You Are Still Not Worried Enough About Foreign Influence Operations

They're real. And they matter.

The first version of this post was going to start with a light-hearted tone and a silly tweet. On Tuesday morning, the political account @thebee45 replied to a Nate Silver tweet about polling, saying

“I hope this new app will get Kamala numbers under the waters, a place she really deserve to be”.

Twitter users found this post suspicious in a number of ways. To start, @thebee45 was impersonating the larger and more established account ‘KamalaHQLies’ by using the same display name and profile picture. The reply in question also had terrible grammar (“Kamala numbers” and “a place she really deserve to be”). But the phrase ‘under the waters’ stood out the most. No native English speaker would say those words instead of saying underwater. Accusations began flying that @thebee45 was a foreign account attempting to influence US elections, and the incident went viral.

This type of incident with foreign influences happens more often than you’d think. Last year a Texan separatist account on Twitter was caught saying that Texas has ‘warm water ports’ – a strategic concept few Americans have ever thought about, but that Russians are obsessed with.¹ Seymour Hersh claimed to have sources in the US government that called Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy a ‘waif in his underwear’ – an extremely strange expression in English, but a common idiom in Russian. The Twitter account @TEN_GOP, which had hundreds of thousands of followers and was often retweeted by members of the Trump campaign, was confirmed by the Mueller report to be part of a Russian troll operation.

From there, the post would have branched out into a few other areas. The other common ‘hidden identity’ trick that you see in conservative circles is the white-conservative-posing-as-black-Trump-voter, with classics like elected official Dean Browning claiming to be a gay black guy for Trump or Joey Marinara pretending to be a black woman. I’d talk about the instances where pictures of real female influencers are stolen for fake pro-MAGA accounts, instances where pictures of unwitting black men are used to create ‘Blacks for Trump’ accounts, and the long history of fake/bot MAGA accounts that goes back before Trump was even elected president.

From there I’d talk about why this happens so often with Republicans specifically - why are they so easy to fool? Part of the answer is the GOP’s wonk gap, the polite way of saying that Republicans are rapidly becoming the party of stupid people and conspiracy theorists. There’s an entire article that I could and probably should write about the crank realignment. It used to be the case that both parties had their cranks – crunchy anti-vax kooks on the left, and evolution denying fundamentalists on the right. But while right-leaning cranks have remained in place, left-leaning kooks have migrated towards supporting Donald Trump. Tulsi Gabbard, Jimmy Dore, and RFK Jr are all traditional Democratic kooks who’ve fully embraced Trump. The current partisan realignment has seen centrist Republicans and conservative wonks fleeing the GOP and being replaced by non-college voters, weirdos and conspiracy theorists.

That was going to be the general shape of this article. And then, about an hour into writing it, the Department of Justice indicted employees of Russia Today in a brazen scheme to pay off major conservative influencers for pro-Russia talking points.

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Russia Today is one of the many propaganda tools that Russia’s government uses to influence other countries. After Russia invaded Ukraine, they were sanctioned and forced to end formal operations in the US. Rather than give up, they turned to paying off conservative influencers.

You can read the indictment directly, or a recap from CNN. But to summarize, it’s as bad as you’d think. Conservative influencers Liam Donovan and Lauren Chen were the US-based masterminds behind the scheme. Their company Tenet Media took money from Russia and used it to pay conservative voices for videos, which were then posted on the Tenet Media YouTube channel. The indictment makes painfully clear that Chen and Donovan knew exactly who was paying them (Chen and Donovan here are Founder-1 and Founder-2):

At one point, hilariously, they can’t get in touch with their handler about a late payment and end up Googling ‘time in Moscow’:

The Russian money was used to pay six conservative commentators - Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen, and Dave Rubin. These commentators, despite being bigots and idiots, are not small-time. Collectively they have tens of millions of followers, billions of video views, and the ability to heavily influence conservative politics in the US.

Chen and Donovan directed around ten million dollars to the six commentators in exchange for Russia-friendly coverage. At many points they ask the commentators to directly comment on specific issues with Russian-approved viewpoints, and the indictment documents that some of the commentators were happy to oblige.

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You might be asking: Sure, these idiots were getting paid by Russia, but what’s the big deal? It’s not like they knew it was Russians! And it’s not like this kind of thing can really make a difference, right? Let me take these in turn.

I think it’s pretty easy to make the case that the influencers knew - or should have known - that they were being funded by Russians. Take a look at this gem from Tim Pool:

As he angrily pounds the table and yells “UKRAINE IS OUR ENEMY” and “WE SHOULD APOLOGIZE TO RUSSIA”, ask yourself if this is really a man who’s ignorant of where his money comes from.

Some of the influencers, including Pool, were being paid $100,000 per video, for four videos and $400,000 per month. The videos in question on Tenet’s YouTube channel were only getting tens of thousands of views - enough to make around $100 bucks in YouTube ad money if we’re being generous. They were being paid an insane amount of money for poorly performing videos, and they weren’t suspicious?

They were also asked to comment on specific Russia-aligned topics repeatedly. When they asked about the funding source, they were only told it came from "Eduard Grigoriann”, a businessman who did not exist and returned zero information on Google. If someone asked you to comment on sensitive foreign policy issues and offered you obscene amounts of money from an obviously fake persona, wouldn’t you ask questions? This is the crowd famous for ‘just asking questions’, which apparently applies in every scenario except asking where their money comes from. I don’t believe them when they say they had no idea.

Second, let’s talk about whether or not this means anything. Maybe it’s just a fun laugh that proves how stupid Tim Pool and Dave Rubin are. Maybe it’s irrelevant and inconsequential to the real world. Or maybe it’s not. As noted above, these influencers have massive audiences into the tens of millions. And more importantly, they’re heavily networked into other conservative spaces. Lauren Chen worked with TurningPointUSA and The Blaze. Dave Rubin has collaborated with Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, PragerU, Scott Adams, Turning Point, and more. Benny Johnson has worked with NewsMax, Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller, and the National Review.

And more directly, many of these folks have real influence on the inner workings of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

That’s Benny Johnson spending quality one-on-one time with Trump in his private jet. Tim Pool has hosted Trump on his podcast. Trump has retweeted Lauren Southern. Many of these commentators are favorites of Elon Musk, who regularly retweets, replies and amplifies them. When they start to parrot certain talking points, it absolutely matters.

Think back to earlier this year. Despite overwhelming bipartisan support,² opposition from a segment of congressional Republicans led to a six month delay in new aid for Ukraine. That delay, in real terms, meant thousands of dead Ukrainians. It meant that during a crucial period of the war as Ukraine was in the middle of a counter-offensive, they were running out of key equipment and munitions. Russia gained ground and captured more territory from Ukraine, which still has ramifications today. And useful idiots like the conservative voices above were instrumental in building opposition to Ukraine aid. This kind of propaganda effort works. It has a real impact on the real world.

And despite all this, you are still not worried enough. If you think ten million dollars is the entirety of Russia’s propaganda budget, you’re a fool. If you think Tenet Media was the only operation they’re running, you’re a fool. They still have their army of fake Twitter accounts. They almost certainly have other covert operations we haven’t uncovered yet. Just yesterday a Trump 2016 campaign adviser was indicted by the DOJ for taking Russian money. The Russians take this seriously and they’re succeeding.

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Most of this post has been me slamming conservatives. Maybe you think this post is all about them. You’re a good liberal or progressive, you understand that Russia poses a big threat to democracy. And yet you are still not worried enough. Because while progressives are temperamentally inclined to be anti-Russia, I see far too many progressives who don’t apply the same lessons to China.

We have concrete proof that China, over and over, has tried to infiltrate our political establishment - just this week, a top aide to New York governor Kathy Hochul was arrested for secretly working for the Chinese government. China also routinely uses spies to steal trade secrets, military secrets, and information from government agencies.³ And China, of course, controls TikTok.

Too many left-of-center people will nod along solemnly when discussing the danger of Russian influence operations, but then completely dismiss the idea that China tries to influence US politics. I’d like to politely suggest that they wake up. Do not make yourself reliant on the good moral standards of the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping. Study after study confirms that TikTok censors certain topics like the Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang, and that ‘sensitive topics’ to China are wildly underrepresented on TikTok compared to any other platform:

If you think that the CCP wouldn’t dare interfere with TikTok’s algorithm for their own gain, you’re a fool. And if you think that’s all the CCP is doing, you’re a fool. We know that they have an army of online propagandists, and they’re learning tricks from the Russians. The account ‘Ultra MAGA BELLA Hot Babe’ amassed 26,000 followers as a conspiratorial pro-Trump account before it was discovered they were a Chinese agent.⁴ Experts have been warning for years that China is increasingly attempting to influence US elections.

The best time to be concerned about this was years ago, but the second best time is right now. If you live in a liberal democracy, you need to realize that authoritarian regimes across the world are trying to undermine your democracy. This is insidious and increasingly successful and it’s happening right now. We need to devote more resources to outing these campaigns. And yes, we do need to ban TikTok. Don’t stick your head in the sand about either Russia or China, just because your news sources might be polarized in a particular direction. Fight to protect democracy from both.

1. They also called themselves ‘Texian’, something real Texans definitely say.

2. The 2024 Ukraine aid bill passed the House 311-112 and the Senate 79-18

3. If you want a more extensive list of China’s efforts, check Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_spy_cases_in_the_United_States or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_United_States

4. I know you’re shocked that we can’t even trust ‘Ultra MAGA BELLA Hot Babe’.