've got their eyes on an American election coming up in 2016. President Obama has done his two terms, so it's going to be an open contest. If you put yourself in the mindset of Putin, the Kremlin, and these people, they go, well, the CIA has been interfering in our politics. They were behind these protests against Putin's return to power in the elections. Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, who they're going to blame for some of that.

19:34David:that she's potentially running for president in 2016. Let's see what we can kind of mess with when it comes to them. So you can see the kind of evolution of how the internet research agency is kind of pushing from domestic to kind of Ukraine, the West, and then thinking, let's take the fight to them. And I guess it's probably still a bit of an open question,

19:55Gordon:at least, you know, sort of outside of intelligence agencies, to what extent And Purgosian was being and the Internet Research Agency was being tasked with specific targets by the Kremlin. And I guess maybe, I mean, what you're saying is you don't need to be. Yeah. Because you kind of know just by virtue of being, you know, connected. Yeah. Politically connected. You kind of know what's of interest. Yeah. To Putin and the advisors around him, what who's disliked the targets are. Yeah. So you don't need someone to tell you or to be directly controlling this project from the Kremlin. You can kind of freelance yourself and provide useful services to them without them even needing to ask.

20:40Gordon:Yeah.

20:40David:That election is 2016. And yet already in April 2014, the Internet Research Agency is going to create a department which goes by different names. But one was the Translator Project, kind of good cover name. But it's going to focus on the US. You know, it's going to be, okay, let's see how we can use these kind of dark arts of PR, social media trolling, and push them on US social media platforms, things like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It's going to have eventually more than 80 employees in that one department. And they're immediately going to start thinking, how can we mess with the American election?

21:17Gordon:And we should say here, we're going to talk, of course, a little bit about this now, but we are going to do a proper broader series on Russian involvement in and interference in the 2016 election. There's a lot of different aspects, you know, sort of storylines to that. This is one of them, which we'll talk a little bit about now, but we're going to we'll treat that, you know, in kind of the full detail that it's due at some point later.

21:46David:Because I think we're interested here from the point of view of the Internet Research Agency and Pregosian and his role. I think the key point is that they're starting to think about this in April 2014. So, you know, kind of two and a half years out about this kind of information warfare. They've understood social media, huge impact in the US at that point, you know, huge audiences in which you can claim to be anonymous. Or you can create a different identity without any real checks. you can pose as an American without being an American. So you can create different entities and dive into social media and affect it.

22:22David:And of course, this is the bit I think is really interesting is that if you want to play in that space, you need to understand American culture. And so one of the things they do is they go out and do field research. They send four staff members from the Internet Research Agency out to the United States in the summer of 2014. they do a 22 day tour of the US, which is basically a kind of intelligence gathering operation. I mean, it's not spying, but they're going to go to sounds like a boondoggle. It does sound like a good trip. Cause they're going to go Nevada. I bet they went to Vegas, California.

22:59David:How nice. New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, Texas, Texas, and New York. All of that in this 22 day trip to basically, to understand America so that you know how to do the social media influence. That is a good trip.

23:16Gordon:It's a great trip. It depends on where they stayed. My guess is this was not particularly well capitalized by the internet research agency, so who knows where they were staying. I also think, I mean, is this espionage, do you think, Gordon?

23:30David:Not really. Right. They're literally traveling around talking to Americans. I mean, because they're trying to get a feel for the place to know how they can then manipulate it. Yeah. Play to it. Is it espionage? I don't know. What is it? I think at this point, especially it's.

23:47Gordon:I guess is it espionage if they are undercover Russian intelligence officers? Yeah. Is it? Well, yes. But not in this case, because it's a bunch of, you know, PR. PR, yeah. From the internet research agency. I think it's not. I do think maybe who the person is does matter. So if you're working at an entity that is not an intelligence service, even if it's subcontracted in a way that makes it adjacent, maybe it's not. I also think, you know, there's a broader question about in an open society like the States, things that maybe elsewhere could be considered espionage or not. Because, you know, if you get the visa, you're not stealing secrets.

24:34Gordon:You're just talking to people and interacting with an open society. You know, I think that's not espionage. Even if the report ends up getting filtered into, you know, an effort to widen cracks that exist in a society that they went to study.

24:50David:Yeah. So they're going to write up these reports from the trip and they're going to be incredibly valuable. Other people are going to go to Atlanta or other places, and it's going to feed into the data analysis group. So what you can see is they are doing something new here. And it's something which I think is off the radar at that point and which no one quite understands or sees. And yet is going to be, as we'll see, hugely controversial.

25:15Gordon:I would bet that this information was not being collected by the SVR, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service. Yeah. So I would bet that this is something that was actually, even if the findings might have been somewhat high level or even kind of obvious, a lot of the facts that I presume that they would have included in this report, conversations with ordinary Americans, things like that, whatever, that color is probably not making its way into the Kremlin through official intelligence channels. And it reminds me a little bit of some of the types of like academic or field reports that the agency might get its hands on that are coming from parts of the world that are of interest to us.

26:02Gordon:Where there's such a high bar for foreign intelligence that your spy service is gathering. It's not secret. It's not secret, but it's also, if you're an intelligence officer, you're an analyst, you know, you're operating in this world of all of the stuff that you're reading is, it's stolen secrets. And yet there's huge swaths of the society, the culture that are sort of open, but that you might not really have a lot of great information on. And I actually think it's one of the weaknesses of a spy service is that you end up in these bubbles of really classified information that isn't always the most useful stuff, depending on the question you're trying to answer.

26:44Gordon:And I think in this case, again, this gets to the point of like Pregosian as an entrepreneur, this is probably stuff that inside the Kremlin or inside these kind of corridors of power around Putin is really interesting. And I think we'll talk, of course, later about, well, how impactful was any of this stuff really on the election. But you can see how it would have been really, really useful to Pergosian. And so maybe there, Gordon, with candidate Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton squaring off in really the final weeks and months of the 2016 campaign. Let's take our break. When we come back, we will see how Yevgeny Pergosian and the Internet Research Agency meddle to potentially affect the outcome of that election.

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30:15Gordon:Well, welcome back. We're in the middle of the 2016 election and Yevgeny Pregosian's trolls at the Internet Research Agency are hard at work. What are they up to, Gordon?

30:27David:Well, a lot of it is on Facebook. Remember that? Kids might not know what Facebook is. It was this social media platform many years ago. Gordon, we have a Facebook page for the Declassified Club. Sorry. Which hopefully Evgeny Pogosian's successes are not interfering with as we speak.

30:45Gordon:Yes. I am apologizing to all of our secret squirrels on behalf of my co-host, Gordon Carrera. Sorry. And I will add this to his nut file. Thank you very much.

30:56David:There are people creating fake email accounts to go on these Facebook pages like all4usa at yuhu.com. And then they purchase.

31:05Gordon:You said yuhu.com. Yahoo.com. Gordon, you're exposing your vast ignorance about the early stages of the interwebs here.

31:14David:They're creating fake accounts, purchasing ads on Facebook and other companies. One of the points is they're pushing ads, particular messages, often division. One of the things we should say is they're kind of pushing both sides often of an argument. They're just trying to divide. Yeah, that's the point. That's the point. It's division. And it's also within the kind of playbook of the KGB. If you go back, planting stories, smearing candidates, smearing people, there's a long history of that by the KGB in American elections. They tried to undermine Ronald Reagan's candidacy at various points. They spread smear stories about AIDS.

31:56David:They spread claim that the CIA was behind the JFK. Which infected your brain.

32:01Gordon:Listeners to our miniseries, our Anti-Classified Club miniseries on the conspiracy theories that sort of come out of this relationship between JFK and the CIA in Cuba. Well, no, Gordon Carrera's synapses were fired by KGB conspiracy theories.

32:20David:Yeah, because that was a kind of KGB planting fake stories, trying to engineer division in American society in the 60s. So, in a way, they've always done that. That is the kind of KGB Russian playbook. The difference is now they've got a mechanism to do it through social media, which they can use remotely and anonymously, which is very effective and largely unpoliced at this time.

32:44Gordon:And I think this says something interesting about the relationship between spy services and contractors. Eventually, I mean, we'll see when we deal with the story in full that Russia's intel services are involved in this, but it's also being contracted out to the Internet Research Agency. This ostensibly private sector company that's doing this on behalf of the Russian state. So you see this blend of, it's essentially a contract effort, right?

33:11David:And that's the Kregosian story, isn't it?

33:13Gordon:Which would have never happened in the 60s, 70s, 80s in Russia. It would have been very controlled and centralized by the KGB, and it's not anymore.

33:21David:Yeah, and that's the nature of the kind of new Russian state in a way. So yeah, you get all these posts fostering division. You get kind of blacktivist basquerading as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, drawing 350 ,000 followers. And then you get Heart of Texas. I don't know if you remember that one, 250 ,000 followers. They're playing both sides. One of the bits that's interesting is, you know, they're playing both sides, fostering division, putting out messages. They also organize real world stunts, you know, and I think this is also interesting. It's a bit like, you know, the fact he was organizing fake demos, poisoning people.

33:57David:He's doing they're doing the same stuff in the American election. You can see the playbook. So they'll have someone in St. Petersburg who create a fake identity, say, called Matt Skyber, who's one. He's going to create a Facebook account and then he's going to contact a real American to ask them as a recruiter for a March for Trump rally in New York. They're going to pay for ads for this and they're going to contact this person and give them money to print posters and also get a megaphone they're kind of organizing flash mobs you know protests uh remotely by engaging with real americans you know all the way from this kind of office inst petersburg the same kind of russian posing as matt skyburn american is going to recruit a real american to acquire a prison costume another person is is paid to build a cage for a pickup truck.

34:48David:And then a Twitter account organises for an actress to dress up as a caged Hillary Clinton in prison uniform in West Palm Beach. So it's interesting. You know, you can see them organising stunts, basically. PR stunts. It's very Prigozian. It's very Prigozian. And this is what's interesting, is, you know, promoting these rallies, using real Americans, doing all of this. And they, you know, contact about 100 real Americans through these fake accounts. And these people, of course, have got no idea they're dealing with Russians. So it is interesting how ambitious it was and how in some ways how russian it was um but i guess this is the question how much difference did it make i mean i think it's very very hard to say how much difference that make how many minds did it change did it sway an election i think it's i don't i mean it's estimated that i think 126 million americans might have seen the facebook posts now that sounds like a lot, but when I see a post on social media, you know, does it change my mind?

35:47David:Does it change my view?

35:48Gordon:Unless it's a Kennedy conspiracy, it's unlikely to, then you're hooked. So my hot take on this is that it has very little impact. Some impact, but very little. And I think in, I mean, you know, the decades since almost, there have been a number of leaked reports that have come out from the Internet Research Agency and other sort of disinformation efforts on the part of the Russian state. And what strikes me as, I think is really fascinating about them, is how bureaucratic these efforts are and how much of it is a self-licking ice cream cone. Yeah. Where essentially the proof of impact is just the activity itself.

36:27Gordon:And it's often a way, and I think it's a high profile way. And this is why someone like Yevgeny Purgosian, I think would see value in this. Again, think about him, Purgosian as this sort of courtier on the outskirts of putin's medieval sort of center of power having these kind of videos is a great way to show that you're you're important and you're doing something the actual impact that it has on the outcome in the states or the extent to which americans are divided yeah you know is almost irrelevant yeah and and a lot of what you see in these like documents is this kind of self-congratulation on the part of the Russians who are involved in these efforts.

37:08Gordon:And it's very bureaucratic. They're showing this stuff as a way to get more funding and more access and sort of spotlight shown on these efforts internally in Russia. I kind of think, we'll get to the bigger 2016 story. And there were some other elements to the influence campaign that I think probably had more of an impact. But this kind of social media posting, I'm pretty skeptical.

37:31David:gone yeah no i think i'm the same and i agree i think some of the other stuff that actually russian intelligence did in terms of hacking the dnc and some of those issues that possibly have more impact but the one thing i think it does have an impact on is i think how many votes it changed i think it's almost impossible to know and i agree it's probably that much it does kind of sour the information environment you know because the combination of kind of social media disinformation the possibility that had an impact all of this is going to kind of create a kind of confusion a noise around what's truth who's who on the internet who's trying to manipulate me and in a way it's exporting that russian world of you know nothing is true everything is possible from the russian media environment into the western media environment you know and i think That's one of the big legacies of it, is the disruption and the lack of trust it creates in information, which is ultimately to the Kremlin's long-term benefit, I think.

38:37Gordon:But it really is, I guess, in the wake of this effort that Pregosian becomes known inside the US, and really it kind of puts a target on his back. in the way. Not literally, but the FBI, the agency, sort of become aware that this guy is responsible for the souring of this information environment.

39:00David:Yeah, nothing is, I mean, it's interesting because nothing at the time public links his company Concord with the whole interference. He always, at this point, denies it. There's a kind of maze of shell companies. It looks like the Internet Research Agency is run by some kind of, you know political technologists as they're called some pr people but there's a brilliant clue which comes actually from the internet research agency itself because at the end of may 2016 some of those people inst petersburg some of the trolls are going to convince an unnamed american in washington dc to stand in front of the white house holding a sign and to be pictured doing so And the sign says, happy 55th birthday, dear boss.

39:47David:And the dear boss was Prigozian, whose birthday was coming up. Because you can imagine it's like the birthday card from the guys at the Internet Research Agency going, look, you know, here's someone in front of the White House saying happy birthday. But it also kind of makes clear he's the boss.

40:02Gordon:That is sort of classically Prigozian, right? I mean, the people below him are essentially mirroring something that he would have done to the people above him. Yeah. To curry favor. Exactly.

40:16David:Yeah. And I mean, that detail comes from the indictment that the U.S. is going to issue in 2018 over the interference. And, you know, that indictment is going to kind of link Pregosian, Internet Research Agency, Concord Catering, you know, and kind of point to the connections between them all and that he's behind it. And he's going to actually appear on the FBI's most wanted list at that point. And, you know, there's going to be sanctions on him. And that is, I think, uncomfortable for him, because I think he has wanted to kind of keep a low profile, at least in this kind of space that he's doing these kind of things.

40:53David:You know, and he's kept his businesses at arm's length. He is getting rich, not super rich. You know, the estimate is by 2016, he's worth maybe$110 million, maybe a bit more. Pretty good. You consider this to be not super rich. By Russian oligarch standards. Okay, okay. That's an important yardstick to standards.

41:12Gordon:That's right.

41:13David:That's right. He's got the yacht. Review that BBC contract. He's got the yacht, the private jets. He's got a vintage powder blue Lincoln Continental car. Interesting. Big estate outside St. Petersburg. Full basketball court. He doesn't strike me as looking at his physique, that he was a basketball player. No. No. Because we should say, by this point, he's kind of big, balding, bit of swagger, but not... Not a basketball guy. Not a basketball guy, yeah. No. He's coming into public view. And I think, you know, with the indictments, with the US election, I think that is a problem for him. Because he's worried about that he's going to lose his private jets.

41:52David:They're going to get impounded. So he goes on the offense. And he kind of basically says, I've got nothing to do with the Internet Research Agency. see he's going to employ and this is going to be another you know thing he pioneers that kind of thing which is called lawfare which is using lawyers to kind of go after your enemies and using the law to go after them because he's going to employ dc lawyers and later he's going to employ london lawyers to both fight the charges but also go after journalists and others who say that he is behind the internet research agency and he's going to deny you know any links to the state one of the interesting things is then Putin starts getting asked about Prigozhin and he compares Prigozhin to George Soros, the Hungarian philanthropist who supports liberal causes around the world.

42:36David:And the point that Putin is making is like, these are just people, rich people pursuing their own private endeavours. And Putin, I love this, Putin kind of mocks the West for falling so low as to suspect a restaurateur from Russia of influencing the US election. You know, he's like, how could you think this chef could possibly influence your election?

42:59Gordon:Sure, he may have a prison tattoo on his back carved in with soot and urine, but he's just a chef.

43:06David:But he's just a chef. How could your election be influenced by this chef? And Prigozhin himself kind of denies it. And he's going to deny it actually until, I mean, the eve of his death only. Don't want to give that away too much. You just want to plot spoiler. We need our producer Becky to get her bleep gun ready. Look at that. Next time you issue a spoiler. A spoiler that Pogosian may not survive. It's only at the very end of this story, let's put it that way, that he'll actually admit he was behind the Internet Research Agency. He's going to deny it all that time. And that's partly about him trying to, I think, protect his wealth effectively.

43:42So, Gordon, I think there with this picture of a man who's a restaurateur,

43:49Gordon:a PR and disinformation tycoon, we obviously have the building blocks of someone who is going to become a mercenary leader. Obviously. Obviously. But let's leave it there. Next time we will see how Purgosian takes this leap into running what will become known as Wagner Group and its forays into Ukraine, Syria, and some other really terrible parts of the world. But, but remember, if you don't want to wait and nothing ever good came by waiting, go to the rest is classified dot com. Join the declassified club. Get early access to this entire series. Binge listen. We hope you join. We'll see you next time.

44:36Gordon:See you next time.

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