Analysis of Russian Disinformation Tactics

So in mid-February, this, this random post appears on

Gab, which is like a far-right-

Right

... sort of website, right? And this post comes up ten days before the

invasion, and it says, "Exclusive US bio labs in Ukraine,

and they are financed at the expense of the US Department of Defense."

Right? Like, kinda weirdly worded, maybe not

from a native English speaker.

Right.

Then on the day of the invasion, suddenly it gets pickup.

It's skyrocketing around far-right websites, social networks.

Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweets that Russia has found evidence that

Ukraine is covering up a military biological program financed by

the US Defense Department. And eventually, Tucker Carlson, the

most-watched cable news host in America, is talking

about a conspiracy theory that, by all

accounts, seems to have originated as a piece of

Russian disinformation.

What exactly are they doing in these secret Ukrainian bio labs?

Does this kind of origin story sound familiar to you?

The pathology of it, yes, is consistent with

prior disinformation campaigns that we've seen from Russia.

So you have your social media accounts.

You identify the issue that you want.

Then you start amplifying, and then it jumps over into the

mainstream.

It jumps over from Facebook into the media space,

and from there, it gets to that final step of

hitting the real world. And by the way, that's the exact same

playbook

that resulted in January 6th.