Guest post by Nat Wilson Turner.
Thursday’s New York Times brings back their old RussiaGate spirit with a front page banner headline about “foreign interference” and data center opposition.
Here’s a key quote:
…a push by foreign adversaries to seize on what polls have shown is deep ambivalence — verging at times on hostility — about the spread of the data centers needed to power A.I. in the United States and elsewhere.
China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran have sought to use state media outlets to turn the controversy over data centers in the United States into “a domestic fracture point,” according to a new analysis by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, which identified scores of articles and posts on social media this year.
These campaigns, whose impact on public opinion remains to be seen, have raised alarms in Washington, where A.I. is seen as a top issue heading into this year’s midterm elections.
The foreign efforts appear intended to stoke the debate over data centers that has united political figures across the political spectrum — from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a progressive, to Stephen K. Bannon, the erstwhile adviser to President Trump.
“Foreign actors aren’t manufacturing American debates over the future of A.I., they are exploiting them,” said Jessica Brandt, a former official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who tracked foreign influence efforts during the Biden administration.
The goal, she added, is to “deepen our divisions in order to dent our appeal and weaken us from within.”
Interesting sources, some company called Alethea and a former Biden admin DNI spook as our sources.
We’ll come back to them later, but first I’m curious as to why the NYT is only now covering this story when OpenAI put out a press release saying basically the same thing on June 10 except focused solely on China.
After all, OpenAI’s report was convincing enough to sway such luminaries as Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), Republican Leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, The Bitcoin Policy Institute and prominent tech investor Kevin O’Leary, per WIRED.
And what did the man Elon Musk calls “Scam” Altman’s company have to say that swayed such shrewd and critical thinkers?
In this report, we describe two clusters of ChatGPT accounts likely originating from China that we banned after they used our models in support of apparent covert influence operations that promoted narratives in an attempt to manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and wider tech policies.
The first cluster generated social media comments and images claiming that data center buildouts for AI were increasing electricity prices for average families. We named this cluster the “Data Center Bandwagon” campaign.
The second cluster generated comments and images criticizing US tariffs as attempts to dominate technological competition and specified in their prompts that the content should not include China’s leader Xi Jinping in the output and instead include only President Trump. This cluster was connected to a network of likely inauthentic social media accounts that were also likely targeting OpenAI by claiming ChatGPT user data had been compromised. These allegations were entirely false. We named this second cluster the “Tech and Tariffs” campaign.
The targeting of OpenAI and US data center buildouts is significant not because the operation appears to have shifted public opinion, but because it shows PRC-origin influence operators testing narratives against AI infrastructure – a foundation of US technological leadership, economic growth and the broader democratic AI ecosystem.
Although as Ben Nimmo, principal investigator of intelligence and investigations at OpenAI, said, per Politico:
“Neither campaign appears to have gained much authentic engagement,” Nimmo said during a Wednesday press briefing. “They’re important for what they reveal about the intentions of influence operators from China, and the narratives they’re testing and seeking to amplify, but not for the impact.”
And you’ve got to trust Ben Nimmo, despite keeping his LinkedIn resume refreshingly brief — as if he emerged fully formed at OpenAI like Venus on the halfshell, he’s actually left quite the trail, like a snail slicing itself open on an Occam’s razor of foreign disinformation.
Nimmo was named one of TIME’s “Democracy Defenders” in 2024. I can’t resist quoting from Ben’s TIME bio :
When Ben Nimmo first began tracking online influence operations targeting elections in 2014, he had to scroll for hours on Twitter, studying how networks of fake accounts tried to hijack partisan narratives.
A decade later, AI is changing the game—not just for foreign threat actors, but for those working to counter them. “So much of the conversation is around how the bad guys might use AI,” says Nimmo, who now works as the principal threat intelligence investigator at OpenAI (a TIME licensing and technology partner). “My all-time favorite misquote from Harry Potter is: We can use magic too.”
…
In May, OpenAI announced it had removed five covert influence operations, detected by Nimmo’s team, based in Russia, China, Iran, and Israel. All were trying to use the company’s AI tools to manipulate public opinion.
A big lesson from 2016, when Russia mounted a vast operation to meddle in the U.S. presidential election, was that influence operations were “a bit like mold in the bathroom,” says Nimmo. “They thrive in the dark, and they thrive when nobody is looking to wipe them up.”
Of course the dude was involved with “investigating” RussiaGate. I also find it interesting that he references 2014. What else happened in 2014? Oh yea, the Maidan Coup in Ukraine.
Coincidentally Nimmo was a press officer for NATO in 2014. Can you say “unprovoked”?
From there it was onward and upward for Ben, who founded the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) in 2015, where he developed his oft-cited “Four D’s of Disinformation: Dismiss, Distort, Distract, and Dismay.” We’re dealing with a regular William of Ockham, here.
I wouldn’t want to rush past Ben’s time as Graphika’s first head of investigations (2019-2021) or as global lead of threat intelligence at Meta (2021-2024). Meta — doesn’t get more reputable than that, amirite?
I should also point out that WIRED pretty well demolished OpenAI’s claims with Molly Taft’s June 12 piece “China Didn’t Make Americans Hate Data Centers.”
Local opposition to data centers in the US has skyrocketed in recent months. A poll released last week from climate outlet Heatmap shows that more than half of Americans support a moratorium on data center development. Separate polling released in early June from UK-based policy research agency Public First shows that support for data centers in the US was the lowest of 15 countries surveyed.
They also quoted some experts, including someone from Graphika (which makes me wonder if Ben didn’t place an angry call to a former colleague or two):
- Dina Sadek, an analyst at Graphika: ““Our ongoing research indicates that domestic US actors are leading the online anti-data-center conversation”
- Kyle Chan, Fellow at the Brookings Institution: ““If you’re looking for prominent people from China who can speak about [AI], they are going to be the very people who would be in contact with and providing advice to the Chinese government—especially in academia, where there’s a lot of back and forth between academic experts and advising the government on policymaking. The framing of it can certainly sound ominous, but almost by definition, you would want people who matter in the Chinese AI debate to be there.”
- Graham Webster, research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University: “You see US media covering these types of data center discourses,” he says. “It’s totally normal for the English-language Chinese media to pick up storylines that are in the US media. It’s just how wire services work…(Chinese coverage of data center opposition in the US is) part of a broader pattern of Chinese state media and connected actors amplifying legitimate social grievances in the US to make the US look bad. I’d be cautious in estimating the impact of these efforts before seeing more evidence…”
Hell even what’s left of TIME magazine managed to debunk this crap in a piece authored by Rebecca Lissner, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations of all places (they’ll come up again later:
Popular opposition to data centers is likely the canary in the coal mine. Propelled by concerns about data centers driving up the price of electricity and water, and creating pollution, community resistance against data center construction is growing across the country.
…
I heard immediate, tangible complaints about the impact of AI on their communities: electricity bills climbing skyward and the incessant hum of data centers disrupting once-quiet neighborhoods.Rather than a boon to the local economy, data centers were seen as a drain on local resources—operations that benefit from generous incentives, drive up utility costs for communities, and generate few permanent jobs in return. Tech industry insiders were bullish on the need for rapid AI innovation. Nearly everyone else sounded a note of deep pessimism.
So if the crack OpenAI team’s report wasn’t persuasive enough to merit coverage from the Gray Lady, what can we learn about former Biden administration official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Jessica Brandt and the team at Alethea?
After all they did provide news that “fit to print” by the “paper of record.”
Let’s start with Jessica Brandt. From the article screenshotted above:
Jessica Brandt’s career has come full circle. Her first job after college was at the Council on Foreign Relations, and she is currently the senior fellow for technology and national security. In between, she held positions at the Brookings Institution and the German Marshall Fund, before becoming the first director of the Foreign Malign Influence Center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
…
And what a “welcome back from summer vacation, kids” essay it is:
CFR: What did you want to be when you were little?
Brandt: I don’t think I had a clear idea early on, but I knew I wanted to do something that combined my interest in government, history, politics, and travel.
CFR:When do you feel like your interest in foreign policy really developed?
Brandt: As a young person, I dragged my family around to history museums and historical sites. So that was an interest very early on. Over time, I developed an interest in politics, and then the broader world.
I definitely had a chapter as a young person where I wanted to be a marine biologist or a voiceover artist in an animated film. But what felt like a handful of different interests in politics and government and travel eventually came together in a career in foreign policy.
CFR: I was surprised, and delightfully so, that you actually started your career at CFR when you finished college. You joined CFR’s National Program and Outreach team. How did that happen? Were you drawn to the organization, or was it just sort of luck of the draw as you were applying?
Brandt:When I had a chance to come to the Council, I jumped on it. I worked on the National Program and Outreach team when we were launching a spate of programs doing outreach to non-traditional foreign policy constituencies. I got to talk to religious leaders, state and local officials—which continues to be a constituency I care a great deal about—academics, and others. I loved that work, connecting non-traditional audiences with the foreign policy research that the Council does.
CFR: That’s so cool. After a few years, you went to get your master’s in public policy from Harvard, and then after that, you joined Brookings. What drew you to the think tank world, rather than maybe going straight into government or private sector?
Brandt:It’s a good question. I think the kind of policy work that researchers at a think tank do is the careful work of examining trade-offs, proposing options and ideas, and finding ways to balance competing equities for the greater good. I was drawn to that opportunity.
Brandt:Before grad school, I had the opportunity to live and work abroad. In my twenties, I worked for a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization. Though I now work on a very different set of issues, the experience I had there left me with an appreciation for what civil society organizations can accomplish, and also with the conviction that there are some things that only governments can do—difficult decisions that only governments can take. That’s what led me to the master’s program and left me very interested in eventually working for the government.
CFR: I noticed that in that first stint at Brookings, you were also special advisor to their president.
Brandt:Yes, I had an opportunity to work for Strobe Talbott, who I greatly admired. I learned so much working for him as he led Brookings. Strobe was a journalist for twenty-one years, the editor of Time magazine, and got his start as a journalist. I think he always had a journalist’s fascination with people and with stories and connected with human beings in that way. I learned a great deal from the way he brought a journalist’s mind and a journalist’s approach to foreign policy problems. I also learned a lot about how organizations work. I’m so grateful to have had that opportunity.
Isn’t that cute, I’m sure Strobe Talbott, known as the house “Russia Hand” in the Clinton administration really enjoyed mentoring her and sharing his learning and wisdom. It takes a long time to expand NATO all the way to Russia’s borders but ol’ Strobe got the project off to a strong start.
There’s no evidence that he had the kind of relationships with his interns that made his boss’s second term so notorious and he was certainly no chick magnet like the late great Ron Brown, but a mentor’s a mentor and an intern’s an intern and there’s no better teacher of Russophobia than ol’ Strobe.
Now on to the crack team at Alethea. It’s Girlboss country, but don’t worry, there’s an experienced daddy in the background, too.
According to their web site, Alethea was founded in 2019 by Lisa Kaplan whose origin story according to her Linked In profile is that in 2018 “Kaplan served as the Digital Director on the Angus King for US Senate campaign, where she developed and implemented a proactive and defensive digital strategy to identify, understand, and respond to disinformation campaigns by analyzing social media and other relevant data to determine reach and impact on voters. She is among the first who can share first hand experience from the front lines.”
Lisa is also a 2013 graduate of Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs at Colby College in Maine. Go Mules!
So we’re dealing with an incredibly credible expert.
Don’t believe me? Check out her 2021 video on “How to Protect Yourself from Disinformation” (409 views in 5 years for the incredibly popular Girl Security channel which has 115 subscribers).
Her four key insights for avoiding disinformation are brilliant and insightful:
- Look at the author
- Look at the date
- Get to know your own algorithm
- Think before you share
So yea, obviously any study released by a a person who’s bringing genius level insights like this is worthy of front-page coverage on the NYT. Go Mules!
But Alethea is more than just a one-woman show, Senior Advisor Brian Besanceney has quite the LinkedIn resume, featuring several years in “Public Service”:
Notably he was running DHS public affairs during Hurricane Katrina. Heckuva job, Brian!
Followed by several years in the “private sector”:
Wow, Disney, Wal-Mart and Boeing. That’s heavy duty.
And our boy Brian was Comms Director for Boeing from 2022-2024? AKA the dead whistleblower years, the cabin door blew off years.
Surprisingly he didn’t last out the year, although his work was recognized by the influential MEK Group:
Essentially building an ongoing case study on how not to handle crisis communications, Boeing first issued tepid and faceless statements in 2019 and didn’t fare much better in 2024. Various sources reported widely that Boeing didn’t seem to know what to do, flattening confidence in an industry that lives on trust and confidence.
Experts noted that the dry statements seemed to be written jointly by a lawyer and an engineer. No empathy. No assurances, No proactive statements promising action and building confidence. No credible compassion. No video of the Boeing CEO striding aboard a 737 Max to confidently demonstrate its airworthiness firsthand.
No wonder Brian moved on before the year was done.
I hope this odyssey through the resume of some our top Disinformation Experts nonsense purveyors and propagandists served to delight and distract, if not warn and alert.
Cross-posted at NatWilsonTurner.com
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