According to T-Online's findings, the Russian government is expanding its secret operations in Germany. This is revealed by screenshots of documents obtained by journalists, the authenticity of which was confirmed by expert Thomas Rid – professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University in the USA. It concerns the activities of the so-called false flag and a manipulated copy of Wikipedia, which is allegedly being worked on by Kremlin-linked agents.
See also: Putin's new weapon on the Internet. Russia boasts of a camp for young trolls
Putin's troll factory expands its operations in Germany
T-Online journalists obtained documents from the Social Design Agency (SDA), which works for Vladimir Putin's administration and specializes in spreading disinformation. The leaked documentation includes her chat histories, project plans, reports and notes.
They show that the organization has expanded its “portfolio”. It does not stop at influencing public opinion through thousands of centrally controlled social media accounts, but, among others, is working on a Wikipedia clone for Germany, intended to smuggle disinformation from Russia into AI systems.
How is this supposed to work? For user queries made in German, publicly available language models should use disinformation created in Russia as answers. To this end, SDA wants to introduce about 500 manually edited articles to AI platforms every month, reports T-Online.
See also: Espionage scandal in the German government. Politicians were said to have fallen victim to hackers
The agency was also supposed to create an English-language website belonging to a supposedly politically neutral “think tank” at the end of March, which – after completing “technical work on concealment and information security” – is to be supplemented with an appropriate offer in German. Its main narrative is the constant discrediting of the European Union and the actions of the governments of the member states.
From the point of view of expert Thomas Rid, the new leak, although small, is “more interesting and significant” than previously disclosed SDA shares. Among others because it exposes the internal communications of the troll factory. According to T-Online Rid, there is no doubt about their authenticity. — Based on the circumstances, content and chronology, I assume that the leak is real. It is very probable, the information contained therein complements other findings, he said in an interview with a German portal.
