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Lukáš Valášek stated that the minister cited a draft report from the Supreme Audit Office, even though the minister's spokesperson insisted on Tuesday that she could not comment on it. Valášek emphasized that neither he nor the report claims that the Czech Republic will lose European funds. He wrote that due to the conflict of interest of the minister's former close associate in the area of subsidies, plans could not be made to pay for already completed projects worth tens of millions of crowns, and thus the funds will have to be found elsewhere. He called on the minister to explain where in the ministry's budget he will find the money and at the expense of what. #Česko #evropsképenny #dotace (translated)

In a new column, the author argued that drawing up a “France 2050” plan should have been the first task of the five-year term now ending, with its implementation guiding the government’s actions. They asked which candidate for 2027 would make the plan central to their platform. #France2050 #Élection2027 #Politique #FR

Oly LePapages wrote that the "envious" had won, but then watched with interest the defeat by a margin of 28 points. He stated that they already had posts ready about Montero-Shorts, the expulsion of B, the suitcases, and a new attempt to undermine the EuroLeague which, he said, his team had conquered on their home court. #olympiacosbc #ολυμπιακός #μπάσκετ #ευρωλίγκα (translated)

Russia’s 2027 draft budget allocates a record share to defence and security, as regions quietly divert funds for foster children and orphans to war payments and “coffin money” for soldiers’ families is cut by up to 95% in some areas. #RussiaDefense #SocialSpending #UkraineConflict

Operation Dark Clark – Russia built a real organisation around a false identity Most influence operations create fake people, fake websites or fake news stories. Operation Dark Clark appears to have gone considerably further: Russian operators built what looked like a functioning research organisation in Latin America, employed real people to produce genuine research and concealed from those employees who was ultimately directing their work. OpenAI disclosed the operation on 8 October after banning a cluster of accounts originating in Russia. The actors used ChatGPT while targeting countries across Latin America, principally to damage Ukraine’s reputation, manipulate domestic political debates and manage a self-described research organisation called the Social Research Center, or SRC. OpenAI assessed Dark Clark as Category Five on the six-level Breakout Scale, the first operation it has disrupted since beginning its influence-operation reporting to reach that level. A front organisation with real employees The SRC presented itself as a research platform studying subjects including Latin America’s relationship with India and the Indian diaspora. OpenAI found more than 60 articles on its website, most of them apparently original rather than plagiarised. Internal reports produced by the Russian operators discussed hiring, dismissals, salary scales, staffing and unfinished research projects, strongly suggesting that the operators controlled the organisation rather than merely collaborating with it. At the centre of the structure was “Mia Clark”, a fictitious identity reportedly used to manage social-media activity and communicate with staff. According to OpenAI, the available evidence indicates that employees working for SRC in Latin America were probably unaware that the organisation was being directed by Russian actors. They interviewed experts, conducted research and wrote papers in what appears to have been good faith. The deception therefore existed primarily at the organisational level: much of the work was real, but the identity and strategic purpose of the institution commissioning it were not. OpenAI This is one reason Dark Clark differs from the familiar model of a troll farm. A reader encountering an SRC paper might be looking at research genuinely written by a Latin American employee based on genuine interviews. The manipulation lies further upstream, in who built the institution, selected its direction and controlled its infrastructure. From forged emails to real events The operation also appears to have attempted something more ambitious than online persuasion: inducing real people to produce events that could later be turned into propaganda. In May 2026, according to the operators’ internal reports, they created an email address impersonating Lima’s regional education authorities and instructed schools to organise activities about Ukraine for a cultural-diversity event. The instructions included references to Stepan Bandera, whose historical legacy remains particularly contentious in Poland and parts of Eastern Europe. The operators claimed that some schools complied, replied to the false address and sent photographs of the events. OpenAI could not independently verify every claim contained in the operators’ reports. It did, however, find Peruvian reporting matching the story, followed by publications in Poland and an English-language outlet in Hungary. Some coverage included comments from a Polish MEP calling for people displaying what he described as anti-Polish attitudes to be declared persona non grata. OpenAI therefore concluded that the fabricated starting point appears to have entered genuine political debate across national borders. The mechanism is unusually effective because the final photographs need not themselves be fabricated. If people can be tricked into staging a real event on the basis of a forged instruction, the operation creates authentic visual evidence of something that was artificially initiated. The same method in Ecuador and Bolivia Dark Clark’s internal reports describe similar efforts elsewhere. In Ecuador, the operators claimed they used a fake education email to encourage schools to stage ceremonies involving President Daniel Noboa and Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater. Ecuadorian media subsequently covered a matching controversy, and the country’s education minister issued a detailed denial. Other Ecuador-focused material included fabricated audio attributed to Ukraine’s consul and a false television report alleging that Noboa’s government was recruiting Ecuadorians to fight in Ukraine. Local fact-checker Lupa found that the supposed Teleamazonas report had never been broadcast, that images had been taken from Instagram, that the audio was AI-generated and that a company named in a supposed recruitment contract did not exist in Ecuador’s corporate registry. In Bolivia, an internal report described a fake audio recording supposedly made by an employee of state water company EPSAS during anti-government protests. It claimed that water supplies to La Paz would be cut and a state of emergency declared. The allegation produced a fact-check and an official denial. OpenAI says the operators explicitly described their objective as worsening the political crisis surrounding the demonstrations. Possible links to the post-Wagner influence machine Dark Clark did not emerge in a vacuum. The operators repeatedly asked ChatGPT about Politology and La Compania, names associated in previous investigations with the Russian influence apparatus that developed from structures once connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin. Forbidden Stories and its partners obtained 1,431 pages of internal documents describing a network known as “The Company”, which they reported had grown to almost 100 operatives and was conducting influence projects across roughly 30 Global South countries. Their investigation found that the organisation moved under the supervision of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, after Prigozhin’s death. Its documented budget for ten months of activity in 2024 was approximately €7.3 million. Two older Argentina campaigns claimed in Dark Clark’s internal reports — a false story about Javier Milei buying Cartier collars for his dogs and the staging of anti-Milei graffiti — had already been independently attributed by investigative journalists to Politology/La Compania. That is significant corroboration, but it is not enough to prove that every Dark Clark activity was run by the same organisational structure. AI was the back office, not the mastermind Perhaps the most important finding concerns artificial intelligence itself. In most documented cases, the Russians were not using ChatGPT to generate the propaganda seen by the public. Their principal use was administrative: drafting reports for an unknown superior, summarising operations, translating material and recording the supposed success of campaigns. Those reports also expose a weakness in the operators’ own measurement. OpenAI found instances in which they tried to claim credit for developments they had probably not caused, suggesting that they were not only attempting to manipulate Latin American audiences but also presenting an inflated picture of their effectiveness to whoever was supervising them. Dark Clark nevertheless broke further into the real world than any influence operation OpenAI had previously disrupted. Under the Brookings framework, Category Five means that an operation has escaped its original network and been amplified by high-profile individuals such as politicians. Dark Clark crossed that threshold because fabricated narratives appear to have provoked governmental denials, mainstream reporting and political comment in several countries. Its most important innovation was therefore not a particularly convincing deepfake. It was the construction of a partly genuine institution around a concealed foreign controller. The research could be real. The employees could be real. The interviews could be real. What was false was who they were ultimately working for. Sources OpenAI — Disrupting AI-enabled “false front” operations https://openai.com/index/disrupting-ai-enabled-false-front-operations/ Forbidden Stories — Propaganda Machine: Russia’s foreign influence strategy across three continents https://forbiddenstories.org/propaganda-machine-secret-documents-reveal-russias-foreign-influence-strategy-across-three-continents/ Forbidden Stories — Ghost Journalists, Cash and Kremlin Scripts: Argentina https://forbiddenstories.org/ghost-journalists-cash-and-kremlin-scripts-how-russian-operatives-tried-to-influence-argentinian-media/ openDemocracy — Russian influence operation in Bolivia https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/russia-bolivia-south-america-putin-evo-morales-wagner-prigozhin-covert-operations-propaganda-disinformation-foreign-interference/ Lupa Media — Fake Teleamazonas report about recruiting Ecuadorians for Ukraine https://lupa.com.ec/verificaciones/noboa-mercenarios-ucrania-ecuador/ Brookings Institution — The Breakout Scale https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-breakout-scale-measuring-the-impact-of-influence-operations/ Keywords: #DISINFORMED #Episode17 #OperationDarkClark #DarkClark #Russia #LatinAmerica #RussianInfluence #RussianDisinformation #Disinformation #InformationWarfare #InfluenceOperations #ForeignInterference #FIMI #FalseFront #FrontOrganisation #FakeInstitution #SocialResearchCenter #SRC #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #ChatGPT #OpenAI #NarrativeManipulation #SourceLaundering #InstitutionalManipulation #ForgedDocuments #FakeAudio #PoliticalInfluence #CovertInfluence #Peru #Ecuador #Bolivia #Argentina #Ukraine #Politology #LaCompania #TheCompany #SVR #WagnerLegacy #PropagandaMachine #GlobalSouth #BreakoutScale #OSINT #MediaManipulation #WRLD

The Typical Day recounted Jon Elmore's journey to the NBA, which began in 2018 when he declared himself eligible for the draft. After not being chosen in 2019, the player continued to pursue that goal between Trieste, Capo d'Orlando, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, and the G League, before also spending time in Turkey and the Canadian league. According to the report, this summer Elmore had played in the Summer League with the Lakers, becoming the oldest player to take the court in the competition. Twenty days ago, in a six-team G League trade that involved players, buses, and three washing machines, his rights ended up with the Spurs, who then signed him. Elmore made his debut in an NBA pre-season game against Atlanta, finishing with 0 points and 0/2 shooting. The Typical Day described his story as one of the most incredible of 2026 and noted that he was 30 years old, ironically describing his mature appearance and physical play under the basket. The profile concluded by wishing him the opportunity to play at least one season before retiring. #NBA #Basketball #Sport (translated)

Glopo wrote that his wife had become pregnant by another man and that he had lived through nine difficult months knowing the child was not his. However, he had said he was excited about raising the child as his own son and announced nine lessons on drafting Jayce in the pros. #paternité #amour #leçondevie (translated)

RTÉ News reported that Ireland would present its Negotiating Box on Saturday, October 10. It described the draft, prepared by the Irish presidency, as a proposal for the next seven-year EU budget, or Multiannual Financial Framework, and said Europe Minister Thomas Byrne would present it. #Ireland #EUBudget #Negotiations #IE

Lukáš Eršil stated that Claude AI created a 3D model of the National Theatre for him after four days of interaction and adjustments, mostly during the evenings. According to him, the model captures the building in seven stages from the foundations to the dome from 1868 to 1883, the fire in 1881, and the subsequent restoration. It also includes a section of the building, a ten-layer X-ray of the technical equipment, and a night scene with the illuminated facade and trams. Eršil added that the model offers 49 interactive locations with descriptions in Czech and English, and he redrew the partitions on all floors according to the original plans from 1883. He estimated that the cost of creating the design using traditional methods was about 3 million crowns based on Czech price lists and would take four to five months of work for six to eight people. He published the code for free on GitHub and mentioned that he added a link to it as well as the executable Artifact in the comment. #3Dmodel #Národnídivadlo #ClaudeAI (translated)

Leo ☘️ said he liked the Americans who played in provincial teams, noting that they started basketball from a young age and dreamed of the draft, the NBA, the All-Star Games, and max contracts. He added that they should be prepared to get to know Ioannina. #μπάσκετ #NBA #Γιάννης (translated)