This year, Russia was so annoyed with the Olympics that it has prevented its athletes from competing under the country’s flag and is now focusing its anger on Paris, which is hosting the Games.
Microsoft informed that Russian propagandists had created a one-hour-long documentary and also spoofed news reports and even emulating French as well as US intelligence agencies in order to issue fake warnings urging people not to go to the Olympics. The report provides information about a disinformation campaign run by Storm-1679. This campaign appears to have intensified since March: vast numbers of short videos raising fears over possible terrorist attacks and concerns regarding safety have flooded social media. The activities aimed at manipulating opinions concerning forthcoming elections in Europe and America also play a role in this operation.
Last summer saw the release of a fake documentary about IOC which used Netflix logo and featured an artificially intelligent voice that sounded like Tom Cruise. The committee managed to convince YouTube administrators to remove “Olympics Has Fallen” (a 2013 movie parody) after citing some copyright infringement issues. However, there have been continuous attempts at discrediting its leadership, said the committee in March while pinpointing another operation using false recordings purporting to be phone conversations by African Union officials representing Russia.
It seems like Storm-1679 now makes shorter films that are easier for them to make themselves. It used to focus negatively on Ukrainian refugees in Western countries but it changed after French President Macron began talking about deploying his own soldiers there. Microsoft says these videos are faked between three and eight times by Storm-1679 every week either in English or French; many tried impersonating Al Jazeera, BBC among other broadcasters.” Other videos focus on possible terror attacks targeting Paris.
The majority of those pretending-to-be from CIA as well as French intelligence videos are pretty simple. They may not have resembled something actually produced by CIA but online viewers who do not suspect anything might think they were genuine using the logo of the agency and black-and-white typography. “They want people to be fearful of going to the Olympics,” Microsoft’s Clint Watts said about Storm-1679. The French authorities and Microsoft have also suggested that one of its strategies may involve attracting fact-checkers. “The content doesn’t normally travel from one platform to another, but when their false content is fact-checked by accounts with a large following, the content gets far more views and in front of new and different audiences,” Watts said
