Operation Overload runs the same play over and over. It's lazy clockwork. Here's a claim from a few days ago next to a claim from last year. They look a lot alike.

Finally, we have a definitive answer to the question of whether AI, bots, and laundering tactics will improve China’s information operations. The answer is no.

Among the many reasons you don’t kidnap a foreign head of state at gunpoint even if you have the capability, is that it sparks consequences you can neither control nor anticipate.

The US TikTok sale has been signed. The company will be controlled by a joint venture including Oracle, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, Abu Dhabi-based MGX. Adding a UAE company really makes it clear that this was never about national security concerns. www.axios.com/2025/12/18/t...

Graphika recently reported on a pro-CCP network attacking Missouri AG Catherine Hanaway. Finding the network wasn't hard. It's using the hashtag FuckHanaway. Here's what else it's talking about. I should stress, though, that no one is listening. The engagement is tragically low.

Big spike in articles published by the Pravda Network site focused on Australia. More than 400% increase from Dec 13 to Dec 14.

I believe this is Iran's Storm-2035 making a push against the Trump administration's actions against Venezuela by using the hashtag ElMundoRepudiaATrump on X. Several of these accounts are confirmed 2035.

Meta's Threat Report essentially declared the end of Iran's Endless Mayfly operation, at least on Meta platforms. That's not entirely the case. There's a few Insta stragglers tied to IUVM and at least a dozen Insta accounts posting identical hashtags and content to X accounts flagged by OpenAI.

The Ministry of State Security is just like us! Reminds me of one hacktivist Telegram channel that periodically shares screenshots of their TryHackMe progress.

In my work, the biggest story of 2025 has been Russian IOs pivoting away from the US. I don't have comprehensive data on all covert ops. But if we use 1516 as an example, the US was its top target in 2024 and not even a top 5 target in 2025. Anecdotally, that roughly holds for all other ops, too.

Great news but also, how were these entities not already sanctioned? apnews.com/article/uk-s...

Wow -- Russia reportedly plotted last year to plant bombs on US-bound flights (gift link) giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Article d’un journaliste du Figaro dont l’identité a été usurpée dans le cadre de la dernière opération informationnelle de Storm-1516. www.lefigaro.fr/internationa...

It strikes me that people make fun of American politicians or influencers who post AI nonsense. But when Russia, China or Iran does the same thing, people act like they're sophisticated threat actors capable of shaping global opinion at will.

I’m off this week, but I hear the MAGA influencer accounts on X that have been amplifying Russian IOs aren’t based in the US. And I’m shocked.

It's still so cool when outlets I read every day cover research I contributed to. You can read more about ISD's findings here: www.isdglobal.org/digital_disp...

Cryptocurrency backed by Farage donor is used for Russian war effort, investigators say www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

There's been a lot of talk about how the Pravda network impacts LLMs. But real people are finding, reading, and citing it. Our latest piece shows that Pravda network links have appeared in reporting from reputable outlets and in commentary from high-traffic sites. www.isdglobal.org/digital_disp...

So, we're doing AI summaries and chatbots in the middle of articles about US war plans? Journalism alive and well?

Pro-Kremlin crowd seems pretty upset with Trump today

Storm-1516 and Operation Overload had things to say about Angelina Jolie's trip to Ukraine. Also, here's another example of a 1516 influencer copying and pasting a DM link into their post. Seem these influencers are getting instructions sent straight to their DMs.

This high-end 1516 film took only 2 months to produce.

ISD research featured in WIRED finds ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek & Grok citing Russian state propaganda when asked about the war in Ukraine: “It’s not only an issue of removal, it’s an issue of contextualising further [...] especially if these sources are appearing amongst trusted, verified sources.”

New substack: Al-Generated US Congressman Fuels False Claims of Somaliland Recognition A number of fake accounts and suspicious news outlets including MiddleEast 24 are pushing the narrative that recognition of Somaliland is inevitable in November open.substack.com/pub/marcowen...

This Google blog begs the question: How can an organization with all the world's data provide such an incomplete view of Russian IOs? cloud.google.com/blog/topics/...

Think about all the personal data that Saudi Arabia could gobble up with this acquisition

CISA has fallen.

TikTok says it removed a network of more than a quarter million accounts targeting Moldovans with content meant to promote pro-Russia candidates. That's an absolutely insane number. It'd be great to get more than three sentences on this op. www.tiktok.com/transparency...

This is why Russian ops have created 700 million stories about Zelensky misusing US funding for Ukraine

I know several people who had some evidence linking REST to Rybar, but the DFR Lab provides definitive proof here. Really amazing domain analysis. dfrlab.org/2025/09/23/s...

The amount of Russian interference in Moldova is staggering.

“Google said in a statement […] “On YouTube, as part of our proactive coverage for the 2025 Moldova elections, we have terminated more than 1,000 channels since June 2024 for being part of coordinated influence operations targeting Moldova.””

Great reporting from the BBC. They uncovered a pro-Russia op paying Moldovans to post disinfo. The DFR Lab apparently did some digging and found a TikTok network linked to the op that's gained 55M views. www.bbc.com/news/article...

As someone from Georgia, it’s very cool to see my name in the AJC, even if they’re republishing an AP article. I’ll take it! www.ajc.com/news/2025/09...

Oh, come on, what an awesome find: "Frames from Dougan’s interview with French media show a Python script calling Ollama (via a function named restart_ollama()), an LLM inference framework used to run local or self-hosted LLMs." www.recordedfuture.com/research/cop...

Hard to think of a more on-the-nose encapsulation of how far the online speech wars have swung in the year of our lord 2025 than major U.S. corporations racing to fire people whose tweets offended Milo Yiannopoulos

The Utah governor's claim that Russian bots are exploiting Kirk's death seems true but overblown. I've seen limited activity from operations like Overload, Undercut, Doppelganger. Pravda published 100+ articles. A few dozen Copy Cop sites posing as local outlets published 90 articles. Nothing viral

Pretty interesting to see a 1516 video break out so long after it was seeded. Just spotted a Newsmax correspondent amplifying it.

There's a small, apparently coordinated network of X accounts attacking Rubio and defending Venezuela:

So we’re doing this now, huh? www.reuters.com/world/europe...

Even more emails from Russia's disinformation campaign, with continued targeting of Moldova, and lots of mimicking of Newsguard. I still suspect the volume of videos and images targeting Moldova is an attempt to get the election results called into question because of the interference.

Been out for a couple days and see Operation Overload migrated to YouTube. The videos I've seen have less than 50 views. The op keeps expanding and keeps being ignored.

A United States Senate investigation has identified more than 500 credible reports of human rights abuses in US immigration detention since January, including alarming allegations of mistreatment of pregnant women and children.

Corporate needs you to find the differences between Russia's Foreign Ministry and a Storm-1516 influencer

New on @indicator.media: I found 88 TikTok accounts using AI avatars of real journalists to spread clickbaity misinformation in Spanish. Together they had 1.7 million followers and many times that in video views.

Interesting to see leaked docs from a company that claims to be revolutionizing Chinese info ops with AI. Less interesting to see the NYT take those claims at face value. I've seen no evidence AI has meaningfully improved info ops. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/u...

Odd that this story doesn't mention Galloway's work for Russian and Iranian propaganda outlets. It also doesn't mention how often Bridgen promotes pro-Kremlin lines. Those two former MPs weren't duped. They spread this type of content intentionally.

Archiving sites have been giving me absolute hell. I wonder how much malicious content is going undocumented, at least in public repositories, because there's no easy, quick way to do so.