# How Russia Shapes What the World Thinks

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 30 Jul 2026, 43 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/6bd9546f-c485-4718-a348-b49501390740/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

Operation Doppelganger was a Russian propaganda project discovered in 2022, a minor part of the enormous, ongoing disinformation and chaos-sewing campaign Russia spreads across the world through social media. And some of your views may have come from it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:11] Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
[0:14] Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's missing. We don't know where she is.
[0:18] Speaker 2: The Russians have her, at the very least, it's quite
[0:21] Speaker 2: possible the Russians have misled her in some way or another,
[0:24] Speaker 2: and maybe they tricked her into leaving when it was
[0:28] Speaker 2: time to record.
[0:29] Speaker 1: You cheeky boy, don't worry everybody, Jerry's just really on vacation.
[0:33] Speaker 1: But that was a very clever setup to this episode
[0:37] Speaker 1: on essentially on Russian propaganda and how you know, I
[0:44] Speaker 1: think we all knew that, like their propaganda machine was
[0:47] Speaker 1: big back in the cold worn stuff obviously, but it's
[0:50] Speaker 1: it's a really big problem now and has been for
[0:53] Speaker 1: a while, ever since the advent of the Internet and
[0:56] Speaker 1: especially social media.
[0:58] Speaker 2: Yeah, because those two things are wide open set up
[1:02] Speaker 2: for people to distribute misinformation, deliberate misinformation. The Russians are
[1:09] Speaker 2: far from the only ones that do it. They're just really,
[1:12] Speaker 2: really good at it, and they've been doing it for
[1:15] Speaker 2: a long time. They I would guess they were probably
[1:17] Speaker 2: the first country to really start doing this on like
[1:20] Speaker 2: a wide scale. But I mean as far back I
[1:24] Speaker 2: think as twenty ten or at least the two thousand, Yeah,
[1:28] Speaker 2: but like the twenty tens, at least twenty thirteen at
[1:33] Speaker 2: the absolute latest. The Internet Research Agency was the first
[1:37] Speaker 2: kind of famous one that surfaced. And the whole premise
[1:41] Speaker 2: back then and now is to basically game social media
[1:46] Speaker 2: and use whatever you can whatever like weaknesses it has
[1:50] Speaker 2: in like the entire structure of it, to confuse people,
[1:54] Speaker 2: to sow discord and disinformation and chaos and questioning what
[2:00] Speaker 2: reality is, getting the media to start using words like
[2:04] Speaker 2: post truth and stuff like that, that kind of stuff.
[2:07] Speaker 2: It might not have a specific aim where it's like
[2:10] Speaker 2: we want to say, get Trump elected that was part
[2:14] Speaker 2: of this too, like that was a Russian name as well,
[2:16] Speaker 2: or we want to stir America up over the border crisis.
[2:21] Speaker 2: Just creating a climate where people question what's real or
[2:25] Speaker 2: what's true. That in and of itself is a huge
[2:29] Speaker 2: triumph for these Russian operations that have been going on
[2:33] Speaker 2: for more than a decade.
[2:35] Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that was one of the things that
[2:37] Speaker 1: chilled me most was it wasn't like we really need
[2:39] Speaker 1: to get people to believe this one thing right about Ukraine,
[2:44] Speaker 1: let's say it's more like, no, let's just so chaos
[2:47] Speaker 1: in confusion to where you doubt what you're reading and
[2:52] Speaker 1: you don't know what the truth is anymore. And that's
[2:54] Speaker 1: just like that feels even scarier, you know.
[2:57] Speaker 2: It does, because ultimately, eventually most people would be like,
[3:01] Speaker 2: it's not worth trying to get to the bottom of this.
[3:04] Speaker 2: You know, I'm just gonna stop. I'm just not going
[3:06] Speaker 2: to pay attention anymore.
[3:08] Speaker 1: I'm just not going to care, or I'll just share
[3:10] Speaker 1: something because like I read.
[3:12] Speaker 2: It, yes, exactly sometimes on Reddit.
[3:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, good point. All right, So maybe we should jump
[3:19] Speaker 1: back a little bit and talk about the IRA, not
[3:23] Speaker 1: the Irish Republican Army, but the Internet Research Agency or
[3:28] Speaker 1: the Russian troll Farm as it might you might know
[3:30] Speaker 1: it better, as that was founded in twenty thirteen by
[3:34] Speaker 1: guy that was a former criminal eventually a successful entrepreneur
[3:39] Speaker 1: and kind of higher up oligarch in Russia and you know,
[3:44] Speaker 1: confidant of Vladimir Putin, and he also founded you know,
[3:48] Speaker 1: Confident up for a while because he also founded the
[3:51] Speaker 1: Wagner Group, which you may have read about the news,
[3:53] Speaker 1: the Russian Mercenary organization that would eventually try and Overthrow putin.
[3:58] Speaker 2: Yes, do you watch the age and see on Prime? No?
[4:02] Speaker 1: I don't.
[4:03] Speaker 2: It is magnificent. Yeah, it's one of the best spy
[4:08] Speaker 2: shows of recent times.
[4:10] Speaker 1: I love a spie show.
[4:11] Speaker 2: You guys liked Black Doves, right, yep. This is at
[4:14] Speaker 2: least on that caliber, if not higher. Michael Fossbender's in it,
[4:18] Speaker 2: Richard Gear, Jeffrey Wright, a bunch of other very talented people.
[4:23] Speaker 2: But it's all like spycraft stuff, and it's it's really
[4:27] Speaker 2: worth it. They just released their second season and I've
[4:32] Speaker 2: got three episodes left. I started two days ago, and
[4:36] Speaker 2: both seasons are well worth watching.
[4:39] Speaker 1: Okay, I did not watch Black Doves. Actually, I thought
[4:41] Speaker 1: you were talking about the what's the Gary Eelman show,
[4:44] Speaker 1: Wild Horses something horses.
[4:47] Speaker 2: I don't know, I know the one you're talking about.
[4:49] Speaker 2: You watch that?
[4:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, I watched that one.
[4:51] Speaker 2: Is it good?
[4:53] Speaker 1: Yeah? It's really good. I mean Gary Oldman's fantastic Slow Horses.
[4:56] Speaker 2: Slow Horses. I swear you watch Black Doves because Emily
[4:59] Speaker 2: said she liked it, the one with she may have
[5:01] Speaker 2: watched it, bend it like.
[5:02] Speaker 1: Beckham, Yeah, Kiera Knightley, I didn't. Yeah, I didn't see it.
[5:06] Speaker 1: May have watched that without me though, because she watched.
[5:09] Speaker 2: Okay, just watch them, watch them both, but definitely watch
[5:12] Speaker 2: the agency. It's much more likely to be in your
[5:16] Speaker 2: wheelhouse if either one of them are going.
[5:18] Speaker 1: To be all right, Okay, So back to the show.
[5:22] Speaker 2: Oh, I know I brought that up. They battle essentially
[5:26] Speaker 2: the Wagner Group, but it's Valhalla in the agency.
[5:29] Speaker 1: Okay, gotcha, sorry about that. That's okay. Everyone loves a
[5:33] Speaker 1: good recommendation from either one of us, I think.
[5:36] Speaker 2: Yeah. I also, I want to be clear here, this
[5:38] Speaker 2: was not brought to you by Prime. We're not trying
[5:41] Speaker 2: to manipulate you or propagandize you or market to you.
[5:45] Speaker 2: This is just I watch it on Prime and it's
[5:48] Speaker 2: on time, and it's so good that I just took
[5:51] Speaker 2: that time to share that with everybody. That's all exactly
[5:56] Speaker 2: what it seemed like on face value. And do you
[5:57] Speaker 2: know why I have to say that.
[5:59] Speaker 1: Chuck, I don't know, Josh, because of.
[6:01] Speaker 2: Stuff like this operation that we're going to talk about.
[6:05] Speaker 1: That's right. So the IRA that I spoke of, the
[6:08] Speaker 1: Internet Research Agency that what they did this is like
[6:10] Speaker 1: mid twenty tens. They hired a ton of you know,
[6:15] Speaker 1: young people basically who could speak English and who knew
[6:18] Speaker 1: a lot about politics to like, hey, why don't you
[6:22] Speaker 1: start a troll farm, you know, get on board this
[6:23] Speaker 1: troll farm and just create fake stuff, create fake news stories.
[6:28] Speaker 1: Although I'm love to even say those words together, fake
[6:31] Speaker 1: social media posts, YouTube videos. Eventually, you know, as you'll
[6:35] Speaker 1: see what would become like deep fakes and AI and
[6:38] Speaker 1: stuff like that. But this is before that. Yeah, and
[6:41] Speaker 1: while this was going on, Sputnik and Russia Today or
[6:46] Speaker 1: RT these are you know, I think legitimate or one point,
[6:51] Speaker 1: we're legitimate Russian news outlets. Right.
[6:54] Speaker 2: They were always backed by the Kremlin. Oh well okay, yeah,
[6:58] Speaker 2: but yeah, I think that they were still they still
[7:01] Speaker 2: had journalists and stuff like that, but they were trying
[7:03] Speaker 2: to get the Russian viewpoint across to Western audiences.
[7:07] Speaker 1: Right, So they started distributing stories around the world, basically,
[7:12] Speaker 1: like we were saying, trying to get people to like
[7:16] Speaker 1: to believe whatever they wanted to believe at the time,
[7:19] Speaker 1: like politically.
[7:20] Speaker 2: Right, And the twenty sixteen United States election was a
[7:25] Speaker 2: real big kind of debut. They've been kind of ated already,
[7:30] Speaker 2: but the twenty sixteen election they really showed just how
[7:33] Speaker 2: much they could monkey with stuff, or at least the
[7:35] Speaker 2: potential of them monkeying with stuff. And this is where
[7:39] Speaker 2: that the allegations of Trump colluding with the Russians, this
[7:43] Speaker 2: is what they were talking about unproven, by the way,
[7:46] Speaker 2: to Rachel Maddow's great dismay right Pizzagate. These they didn't
[7:51] Speaker 2: necessarily come up with these things, but they were able
[7:55] Speaker 2: to amplify them, yeah, and get people talking about them
[7:59] Speaker 2: and make people questioning what was what, you know, or
[8:02] Speaker 2: the Democrats like really keeping child sex slaves in the
[8:05] Speaker 2: basement of Comet Pizza in DC. Who knows? Maybe you
[8:08] Speaker 2: should take an assault rifle from North Carolina and go
[8:11] Speaker 2: find out.
[8:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So once this start sort of starts coming out,
[8:15] Speaker 1: and the United States and you know, all over North
[8:19] Speaker 1: American and Europe started realizing what was going on. In
[8:23] Speaker 1: February twenty twenty two, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
[8:27] Speaker 1: there started to be a little bit of action taken.
[8:29] Speaker 1: The EU banned Russian state media, including Sputnik and RT.
[8:34] Speaker 1: Other companies Google News dropped them from aggregation service. I
[8:37] Speaker 1: think Google, Microsoft and Apple all started like pulling their apps.
[8:42] Speaker 1: So that sort of started happening and then in twenty
[8:45] Speaker 1: three was when that failed uprising against Putin by the
[8:48] Speaker 1: Wagner group happened. And the long and short is after
[8:53] Speaker 1: all this, the IRA finally disbanded, but this work continued
[8:57] Speaker 1: among other groups.
[8:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a good example of the whack a
[9:02] Speaker 2: mole that the West is playing. The Russian Internet disinformation
[9:07] Speaker 2: operations have the West on our heels. Clearly, there's basically
[9:11] Speaker 2: no one who knows what they're talking about with this
[9:13] Speaker 2: stuff who would disagree with that. The West still has
[9:16] Speaker 2: not figured out how to do it, aside from piecemeal
[9:20] Speaker 2: responses like taking Russia Times app off of the Apple market,
[9:26] Speaker 2: off of the Apple app store, you know, like that's
[9:29] Speaker 2: the kind of response we have to this. Still, and
[9:32] Speaker 2: this has been going on for more than a decade.
[9:35] Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why it's so hard to
[9:37] Speaker 2: do anything about it is because they use what the
[9:40] Speaker 2: Rand Corporation researchers Christopher Paula and Miriam Matthews call a
[9:44] Speaker 2: fire hose of falsehood, just put everything out there. It's
[9:49] Speaker 2: not the quality, it's the quantity that they focus on.
[9:53] Speaker 1: Yeah. For sure, after CRIMEA was annexed in twenty fourteen,
[9:59] Speaker 1: and then obviously after the invasion of Ukraine in February
[10:03] Speaker 1: of twenty twenty two, they really ramped up a lot
[10:06] Speaker 1: of messaging to try and get you know, sentiment, sometimes
[10:11] Speaker 1: on their side, but a lot more times like just
[10:13] Speaker 1: against Ukraine and what was going on. And this eventually
[10:18] Speaker 1: it would become known as Dappelganger. But to be clear,
[10:21] Speaker 1: Dappelganger isn't like it wasn't Operation Dappelganger or there's not
[10:26] Speaker 1: an organization called Dappelganger. It's more of just sort of
[10:30] Speaker 1: I think the media sort of misread that and labeled
[10:32] Speaker 1: it that, but it's really just sort of this method
[10:35] Speaker 1: of doing what they're doing and how they're doing it.
[10:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, to be specific, it's a way of cloning dummy
[10:43] Speaker 2: websites that look like actual legitimate websites. The ones some
[10:47] Speaker 2: of the ones that they targeted were Lamonde and France,
[10:51] Speaker 2: their website, Washington Post in the US, the Guardian in
[10:55] Speaker 2: the UK, and they would essentially just take they would
[10:59] Speaker 2: have the bots start sending links or putting links all
[11:02] Speaker 2: over the Internet to basically share, right, hey, look at
[11:05] Speaker 2: this crazy article. Right. The Washington Post actually reported this,
[11:09] Speaker 2: so it seems like it would be legitimate. Then you
[11:12] Speaker 2: would click that and it would take you to a
[11:14] Speaker 2: different series of domains that got smaller and smaller to
[11:19] Speaker 2: where if you were in the area they were targeting,
[11:23] Speaker 2: say you were in the United States and you had
[11:25] Speaker 2: clicked you know, this thing to find out about whatever
[11:27] Speaker 2: this fake Washington Post thing was saying, it would it
[11:32] Speaker 2: would take you to this fake website like Washingtonpost dot PM,
[11:36] Speaker 2: just different enough that like you probably wouldn't notice, but
[11:40] Speaker 2: it's a different domain name. And the way that they
[11:43] Speaker 2: were able to get away with this was shell companies
[11:46] Speaker 2: and using shady kind of hosting services around the world.
[11:51] Speaker 2: And that that was doppelganger, that technique that they used
[11:56] Speaker 2: for getting this stuff out. There is no operation like this.
[12:01] Speaker 2: These these using bots or creating like fake accounts on
[12:06] Speaker 2: Facebook or whatever. That wasn't dopplgetor that is constant. It's
[12:09] Speaker 2: so constant and so embedded that there's no name for that.
[12:13] Speaker 2: Doppelganger was just the technique of the way that they
[12:16] Speaker 2: use the infrastructure of the Internet to deliver misinformation for
[12:20] Speaker 2: this short period of time.
[12:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, sort of one of the main companies. And we're
[12:25] Speaker 1: not going to go through all of these because it's
[12:27] Speaker 1: a little mind numbing. But there's one called the Social
[12:29] Speaker 1: Design Agency, which is a pr firm that started up
[12:33] Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, founded by a political consultant who
[12:38] Speaker 1: had you know, that was their business, so you know,
[12:42] Speaker 1: they know exactly how to do it, and the Russian
[12:45] Speaker 1: government all of a sudden was like, wait a minute,
[12:47] Speaker 1: we would love to hire you to do like all
[12:49] Speaker 1: this stuff. It's literally as of I think a couple
[12:52] Speaker 1: of years ago, run by the Kremlin and directed by
[12:56] Speaker 1: the Putin administration, so they're kind of in the middle
[13:00] Speaker 1: of most of this doppelganger activity. Yes, and you know,
[13:03] Speaker 1: like you said, when you go to one of these websites,
[13:05] Speaker 1: when you click on the link, if you're not paying
[13:07] Speaker 1: attention to the dot whatever, and you realize it's not
[13:10] Speaker 1: you know, Washingtonpost dot com. It looks like it, it
[13:14] Speaker 1: smells like it, it acts like it for the most part.
[13:17] Speaker 1: So it's really easy to fool people.
[13:20] Speaker 2: It is. I mean, if you really look closely, and
[13:23] Speaker 2: you look with a skeptical eye, you'll turn up some stuff.
[13:25] Speaker 2: I saw. One example is that the US must not
[13:29] Speaker 2: become the world's gendarme, which is police in French, like
[13:34] Speaker 2: the Washington Post would not use a phrase like that, right.
[13:38] Speaker 1: But you have to know that, like I think they
[13:40] Speaker 1: count on just fire hosing it such where they're like, well,
[13:43] Speaker 1: who cares if most people don't, If we just get
[13:45] Speaker 1: this percentage of people, that's great.
[13:47] Speaker 2: Yes, And even more than that, I feel like going
[13:50] Speaker 2: to the trouble of actually creating the article on the
[13:53] Speaker 2: fake website is almost superfluous because so many people on
[13:58] Speaker 2: the internet just share, Yeah, share, like that headline gotcha? Now,
[14:03] Speaker 2: I think that this is going on, not even bothering
[14:06] Speaker 2: to click into this to read the actual article. All
[14:10] Speaker 2: I need is the headline because it got me juiced up.
[14:13] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And of course they're amplifying this through
[14:16] Speaker 1: the bot farms. Russian social media bots will post links
[14:20] Speaker 1: and then there are more bots that retweet these links.
[14:24] Speaker 1: I think I mentioned on the show. I saw a
[14:25] Speaker 1: picture of a bot farm one not too long ago
[14:28] Speaker 1: that was in big expose.
[14:29] Speaker 2: Were they all just doing grass?
[14:32] Speaker 1: No? That was terrifying. It was like a dude sitting
[14:36] Speaker 1: at a desk on a computer and there were a
[14:38] Speaker 1: thousand cell phones connected hardwired to the computer, and then
[14:42] Speaker 1: there were dozens and dozens of these guys with hundreds
[14:45] Speaker 1: and hundreds of smartphones wow, connected on a big wall.
[14:49] Speaker 1: So when you see how it actually works, like literally
[14:51] Speaker 1: connecting to phones to send this stuff out and amplify it,
[14:54] Speaker 1: it's just it feels really dystopian and scary.
[14:58] Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel like it's becoming clear that we're going
[15:00] Speaker 2: to have to abandon the Internet and come up with
[15:03] Speaker 2: a new one because this one got cooked.
[15:07] Speaker 1: A creed. Should we take a break? All right, Well,
[15:10] Speaker 1: we're going to ruminate that, and I hope we can
[15:12] Speaker 1: even come back after we ruminate, but we'll be right back.
[15:15] Speaker 3: I hope.
[15:39] Speaker 1: All right. So I mentioned after the invasion of Ukraine
[15:42] Speaker 1: in February twenty twenty two, that's when things really ramped
[15:45] Speaker 1: up again. They you know, a lot of these ideas
[15:50] Speaker 1: were really pretty clever. There was a one group that
[15:53] Speaker 1: launched sort of like a Snopes like site, but a
[15:56] Speaker 1: fake one, I know, War on Fakes, and it was
[16:00] Speaker 1: design to discredit Ukraine and support Russia obviously. And then
[16:04] Speaker 1: another one called are in Reliable Recent News which replace
[16:10] Speaker 1: reliable Russian news. So on one side you've got something
[16:14] Speaker 1: that says like, hey, this is reliable news, so this
[16:16] Speaker 1: is real. On the other side, it's like, hey, we
[16:19] Speaker 1: root out the fake stuff, but it's fake, so it's
[16:22] Speaker 1: almost like, you know, it's not almost like they've got
[16:24] Speaker 1: all their bases covered.
[16:25] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, if you pay too close attention to this,
[16:28] Speaker 2: you'll start bleeding out of your ear guaranteed.
[16:31] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[16:32] Speaker 2: Doppelganger got its name from the EU's Disinformation Lab. One
[16:37] Speaker 2: of the disheartening things to me, Chuck was figuring out
[16:41] Speaker 2: that the people who are tracking this stuff, there's not
[16:45] Speaker 2: a government agency involved anywhere. These are all like independent
[16:50] Speaker 2: NGOs that are dedicated to tracking disinformation.
[16:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting journalists.
[16:55] Speaker 2: Like these are the people doing the actual work, and
[16:58] Speaker 2: then seven years later the governments like, oh, we're going
[17:01] Speaker 2: to have our Department of Justice do something about this.
[17:04] Speaker 1: Right.
[17:05] Speaker 2: So where that's where Doppelganger got its name from. I
[17:08] Speaker 2: think it's basically it suggests that these are or it
[17:12] Speaker 2: points out like the cloned sites, they're like Dappelgangers of
[17:16] Speaker 2: the real thing.
[17:17] Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
[17:20] Speaker 2: But that war on Ukraine, after the invasion of Ukraine,
[17:24] Speaker 2: they really ramped up the misinformation flood that was coming.
[17:29] Speaker 2: Like they targeted in twenty twenty four and I think
[17:34] Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, their main targets were France, Germany, the US,
[17:38] Speaker 2: the UK and Ukraine. And essentially what they were trying
[17:42] Speaker 2: to do was to make the people, the public in
[17:46] Speaker 2: each of those countries lose support or turn on the
[17:50] Speaker 2: idea of supporting Ukraine so that Russia could get them
[17:54] Speaker 2: out of the Ukraine business in Russia could just get
[17:57] Speaker 2: back to trying to take over Ukraine as best it could.
[18:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, and they, you know, they did it in a
[18:02] Speaker 1: lot of ways. Obviously, some ways were just fake articles
[18:06] Speaker 1: about like, you know, stuff that Ukraine does, or maybe
[18:10] Speaker 1: a fake article about that whitewashes a Russian atrocity like
[18:15] Speaker 1: the Buka massacre, like that never happened, right, But cleverly
[18:20] Speaker 1: they're also going like through celebrities and like faking that,
[18:24] Speaker 1: you know, Taylor, like a real influential celebrity like Taylor
[18:27] Speaker 1: Swift or Kim Kardashian, Like fake messages where they're supporting
[18:33] Speaker 1: or they're criticizing America and Europe for supporting Ukraine. Or
[18:38] Speaker 1: did you find something about Oprah?
[18:39] Speaker 2: Yeah, do you want to read that quote? Go ahead,
[18:42] Speaker 2: Oprah says supporting Ukrainians is unacceptable. Their actions destroy lives
[18:47] Speaker 2: in societies.
[18:49] Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, especially if you're some like young
[18:53] Speaker 1: person who supports Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian, you're probably
[18:58] Speaker 1: you know, not even aware that this kind of stuff
[19:00] Speaker 1: even goes on. All you're thinking is like, well, Taylor
[19:03] Speaker 1: Swift said, Ukraine deserves what's coming, So that's probably true.
[19:06] Speaker 2: That's exactly right, that's exactly what they're trying to do.
[19:09] Speaker 1: Or maybe not deserves what's coming, but like America, this
[19:12] Speaker 1: is what a big sort of angle for them is.
[19:16] Speaker 1: America first, like, we shouldn't get involved in this. Let
[19:18] Speaker 1: Ukraine handle it themselves.
[19:20] Speaker 2: Right, And so that you just hit the nail on
[19:24] Speaker 2: the head. As far as why Republicans typically get targeted
[19:28] Speaker 2: with this stuff, it's not because the Trump administration is
[19:33] Speaker 2: colluding with the Russians. It's because the message that the
[19:37] Speaker 2: Trump administration and MAGA in general and Republicans by extension,
[19:43] Speaker 2: are basically basing their platform on. It's like you said,
[19:46] Speaker 2: America first, focus on domestic issues, get ourselves out of
[19:50] Speaker 2: foreign affairs, and that goes lockstep with what Putin wants.
[19:55] Speaker 2: It's like, yes, America, go mess with your own stuff,
[19:59] Speaker 2: and by pointing out and creating turmoil about all the
[20:03] Speaker 2: things that are going on in America at any given time.
[20:06] Speaker 2: It makes it seem even that more urgent to just
[20:08] Speaker 2: stop giving money to Ukraine when we've got all of
[20:11] Speaker 2: these middle class white people who need that money too,
[20:15] Speaker 2: and like tax breaks and stuff like that. That kind
[20:18] Speaker 2: of messaging that's not necessarily wrong, but is making it
[20:23] Speaker 2: seem like the American public sentiment is behind that. That's
[20:28] Speaker 2: the part that's wrong. They're manipulating that to kind of
[20:30] Speaker 2: try to get the public to swing that way, all
[20:33] Speaker 2: because they just want to be able to invade Ukraine
[20:35] Speaker 2: more easily.
[20:36] Speaker 1: Yeah. They had one project called the Good Old USA Project,
[20:41] Speaker 1: which one of the SDA founders had come up with
[20:44] Speaker 1: with some other people, and it targeted voters in six
[20:46] Speaker 1: swing states during the last election in twenty twenty four
[20:50] Speaker 1: about just that, like let's not help Ukraine, like why
[20:54] Speaker 1: are we doing that when we have problems here? And
[20:57] Speaker 1: they also spent about ten million bucks encouraging right wing
[21:02] Speaker 1: influencers to get on board with pro Russia opinions. So
[21:06] Speaker 1: that's why if you've if you've ever been on like
[21:09] Speaker 1: the comment section of any social media site about anything
[21:12] Speaker 1: political like this, first of all, we would both encourage
[21:16] Speaker 1: you to stop doing that because it's just not good
[21:19] Speaker 1: for your mental health and well being. But if you
[21:21] Speaker 1: do and you see people saying like, oh yeah, thanks,
[21:23] Speaker 1: comrade or whatever Russian bought, like, that's that's what they're
[21:26] Speaker 1: talking about here.
[21:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, And to be fair, those right wing influencers, the
[21:31] Speaker 2: YouTubers that were hired to disseminate Russian propaganda were not
[21:36] Speaker 2: aware that that's what they were doing. They were hired
[21:39] Speaker 2: by a front company called Tenant Media. Yeah, they hired
[21:42] Speaker 2: like six hardcore right wing YouTubers and just basically said, hey,
[21:47] Speaker 2: let's talk about this kind of thing. But they were
[21:50] Speaker 2: not aware that they were being paid by the Kremlin.
[21:52] Speaker 2: They didn't know that. And then once that was exposed,
[21:55] Speaker 2: that company dissolved in. Those people, well, I guess had
[21:59] Speaker 2: to eat some crow, I would guess.
[22:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Another thing, if you ever heard, you know,
[22:05] Speaker 1: you know, George Soros is paying those protesters like that
[22:08] Speaker 1: by the hour, like paid protesters, paid protesters. Yeah, that
[22:11] Speaker 1: comes from a fake Washington Post article, like you know,
[22:16] Speaker 1: from one of these like completely fake cloned websites. That's
[22:21] Speaker 1: where that comes from. It was right after Israel invaded
[22:25] Speaker 1: Gaza in spring of twenty twenty four and that there,
[22:28] Speaker 1: you know, all the protesters were going on, and there
[22:31] Speaker 1: was a fake Washington Post article that came out about
[22:34] Speaker 1: the Sorols Foundation and Rockefeller like paying people thirty bucks
[22:38] Speaker 1: an hour to go protest.
[22:40] Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh, well, the one I remember was that the
[22:43] Speaker 2: Ukrainian government was actually like Nazis. Oh yeah, yeah, and
[22:48] Speaker 2: really what Russia's doing is liberating the Ukrainian people. I
[22:53] Speaker 2: remember that one for sure. That definitely came from this
[22:55] Speaker 2: Doppelganger era.
[22:57] Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the weirder ones was Princess Kate when
[23:00] Speaker 1: she sort of disappeared from the public eye. Yeah, and
[23:03] Speaker 1: you know this is before she revealed it was because
[23:05] Speaker 1: of a cancer diagnosis. But they jumped on that and
[23:08] Speaker 1: sort of hijacked that with all sorts of weird conspiracy theories.
[23:12] Speaker 1: And again I think that was one just to just
[23:15] Speaker 1: to create tension and chaos in the UK.
[23:18] Speaker 2: Yes, I don't remember where I found this, but I
[23:20] Speaker 2: saw that their involvement in conspiracy theories is topic agnostic.
[23:25] Speaker 2: They don't care about the subject. Whatever it is that
[23:28] Speaker 2: will push people's buttons, that will get emotional responses and
[23:31] Speaker 2: get people worked up, they will get in there and
[23:33] Speaker 2: amplify it if they if they didn't make it up
[23:36] Speaker 2: themselves in the first place. Man, they also apparently, according
[23:40] Speaker 2: to I think the Good Old USA Project, that they
[23:47] Speaker 2: there was a whole group at the Social Design Agency who, again,
[23:50] Speaker 2: like you said, seem to be the ones behind this.
[23:54] Speaker 2: If all of a sudden you start to hear negative
[23:56] Speaker 2: chatter about stuff, you should know, I'm going to go
[23:59] Speaker 2: ahead and say it was probably them after this episode
[24:01] Speaker 2: comes out.
[24:02] Speaker 1: What's a little worried about that.
[24:04] Speaker 2: I am hopefully we're still under the radar enough.
[24:08] Speaker 1: Well, I like to think so.
[24:11] Speaker 2: Yeah. And if all of a sudden, Chuck and I
[24:12] Speaker 2: die in a fiery car crash together, it was probably
[24:15] Speaker 2: the Kremlin.
[24:16] Speaker 1: I'm not flying anytime soon.
[24:19] Speaker 2: You have to, although I don't want to say when
[24:21] Speaker 2: or how. We should probably edit this part out. But
[24:24] Speaker 2: there was a whole group at the Social Design Agency
[24:26] Speaker 2: that was their job was to monitor social media posts
[24:30] Speaker 2: from GOP lawmakers to figure out what was on America's
[24:34] Speaker 2: mind or what people were worried about or angry about,
[24:37] Speaker 2: and then they would start making memes and stuff based
[24:40] Speaker 2: on that and try to create like I guess, mess
[24:43] Speaker 2: from that, just from like one tweet or something could
[24:46] Speaker 2: do it.
[24:47] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I don't know how much you want
[24:50] Speaker 1: to get into this nuts and bolt section.
[24:52] Speaker 2: We kind of already covered it really.
[24:55] Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets sort of in the weeds, but like
[24:58] Speaker 1: you sort of mentioned earlier, we just want to be clear.
[25:00] Speaker 1: It's like they'll use disposable domains that are owned by
[25:03] Speaker 1: other companies. They will use virtual offices and set up
[25:07] Speaker 1: shell companies. They'll work with you know in places like
[25:13] Speaker 1: sometimes at the far reaches of the earth. Well they'll
[25:15] Speaker 1: set up like some company in Malaysia where you know,
[25:19] Speaker 1: it's then it goes to another shell company in Lithuania
[25:22] Speaker 1: and it's just you know, it's also obfuscated. And that's
[25:25] Speaker 1: the whole point, you know that you don't know, it's
[25:28] Speaker 1: hard to even trace back to any origin.
[25:30] Speaker 2: Right, and it's just very decentralized. And then the companies,
[25:34] Speaker 2: these shell companies are just legitimate enough to provide cover
[25:37] Speaker 2: for the shady hosting companies to say like, well they're legal.
[25:42] Speaker 2: There's a UK company, so you know, we don't have
[25:46] Speaker 2: any obligation to check what they're doing, right, And as
[25:51] Speaker 2: it gets closer and closer to the actual fake website,
[25:55] Speaker 2: the companies just get shadier and shadier, and apparently they're
[25:59] Speaker 2: not the one thing didn't come up with this technique.
[26:01] Speaker 2: It's fairly common among bad actors. Yeah, like Brad Pitt.
[26:08] Speaker 2: I guess I.
[26:09] Speaker 1: Was trying to think of a bad actor. I didn't
[26:12] Speaker 1: want to be mean.
[26:14] Speaker 2: I think you can be mean to Brad Pitt at
[26:15] Speaker 2: this point.
[26:16] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because he's a fine actor. Oh yeah, and
[26:19] Speaker 1: a fine piece you know, a piece of what you know?
[26:26] Speaker 1: Did you see he and Ed Norton at the soccer match?
[26:29] Speaker 3: No?
[26:29] Speaker 2: I heard about it.
[26:30] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of fun, the old fight club thing.
[26:33] Speaker 2: What was I gonna say?
[26:35] Speaker 1: You were gonna say, we're gonna take a break, right.
[26:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think whatever I was saying, just peter it out.
[26:40] Speaker 2: Didn't matter.
[26:41] Speaker 1: All right, Well, Josh is gonna Peter back up and
[26:43] Speaker 1: we'll be back right after this.
[27:09] Speaker 2: Okay, So we're back, and we know about Doppelganger. Like
[27:13] Speaker 2: I said, thanks to journalists and non governmental organizations that
[27:18] Speaker 2: are dedicated to tracking and fighting disinformation. The first one
[27:23] Speaker 2: where it came up even before it was called Doppelganger,
[27:25] Speaker 2: because remember that was the EU's Disinfo Lab that gave
[27:29] Speaker 2: it that title. But a full year or so before that,
[27:33] Speaker 2: a German website t online not the thing it does.
[27:39] Speaker 2: It sounds super fake. They published an article where they
[27:42] Speaker 2: were like, hey, there's a bunch of new Facebook accounts,
[27:46] Speaker 2: all of our German women. And the weird thing is
[27:48] Speaker 2: they all say that they work for Netflix, and even weirder,
[27:53] Speaker 2: every single one of them seems to be really really
[27:56] Speaker 2: adamant about Germany not funding you and just leaving Russia alone.
[28:02] Speaker 1: I'm sure Netflix is like seriously, thanks.
[28:05] Speaker 2: I know, although Netflix is probably like, hey, any publicity's good.
[28:08] Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's a good point. I get this is
[28:13] Speaker 1: this is not this, But I know you're not on
[28:16] Speaker 1: social media a lot, but on Instagram I will get
[28:19] Speaker 1: I will have to block a lot of people that
[28:21] Speaker 1: come on to follow me because it's clear that it's
[28:25] Speaker 1: some sort of a some sort of a porn thing. Sure,
[28:29] Speaker 1: Or I will get a comment from someone on some
[28:32] Speaker 1: random like I'll leave a comment on some random like
[28:36] Speaker 1: like Instagram posts that I think is cool or whatever,
[28:38] Speaker 1: and then someone will comment on that like oh yeah, totally,
[28:42] Speaker 1: Chuck Brian or whatever, Chuck the podcaster, And then I'll
[28:46] Speaker 1: look at you like who is this and it's you know,
[28:48] Speaker 1: it's clearly some fake person, and I just I don't
[28:51] Speaker 1: know what the angle is and I always block it,
[28:54] Speaker 1: so obviously I don't know, but I wonder what the
[28:58] Speaker 1: goal is. I got to be separating me from money somehow.
[29:03] Speaker 2: Somehow, or yeah or yeah, or getting money to somebody
[29:06] Speaker 2: like an influencer something or to boost whatever thing you
[29:09] Speaker 2: said was cool.
[29:10] Speaker 1: Maybe it's very strange, but it's always quite obvious what
[29:14] Speaker 1: it is because they have like zero posts, uh follow
[29:19] Speaker 1: a ton of people, no one follows them, and it's
[29:22] Speaker 1: usually some you know, if I can be frank, it's
[29:25] Speaker 1: usually some very like well endowed you know woman.
[29:29] Speaker 2: Yeah. Do you remember there was a period of time
[29:31] Speaker 2: when AI slop was really starting to gear up, where
[29:34] Speaker 2: it does not matter what video you were watching on
[29:38] Speaker 2: like YouTube or whatever. In the search it was like
[29:42] Speaker 2: a very beautiful woman standing there like Vana White, right
[29:46] Speaker 2: next to the video screen, like learn all about C
[29:49] Speaker 2: plus plus coding from me the sixty secretary, you know.
[29:54] Speaker 2: Like it was all videos were like that for a minute,
[29:57] Speaker 2: and I was like, God, is this how it's going
[29:59] Speaker 2: to be from now on? And then it seems to
[30:00] Speaker 2: have vanished.
[30:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know the only reason I bring all
[30:03] Speaker 1: that up is because it's just sort of backs up
[30:06] Speaker 1: this thing that we're talking about in this idea that
[30:09] Speaker 1: I keep edging toward, which is like, God, maybe it's
[30:13] Speaker 1: just best to get off and away from all of
[30:16] Speaker 1: that stuff all together. Yes, is really going in the
[30:19] Speaker 1: wrong direction.
[30:20] Speaker 2: No, it definitely is. There's this thing called the dead
[30:22] Speaker 2: Internet theory. Been wanting to do at least the short
[30:25] Speaker 2: stuff on it, but essentially it says that the Internet
[30:28] Speaker 2: has become a just a bunch of bots interacting with
[30:32] Speaker 2: bots trying to gain social media algorithms to make money
[30:36] Speaker 2: for some dude or whatever country Singapore or something like that, right,
[30:41] Speaker 2: And some studies have found that perhaps a third of
[30:45] Speaker 2: accounts on either Instagram or Facebook, probably Facebook, are bots
[30:50] Speaker 2: a third man, and that it's just gotten so far
[30:53] Speaker 2: out of hand that we're never going to get it back.
[30:55] Speaker 2: And also, like those long tail articles where you make
[30:58] Speaker 2: like five cents but it costs nothing to have an
[31:00] Speaker 2: AI write and publish that article, those have have pushed
[31:05] Speaker 2: actual human written, researched articles about any given thing from
[31:10] Speaker 2: like page one Google search to like page twenty. So
[31:14] Speaker 2: there's still like no reason to go in and search
[31:16] Speaker 2: for anything anymore unless you want some AI article broken
[31:20] Speaker 2: into fifty different small paragraphs or sections that are basically
[31:25] Speaker 2: repeat themselves over and over again, that's what you have available.
[31:29] Speaker 2: So it does seem like the Internet is pretty dead.
[31:32] Speaker 1: Yeah, I've noticed even on Instagram from some sites all
[31:36] Speaker 1: I can follow, like music sites or whatever, it's sort
[31:38] Speaker 1: of a dead giveaway. Now if the caption instead of
[31:42] Speaker 1: being like, you know, led Zeppelin performs at this performance
[31:46] Speaker 1: and it was awesome, it's now some really long, like
[31:48] Speaker 1: four paragraph thing with like this detailed history of like
[31:52] Speaker 1: led Zeppelin was a band and blah blah blah, and
[31:53] Speaker 1: it's just so obvious AI is doing it. Yeah, and
[31:56] Speaker 1: it's just it's kind of ruining what I used to
[31:57] Speaker 1: like about Instagram, along with a lot of other stuff. Yeah,
[32:01] Speaker 1: like you know, these fake busting women. It's like it
[32:03] Speaker 1: just makes me want to run away. Stop it, run away.
[32:06] Speaker 2: Something else is going to come along, because there is
[32:09] Speaker 2: like it's very clear that the Internet, and it's like
[32:13] Speaker 2: ideally is really great and useful and important and we
[32:15] Speaker 2: need it. It's just this version of it is no
[32:18] Speaker 2: longer useful, so we need to figure out a different one.
[32:21] Speaker 2: And somebody right now it'll.
[32:22] Speaker 1: Well it just it sucks because I don't like to
[32:25] Speaker 1: support that company because they're part of Meta, which I
[32:28] Speaker 1: hate and got off of Facebook. But I do like
[32:31] Speaker 1: the connection with listeners and be able to chat stuff up.
[32:34] Speaker 1: So it's, uh yeah, it feels like it's a no
[32:38] Speaker 1: in situation.
[32:38] Speaker 2: Sometimes I think what'll probably become is more of an
[32:41] Speaker 2: emphasis on email maybe again, and then like they'll that'll
[32:46] Speaker 2: get taken over and then it'll be handwritten letters.
[32:50] Speaker 1: That'd be great. Speaking of Meta though, in twenty twenty two,
[32:54] Speaker 1: and this was after that t online group that you mentioned,
[32:58] Speaker 1: sort of out of this whole thing. Mm hm, that's
[33:01] Speaker 1: when like Meta and some other higher profile companies started
[33:04] Speaker 1: saying like, oh, well, like we know this is going on.
[33:07] Speaker 1: We're going to start removing pages and we're going to
[33:09] Speaker 1: start deleting this and we're going to take this super
[33:11] Speaker 1: serious and who knows what's going on on the inside.
[33:15] Speaker 1: I sound like I'm being cynical, because I probably feel
[33:17] Speaker 1: like I am. But they have found that like a
[33:21] Speaker 1: lot of it is coming through ads, and like they're
[33:23] Speaker 1: not even catching a ninety five percent of undeclared political
[33:28] Speaker 1: ads aren't being caught in this supposed sweep to clean things.
[33:31] Speaker 2: Up right, Yeah, because it's not just posts or bots
[33:36] Speaker 2: creating posts or even commenting, it's buying ads, and so
[33:39] Speaker 2: Facebook has a huge financial incentive to not root those
[33:44] Speaker 2: things out because they make tons of cash off of it.
[33:46] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[33:48] Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean they said that they're doing this,
[33:50] Speaker 2: they're not actually doing it. And that's a good example
[33:54] Speaker 2: of the whole whack a mole thing too. Is like
[33:56] Speaker 2: a big company like that trying to police their own
[34:00] Speaker 2: social media site that's gotten out of their own control.
[34:03] Speaker 2: That's not a good technique either, although I think all
[34:07] Speaker 2: of us could probably agree that medic could do way,
[34:09] Speaker 2: way more than it does. So the finally, in September
[34:14] Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, after this has been identified for two
[34:17] Speaker 2: full years, the US Department of Justice is like, we're
[34:20] Speaker 2: going to take charge here.
[34:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll take care of it.
[34:23] Speaker 2: Get this. They took down thirty two websites wow, that
[34:29] Speaker 2: were related to Doppelganger, and they were like, this is
[34:33] Speaker 2: too risky before a US election, So we're gonna we're
[34:37] Speaker 2: gonna do We're gonna go the nuclear option and take
[34:40] Speaker 2: down thirty two websites.
[34:43] Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the cynicism is coming through. It's I mean,
[34:47] Speaker 1: whack a mole didn't even begin to describe it. I'm
[34:49] Speaker 1: sure like Russia hears the stuff and they're just like
[34:51] Speaker 1: laughing into their vodka, you know.
[34:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, Well that's the point that a lot of people make,
[34:56] Speaker 2: is that it might not even be changing people's minds,
[35:01] Speaker 2: but just the fact that we know it exists makes
[35:04] Speaker 2: you question everything then, And so you're right, are questioning
[35:08] Speaker 2: the legitimate stuff too, So you're not learning anything. Everything
[35:12] Speaker 2: has an angle.
[35:13] Speaker 1: Yeah, and now we're seeing of course, and we've talked
[35:16] Speaker 1: about I think we did a whole episode on deep fakes, right,
[35:18] Speaker 1: mm hmm, yeah, on deep fake and obviously the advent
[35:21] Speaker 1: of AI technology, which is now completely taken over already
[35:26] Speaker 1: where they have, you know, a fake video going up
[35:29] Speaker 1: where it looks like Joe Biden doing something, or it
[35:31] Speaker 1: looks like anybody doing something, and they will take you know,
[35:35] Speaker 1: they try to evade detection, so they'll post a video
[35:38] Speaker 1: just a little differently in different iterations, like with just
[35:41] Speaker 1: a few milliseconds trimmed out, so they can't be automatically
[35:44] Speaker 1: rooted out when like a company builds a system to
[35:47] Speaker 1: root out this kind of stuff, right, and we're already
[35:51] Speaker 1: at the point like AI has moved so fast, we're
[35:53] Speaker 1: already at the point where people all over the place.
[35:56] Speaker 1: For months now, I have been going like, I don't
[35:58] Speaker 1: even know if this is real, Like I don't know
[35:59] Speaker 1: if what I can believe anymore. So like it's working.
[36:02] Speaker 1: What they're doing is working, right.
[36:05] Speaker 2: The thing that got me is that they've figured out
[36:08] Speaker 2: because AI companies train their models on like the Internet
[36:14] Speaker 2: and specific parts of the Internet, the Russians have figured
[36:17] Speaker 2: out that they can flood those parts of the Internet
[36:20] Speaker 2: with misinformation, and that's what the AI is going to
[36:24] Speaker 2: learn and think is real. So the AI is going
[36:28] Speaker 2: to just give out bad information or misinformation as well
[36:31] Speaker 2: because that's what it thinks is true.
[36:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to go live in a cave right
[36:37] Speaker 1: after we record.
[36:38] Speaker 2: This, We'll get into Buddhism.
[36:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's do that.
[36:43] Speaker 2: So, like we said, I don't know if we gave
[36:47] Speaker 2: our a hat tip to Olivia, who really did a
[36:50] Speaker 2: good exhaustive job on explaining this, But one of the
[36:54] Speaker 2: things she points out is that it's really unclear whether
[36:57] Speaker 2: this actually sways opinion.
[37:00] Speaker 1: Yeah, there have been some studies, right, Yeah, but.
[37:03] Speaker 2: I mean just anecdotally, I think it does, but maybe
[37:06] Speaker 2: it's one of those things where like, Okay, if it
[37:08] Speaker 2: really comes down to somebody saying, do you truly believe that?
[37:11] Speaker 2: Are you gonna be like yes, then maybe it doesn't
[37:14] Speaker 2: really sway opinion. But there was a study that looked
[37:18] Speaker 2: at disinformation efforts by Russian the twenty sixteen US election,
[37:23] Speaker 2: and it basically found that, like it had almost no
[37:26] Speaker 2: effect whatsoever.
[37:28] Speaker 1: Yeah, they found that one percent of social media users
[37:31] Speaker 1: got seventy percent of the exposures, so a few people
[37:36] Speaker 1: getting most of this stuff, but that's still thirty percent
[37:39] Speaker 1: on the other ninety nine percent. And they also point
[37:43] Speaker 1: out that like a lot of the people getting exposed
[37:46] Speaker 1: to this are Republicans because the Russian posts are you know, again,
[37:52] Speaker 1: they're sort of targeting them about like hey, America first stuff,
[37:55] Speaker 1: America first stuff, and they already believe that stuff anyway,
[37:58] Speaker 1: so it's not maybe like they're changing minds, maybe that's
[38:00] Speaker 1: the point, but they're reinforcing beliefs for sure.
[38:03] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but again, that fire hose or the fire
[38:06] Speaker 2: hose of misinformation or false information, that's the technique, and
[38:12] Speaker 2: it seems to be working. The thing that stuck out
[38:14] Speaker 2: to me was I couldn't find anything about what they're doing. Now,
[38:19] Speaker 2: it seems like they're still doing much the same because
[38:23] Speaker 2: it works really, really well and it can just pop
[38:25] Speaker 2: up anywhere. Like there is a story I found, I
[38:27] Speaker 2: don't know if you saw it, where a twenty sixteen
[38:31] Speaker 2: disinformation campaign from Russia actually managed to get real life
[38:36] Speaker 2: Texans to battle one another, at least verbally. I don't
[38:41] Speaker 2: think anyone was physically injured over the Islamification of Texas,
[38:46] Speaker 2: which was just complete bunk made up by the disinformation group.
[38:51] Speaker 2: And even more than that, they made up the group
[38:54] Speaker 2: that the protesters joined. They also made up the group
[38:56] Speaker 2: that the counter protesters joined, So the whole thing was
[38:59] Speaker 2: totally fat, fabricated and social engineered. So like that works,
[39:05] Speaker 2: and at the time, these people were not thinking that
[39:07] Speaker 2: they were being manipulated by Russians, right, They thought it
[39:10] Speaker 2: was real. So it's going to keep continuing to work,
[39:13] Speaker 2: so there's no reason for them to stop. I'm curious
[39:15] Speaker 2: about what the next thing is that they're doing now
[39:18] Speaker 2: that we're going to find out about three years from now.
[39:20] Speaker 1: You know, right, yeah, for sure. The other thing that
[39:23] Speaker 1: sort of would send a chill up your spine is
[39:25] Speaker 1: like none of this is even secret anymore. Like it's
[39:28] Speaker 1: out and they know it's out, and they don't care.
[39:31] Speaker 2: They're in crowd if.
[39:33] Speaker 1: They're out and proud with their what they call a
[39:36] Speaker 1: high reach, low impact campaign, which is, like you said, again,
[39:40] Speaker 1: the fire hose and the volume of content doesn't really
[39:43] Speaker 1: matter how much people believe it or not, as long
[39:46] Speaker 1: as you're sowing chaos and getting people to eventually think
[39:49] Speaker 1: like I don't even know, like maybe I'll just disengage
[39:51] Speaker 1: altogether because I don't know what's real. When widespread coverage
[39:56] Speaker 1: of Doppelganger came out, the Russian government was like, awesome,
[40:01] Speaker 1: let's give more funding to the SDA. And there's even
[40:05] Speaker 1: a suggestion that SDA deliberately leaked Operation Doppelganger like information
[40:11] Speaker 1: about that just to get more media coverage about it. Right, man,
[40:17] Speaker 1: I really do want to go live in a cave
[40:18] Speaker 1: after this.
[40:19] Speaker 2: The best suggestion I saw was to fight fire with fire.
[40:22] Speaker 2: That the whole wackamle thing is never ever going to work,
[40:25] Speaker 2: and it actually just helps Russia, like you said, just
[40:28] Speaker 2: by giving it publicity, and that essentially the best thing
[40:32] Speaker 2: the West could do is to create its own SDA
[40:36] Speaker 2: and just turn it on Russia that that's basically the
[40:40] Speaker 2: only option to get them to stop.
[40:43] Speaker 1: That sounds like a great idea for sure.
[40:46] Speaker 2: Well, since Chuck and I are jaded, I think it's
[40:49] Speaker 2: time for listener mail.
[40:54] Speaker 1: Is beyond jaded, all right, guys, for this is a
[40:58] Speaker 1: nice light way to end. Guys. For years, my wife
[41:01] Speaker 1: and I have had an argument over the pronunciation of biopic,
[41:06] Speaker 1: like when you make a movie about a person like
[41:08] Speaker 1: a biographical picture. We've both been stubborn to admit defeat.
[41:12] Speaker 1: She's part of the biopic crowd, but I prefer biopic.
[41:17] Speaker 1: She of course claims she's right because she's a former
[41:19] Speaker 1: elementary school teacher and a big study of English lit
[41:22] Speaker 1: and knows the truth. Blah blah blah. But it wasn't
[41:25] Speaker 1: until Chuck said biopic in your recent Howard Hughes episode
[41:28] Speaker 1: that I got the vindication I needed. I don't care
[41:31] Speaker 1: if Chuck and I are wrong, it doesn't matter. All
[41:33] Speaker 1: that matters is I know I'm not alone anymore. And
[41:35] Speaker 1: we'll continue with my pronunciation, and I'll make sure to
[41:38] Speaker 1: pass this down to my seven and four year old kids.
[41:41] Speaker 1: That is from Kevin Croyle in North Carolina, and I
[41:45] Speaker 1: also got a really rude email from a very I
[41:49] Speaker 1: guess angry person that I said it differently and they
[41:52] Speaker 1: were like, a goosh, you'd like being wrong. I guess
[41:55] Speaker 1: it is wrong. I don't even know. I never thought
[41:57] Speaker 1: about it. But I don't say biography. I say biography,
[42:01] Speaker 1: so I say biopic and I don't know. That's just
[42:03] Speaker 1: how it flowed out of my mouth. So I may
[42:05] Speaker 1: be wrong. I don't care.
[42:06] Speaker 2: Yeah, you may be prettrazy.
[42:08] Speaker 1: You say biopic, right, mm.
[42:09] Speaker 2: Hmm, but that's just what I've always heard, and I'm
[42:12] Speaker 2: so used to you saying biopic. Now that's not even
[42:15] Speaker 2: I think that they're both right. I think you managed
[42:17] Speaker 2: to wedge it into reality.
[42:19] Speaker 1: Well maybe someday when someone writes the biography on our lives,
[42:24] Speaker 1: it'll make it creat to do a biopic. Yeah all right.
[42:28] Speaker 2: Well, who is that from? The nice one?
[42:31] Speaker 1: That is from Kevin?
[42:32] Speaker 2: Thanks Kevin, that was very nice and I'm glad. Do
[42:34] Speaker 2: you feel vindicated sorry to your wife although she and
[42:39] Speaker 2: I share the same pronunciation.
[42:41] Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, we can all have an arm wrestling match
[42:43] Speaker 1: one day.
[42:44] Speaker 2: Or something if you want to be like Kevin and
[42:47] Speaker 2: write to us about feeling vindicated by me or Chuck
[42:50] Speaker 2: or Jerry or whoever we want to hear about it,
[42:52] Speaker 2: Send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
[42:59] Speaker 2: Stuff you should know the production of iHeartRadio.
[43:01] Speaker 1: For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
[43:06] Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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