RUSSIA is increasingly turning to American social media stars to covertly influence voters ahead of this year's presidential election, according to United States officials and recently unveiled criminal charges.
"What we see them doing is relying on witting and unwitting Americans to seed, promote and add credibility to narratives that serve these foreign actors' interest," a senior intelligence official said in a briefing last Friday.
"These foreign countries typically calculate that Americans are more likely to believe other Americans' views."
The approach is widely viewed by US security agencies as one of Russia's preferred tactics in order to make their psychological operations appear more authentic.
Broadly, these missions seek to anger Americans, highlight societal divisions and emphasise partisan talking points while questioning the US government's effectiveness and role in global security, experts said.
"We're focusing on these tactics because the American public should know that content that they read online, especially on social media, could be foreign propaganda, even if it appears to be coming from fellow Americans," another senior US intelligence official said in a July briefing with reporters on election security.
Last Wednesday, the Justice Department revealed criminal charges against two former employees of Russian media outlet Russia Today (RT), who they say were covertly funding an American political media company.
The indictment outlines an alleged scheme where the Russians sent about US$10 million to two media business owners, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, who then paid American conservative influencers to create videos and social media posts.
Some of the commentators had at different times shared anti-Ukraine content, which aligned with the effort's priorities.
While the indictment does not name the accused media outlet, Reuters found it is a Tennessee-based firm named Tenet Media, which publicly describes itself as the home for "fearless voices".
Historically, it has employed several prominent social media figures, including podcaster Tim Pool and former journalist Benny Johnson, among others.
The indictment notes that Chen and Donovan knew they were accepting money from the Russian operatives, but that the commentators they paid appeared unaware of the arrangement.
Tenet manages a YouTube channel and other social media profiles, where it publishes videos and audio recordings from its contributors.
In his statement, Pool said "never at any point did anyone other than I have full editorial control of the show" and that "I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims".
Johnson's statement said he was "disturbed by the allegations in the indictment, which make clear that myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme."
Experts say the scheme fits a historical trend.
"Paying journalists or front media outlets was a very established process for laundering propaganda during the Cold War for example, this is sort of a digital update to that," said Renee DiResta, a digital disinformation analyst.
"That they use influencers rather than journalists is interesting — a recognition of where the influential voices in the community are."
In a related but separate filing, the Justice Department also exposed a different Russian operation, known as Doppelganger, that impersonated actual Western news outlets and shared false information about US political candidates and the war in Ukraine.
This effort was allegedly orchestrated by the Russian government through Russian marketing agencies Social Design Agency, Structura National Technology and ANO Dialog.
Among the evidence submitted to the court were internal presentations from the Russian marketing agencies that explained their approach and tools.
A key element, according to the documents, involved identifying Western influencers who share sympathetic views and finding ways to collaborate with them.
One presentation notes how they "work with influencers among proponents of traditional values who stand up for ending the war in Ukraine and peaceful relations between the US and Russia and who are ready to get involved in the promotion of the project narratives.
Among them are actors, politicians, experts in different areas, media representatives, social organisations' activists and clergymen, etc".
A second presentation states the Russian companies are monitoring 2,800 influencers, 600 of whom are based in the US, including radio hosts, bloggers and comedians.
"Russian influence actors have undertaken distinct efforts during this election cycle to build and use networks of US and other Western personalities to create and disseminate Russian friendly narratives," said the senior intelligence official.
The writers are from Reuters