Securing Democracy Dispatch

Though foreign and domestic actors exploited societal divisions during Germany’s federal election campaign earlier this year, Kremlin-linked information operations integrated content generated by artificial intelligence (AI), bot networks, and sanctioned outlets. Read this and more takeaways from an assessment co-authored by ASD and other organizations. 

Russian diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week: 

• BRICS Summit: Russian officials and state media praised BRICS’ political and economic achievements during its summit this week in Brazil. Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that BRICS had significantly expanded and that together its countries have “enormous economic, scientific, technological, and human potential”. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov elaborated that multipolarity of the global order is an “objective reality” replacing an old neoliberal model based on “neocolonial practices”. Putin also boasted that BRICS surpassed the G7 in purchasing power parity, while Lavrov added that BRICS countries now account for 40% of global GDP. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva urged the group to create a “new trade currency” and Brazilian economist Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr. forecasted that BRICS’ reserve currency would be digital. Sputnik Brasil claimed that BRICS nations will abandon the US dollar, while Sputnik Mundo reported that the dollar has lost 10.8% of its value this year, its largest half-year drop since 1973. 
• Epstein Files: Russian propaganda outlets discussed disagreements among the American right wing about financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s records. RT’s Going Underground shared a clip of American political commentator Tucker Carlson “slamming” US Attorney General Pam Bondi for her handling of the Epstein files and for not divulging the names of Epstein’s collaborators. Propagandist Vladimir Solovyov speculated that “some shadowy group of the ‘Deep State’” destroyed these records before the new US administration arrived. Sputnik featured controversial US blogger and former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, who suggested that Epstein was an Israeli asset who controlled politicians with blackmail. Going Underground attempted to corroborate these accusations with confirmation from former Mossad agent Ari Ben-Menashe and a former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, who alleged that the White House covered up the Epstein Files “to protect Israel and the morally abominable [American] elite society”. 

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week: 

• BRICS Tariff Threat: PRC media outlets and government officials last week criticized US President Donald Trump’s threat to levy a new 10% tariff on BRICS countries. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the tariff a “tool of coercion” and one state media commentator said that the threat was “a perfect example of why the global community needs a more inclusive global environment”. In multiple languages, CGTN ran segments showcasing BRICS members blasting the tariff and using the threat to champion the “inclusive” and “multipolar” nature of the BRICS model. CGTN also posted a video that showed Putin announcing that the “liberal globalization model has become obsolete”.   
• “Japanese Aggression”: The term “Japanese aggression” was among the ten most used key phrases in descriptions of videos posted by PRC state media channels to YouTube last week. These posts were largely connected to commemorative events for the “war of resistance against Japanese aggression”, particularly the so-called Lugou Bridge (also known as the Marco Polo Bridge) incident that marked the start of Japan’s full-scale invasion of China during World War II. CCTV described the attack as China’s “Pearl Harbor” and Japanese actions as “no less heinous than fascist war crimes in Europe”. Chinese-language posts accused Japan of attempting to “whitewash” this history in its textbooks by using “vague terms” that “obscure their nature and ambitions of aggression”. Several PRC outlets also connected the commemoration events to Taiwanese “separatism”, with CGTN noting that “civil groups” in Taiwan protested outside the ruling party’s headquarters in the hopes of “teaching” them a “history lesson”. 

Iranian diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week: 

• Ashura: Last week, commemoration of the Muslim holy day Ashura dominated Iranian state messaging on all monitored platforms, making use of the holiday to underscore Iran’s perseverance in the face of US and Israeli “oppression”. Iranian state media and officials dedicated significant coverage to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s attendance at the Ashura ceremony, his first public appearance since the start of the Iran-Israel conflict, claiming his “courageous” attendance proves Iran will never surrender. State messengers emphasized the Ashura’s teachings of martyrdom and resistance against US and Israeli tyranny, with Khamenei Media encouraging followers to “take action” against them.  
• IAEA: Iranian state messengers continued to criticize the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Director General Rafael Grossi. State media and officials blamed IAEA “double standards” of failing to safeguard international security and continued to repeat allegations that the IAEA was a front to spy on Iran, misinterpreting comments by a French official to claim that the organization shared sensitive data with Western intelligence services. Pars Today further suggested that the IAEA enabled a “racist system of nuclear apartheid”. Iranian state outlets also closely covered the withdrawal of IAEA inspectors following Tehran’s suspension of cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog. In response to the German Foreign Office’s criticism of the decision, Iran’s Foreign Minister Sayed Abbas Araghchi lambasted Berlin, accusing it of “Nazi-style backing of genocide in Gaza”. 

Malign actor uses AI to impersonate Rubio, contact foreign and US officials: An unknown malign actor used AI to impersonate US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in communications with three foreign ministers, a US governor, and a member of the US Congress via a text message, voice messages, and a fake Signal account, according to a State Department cable obtained by the Washington Post. Managing Director David Salvo tells the Dispatch, “AI-fueled information operations, like the one impersonating Rubio, are increasingly prevalent. And while this particular scam could very well have been perpetrated by a state-sponsored actor, the tools are widely available to state and non-state actors alike with implications not just for national security but citizens’ livelihoods too.” 

Amazon removes seemingly AI-generated biographies of Scottish politicians: Amazon removed multiple unofficial biographies about prominent Scottish National Party politicians that appeared to be written with AI and were littered with falsehoods, fueling fears about false information ahead of next year’s Scottish parliamentary elections. Senior Fellow Bret Schafer says, “I’m less concerned about any specific risks to the Scottish election than about broader implications for the information space created by ‘AI slop’. Very few of these low-quality, AI-generated publications are likely to attract sizable audiences, but if large-language models are trained on them, everything from chatbots to search engines are more likely to generate false or misleading results.”  

In Case You Missed It 

• A review commissioned by CIA Director John Ratcliffe concluded that the Agency’s 2016 assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election and sought to sway the outcome in President Trump’s favor was sound. 
• Russian state-sponsored operatives directed at least four British men via Telegram to set fire to a London restaurant and kidnap its owner, a Russian dissident. The suspects were caught before carrying out the operation, but after destroying two warehouses operated by a Ukrainian businessman in March 2024. 
• X’s AI chatbot Grok answered several queries on Tuesday with unprompted antisemitic responses, some of which praised Adolf Hitler, following recent updates to the chatbot. 
• Iranian physical threats to critics of Tehran’s regime on British soil have become more wide-ranging and unpredictable since 2022, a UK parliamentary committee assessed. 
• A network of self-described “pan-Africanist influencers” spread claims of a coup in Ivory Coast online, sharing doctored videos of soldiers and AI-generated news reports that attracted millions of views on YouTube, according to a BBC News report. 
• PRC embassy officials carried out a covert information campaign across multiple Asian countries, notably Indonesia, to damage the reputation of the French-made Rafale fighter jet and encourage purchases of Chinese-made jets, according to French intelligence. 

Defeating Disinformation. Senior Fellow Bret Schafer and Research Analyst Krystyna Sikora interviewed on Savvy Citizen: A Gaston County Podcast 

Pro-Kremlin actors push multilingual biolab hoax targeting Armenia. ASD research/Information Laundromat cited in DFRLab 

The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the author alone.