Jack Delaney, an aspiring man living in Brooklyn, New York, saw his globalization upside down Tuesday when the 26-year-old found himself in the middle of an obvious Russian plot to secretly insert himself into America’s national conversation.
All in July, when Delaney won a personal Twitter message from Alex Lacusta, who ran peace data, an independent left-wing online magazine.
The publisher stated that he had noticed some of Delaney’s works on other independent sites, usually left-wing, and that he sought to offer him a normal, paid column.
Delaney, who had lost his daily homework in a place to eat at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, thinks this will be his big break.
He wrote for the site, generating 3 articles for a few months for $100 each.
Your articles may have simply made the impression on any independent left-wing website, with titles like “QAnon intends to spread fascist mythology and distract American failures” and “Excessive funding from the U. S. military. supremacist culture of war crimes. “
But Peace Data and Alex Lacusta were what they introduced themselves to.
On Tuesday, Facebook, acting on the recommendation of the FBI, said Peace Data is a component of a Russian secret crusade, connected to the same Russian organization that used social media to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election.
In a post on the online page after the Facebook ad, Peace Data argued that it was an independent site and questioned the company’s findings.
The smiling guy in Lacusta’s Twitter profile picture, the account that had presented Delaney with a job, didn’t exist, according to the experts. Although realistic, the symbol was computer-generated, new synthetic intelligence techniques.
Peace Data had recruited and paid Americans to write articles on a wide variety of topics, adding American politics and racial inequality in America.
Although it has a fashionable virtual twist, the scheme comes directly from a playbook that Russia has been since at least the Cold War: putting pressure on unwitting Americans to help highlight cracks in American society and raise dissenting voices. , according to the U. S. government, is designed to exacerbate divisions in American life.
Delaney, and others like him, act in faith, simply writing articles and opinion articles that would do it for any other medium.
Voices that defy traditional wisdom are all clever things, Says Delaney, but not at the request of a foreign government (or anyone else). He was surprised, horrified and embarrassed on Tuesday when he learned that he had been co-opted by an obvious Russian influence. Operation.
“Obviously, I’m not a fan of Putin or the Russian government,” he told CNN in an interview Thursday. “I don’t need to have any agreement with an authoritarian regime. “
Delaney was not the one; other Americans were also unintentionally co-opted to write for the website.
In 2016, the same Russian troll organization that Facebook claimed was connected to Peace Data ran a network of fake sites and social media accounts posing as Black Lives Matter activists for pro-Second Amendment organizations. CNN has documented in the past how, as a component of this effort, involuntary Americans were recruited to organize protests and stunts.
Special suggestion that Robert Mueller’s research in 2018 has known that the character “Alice Donovan” was directed through the GRU, the intelligence of the Russian army.
The character used to plant articles in a genuine American publication, the left-wing independent magazine CounterPunch.
CounterPunch editor-in-chief Joshua Frank explained at the time how its publication had been deceived, and it turns out that CounterPunch remains a target of Russian-influenced operations.
Frank this week shared emails with CNN that had been sent to CounterPunch in months via “Alex Lacusta. “
The user who passed through Lacusta presented Delaney’s 3 stories to CounterPunch, obviously for a true U. S. publication to publish articles commissioned through Russia and written through genuine Americans.
“We would appreciate it if you would share this story on your platform. We look forward to your reaction and fruitful cooperation,” it reads in an email.
CounterPunch ran the parts.
Frank told CNN Wednesday: “This kind of thing in the end hurts real interested hounds and independent media in general, especially the media criticizing the U. S. government, wondering about our authenticity.
Delaney, for his part, hopes to paint with an original publication.
“I’m more angry at myself for letting this happen than with Vladimir Putin or Russia or whatever I have, I have a little more custody,” he said.
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