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Le Chiffre estimated that French law deemed 16-year-olds sufficiently capable of discernment to emancipate, marry, enter into a contract or a will, be imprisoned, work, and drive a car, but not to vote. He asserted that, in his opinion, there was no argument for this exclusion other than contempt for young people. #Démocratie #Jeunesse #Voter (translated)

This is a completely despicable act and it is one of the reasons why the United Kingdom is supporting Saudi Arabia (…) The British Defence Minister, Wes Streeting, condemned a "dangerous escalation" that "fits into an increasingly marked trend of the Houthis targeting civilian sites in Saudi Arabia." #AttaqueRyad #CondamnationInternationale #Yémen (translated)

What we witnessed during the night constitutes a dangerous escalation and, I fear, is part of an increasingly marked trend of the Houthis targeting civilian sites in Saudi Arabia. British Defense Minister Wes Streeting also condemned this attack on Sunday, calling it a "dangerous escalation" and a "despicable" act. #Terrorisme #ArabieSaoudite #Houthis (translated)

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 author reproached Jean-Michel Blanquer, former Minister of National Education for five years and former media favorite, for having referred to the baccalaureate as "paper." He reminded that the baccalaureate was the first university degree and the basic diploma required to participate in civil service competitions, denouncing what he considered to be contempt. https://t.co/0OexNylwSb #Éducation #Bac #FonctionPublique #FR (translated)

Impact reported, citing BFM TV, that Linda, a modern literature teacher, had been called to teach English 60 km from her home. She was one of the 3,000 substitute teachers mobilized by the Minister of National Education in response to the social movement of high school students. According to Impact, Linda had denounced a "total contempt" and said she risked sanctions for abandoning her post if she refused this assignment. #Éducation #Professeurs #France (translated)

Linda, a substitute teacher of modern literature, denounces the total contempt of the Ministry of National Education after being assigned 60 km from her home to teach English, risking sanctions for abandonment of post if she refuses. #Éducation #ProfesseursRemplaçants #ColèreDesLycéens (translated)

Arto Koskelo claimed that some Members of the European Parliament had accepted corrupt money from Qatar, although not all had. He assessed that this could be reflected in votes concerning Islamists and wrote that terrorism took precedence over everything else. #korruptio #terrorismi #EU (translated)

Jussi Halme wrote that the European Parliament had taken a tough stance against Islamist infiltration, but eight Finnish MEPs from the SDP, the Left Alliance, and the Greens, as well as Sirpa Pietikäinen, voted against it. He asked why, in his opinion, defending European values, equality, and security was not acceptable to the left. https://t.co/GKBpQMHec4 #Eurooppa #Arvot #Politiikka (translated)

Lucia-pulla asked whether the Security Police was listening and suggested that the Members of the European Parliament who voted against the resolution be placed under observation. She criticized the voters and accused them of acting in favor of terrorists and against the security of Europe. In the publication, she marked the Left, Greens, and Democrats and used hashtags related to terrorism, Islamism, jihadism, and reputational harm. #terrorismi #islamismi #mainehaitta (translated)

Bally Bagayoko welcomed the stance taken by actor Tahar Rahim in support of high school students. He wrote that taxes should also contribute to improving schools and that young people demanding resources and answers should not, in his opinion, face the silence and contempt they feel in the face of the inaction of public authorities. Bagayoko called for participation on October 17 in a "great convergence of struggles" to defend school, youth, and their future. #Justice #Éducation #Solidarité (translated)

Martti Kosonen asked what capital Finland had gained from the blunders he described. He claimed that only in Spain and Finland was the majority of Members of the European Parliament completely misguided, and felt that adults should have been ashamed. He mentioned in his writing the SDP, the left, Sirpa Pietikäinen, and the Greens. #Suomi #politiikka #EU (translated)

Sardoche stated that David Lisnard would win against all his opponents in the second round of the presidential election of 2027. According to him, the mayor of Cannes was the only one to reassure French workers while defending radical positions on the economy, immigration, and culture, and would not divide the country. Sardoche also mentioned an increase of 12,000 members in Lisnard's party in one week, bringing the total to 50,000, with 200 days to go before the first round. He estimated that this momentum was unprecedented under the Fifth Republic and that the party would soon have the largest number of members. He added that Lisnard had established connections with thousands of elected officials across France, despite the contempt that, according to him, the Parisian political elite would show him. Sardoche finally predicted that Lisnard would become president and would be the only candidate capable of rallying the National Assembly around his project. #Présidentielles2027 #DavidLisnard #France (translated)

The initiative's author, Lithuanian MEP Rasa Juknevičienė, argues that the Kremlin uses these so-called “Russian Houses” not only to promote Russian culture but also as tools of political influence and information operations. #РускиДомове #АнтирускиСанкции #ХибридноВлияние (translated)