In October 2013, at the same time that Veterans Today began publishing content from New Eastern Outlook, its sister site Veterans News Now began publishing content from the Strategic Culture Foundation, a Moscow think tank run by Yuri Profokiev, a former head of Moscow’s Communist Party and member of the Soviet Politburo.
In October 2015, Veterans Today also partnered with a slickly designed, anonymously authored military affairs website called South Front that had been registered in Moscow that April just as Russia was ramping up its influence operations in response to Western sanctions.
Since then, the site has consistently published articles that push the Kremlin party line, both from its Russian partner and its own contributors. Now, in addition to learning about “The Coming Shift to Cosmic Fascism,” readers who cruise to Veterans Today — which has 45,000 Facebook followers and claims over 900,000 unique visitors per month — to catch up on the news or to check out the free services offered to veterans can read headlines like “Pravda: Ukraine indignant at 80% of Jews in power” and “Trump Humiliated: Syria Shoots Down 34 of 59 Cruise Missiles, Russia to Upgrade System Soon.” Recent contributions from South Front include “U.S. Suffers Reverses as Trump’s Plan to Aid Terrorists is Realized by Russia” and “The Political Uses Of Russophobia.” And recent contributions from New Eastern Outlook include, “If NATO wants peace and stability it should stay home” and “Brussels, NATO and the Globalists in Total Disarray.”
In late 2014, Duff and Dean attended a counterterrorism conference in Damascus at which Duff proclaimed to delegates from Russia, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon his theory that “the U.S. government is subservient to a worldwide criminal organization.” This March, the Veterans Today chairman attended a “VT Reception” in Damascus at which attendees gave speeches flanked by over-sized portraits of Assad and Putin, according to video he published to YouTube. Duff did not respond to a question about whether any foreign entities had been involved in funding his travel to Syria.
A State Department expert in Russian influence campaigns who was not authorized to speak on the record said he had taken note of Veterans Today’s partnership with New Eastern Outlook and that Southfront appears to be a Russian front that deliberately obscures its origins. The expert also described the Strategic Culture Foundation as a part of the Kremlin’s influence apparatus and noted that Russia has long sought to amplify the voices of Western conspiracy theorists.
Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington who has studied the role of Veterans Today in the Russia-aligned “alternative media ecosystem,” described the website as an “active partner” in the dissemination of Russian propaganda.
Despite the often far-fetched claims and clunky feel of Veterans Today and other outlets used by Russian propagandists, Starbird said she has come to consider them potentially potent vehicles for disinformation. “I used to think it, and others like it, were quite fringe,” she said. “But the intentional targeting of U.S. military, active and retired, seems to be a strategy of information war. I have anecdotes from friends, family members and now strangers who tell me about their family members who are deeply engrossed in this information ecosystem.”
Joel Harding, a former Army intelligence officer who now works as independent researcher, describes Veterans Today, Veterans News Now and South Front as “Russian proxy sites.” Harding said that in combination with other components of Russian influence efforts, the sites could successfully influence the military community over the long term. “Veterans Today and Veterans News Now will not cause soldiers, marines, airmen, or seamen to defect or become pro-Russian, not by themselves,” he said. “But if someone regards them as a reliable source of truthful information, does not recognize that they are pushing Russian propaganda or information with a pro-Russian perspective, over time they will change.”
In an email, representatives of South Front who did not provide their names said the site has no links to the Russian government. They suggested that identifying South Front as part of the Kremlin’s influence apparatus would run contrary to the principles of freedom of speech and be discriminatory against Russians (one common tactic of Russian influence operations is to invoke Western values in their efforts to undermine Western societies). The Strategic Culture Foundation did not respond to messages requesting comment and emails sent to the contact address provided by New Eastern Outlook were rejected by the journal’s web servers.
Dean said he was not aware that researchers had identified Veterans Today as a vehicle for Russian propaganda. “We appreciate the publicity,” he wrote in an email. “Please ask them to keep up the good work.” He did not address a question about whether the site received funding from foreign entities. Debbie Menon, the Dubai-based, recently departed editor-in-chief of Veterans News Now did not respond to an email seeking comment.
***
In addition to influence operations, military personnel and veterans have been the subject of a disproportionate share of hacking attempts in Russia’s active measures campaign against the United States.
In fact, the Russian military hackers who breached the DNC appear to expend as much effort on current and former military personnel as on political targets. A security oversight by the hacking group, most commonly known as “Fancy Bear,” gave researchers a public window into the targets of thousands of its phishing attempts between March and September of 2015. Of the people targeted by Fancy Bear outside of the former Soviet Union, 41 percent were current or former members of the military, according to a report by cybersecurity firm SecureWorks. Authors and journalists made up 22 percent of Fancy Bear’s targets, NGOs 10 percent, political activists 4 percent and government personnel 8 percent. Of the journalists and authors targeted, more than one-fifth were spouses of military members who blog about military life.
The posting of hacked data, a novel tactic used in Russia’s assault on the American political system, has also been a component of the country’s active measures against the American military. Last summer, Russian hackers leaked emails stolen from Breedlove in an effort to embarrass NATO. And in 2015, a group calling itself Cyber Caliphate hijacked the Twitter account of the United States Central Command, directing the account’s followers to a site where the group had posted data stolen from the military. Cyber Caliphate purported to be supporters of ISIS, but in fact this was a “false flag” designed to obscure the true identity of the perpetrator, which was Fancy Bear, according to a report by the Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro that said French authorities confirmed the firm’s own analysis fingering the Russian hacking group.
As Washington comes to terms with the scope of Russian active measures, the hacking campaign against the military continues. Last month, Time reported that American counterintelligence officials concluded in March that Russian hackers were targeting 10,000 Department of Defense employees with highly targeted messages on Twitter designed to trick them into downloading malware that could compromise their Twitter accounts, computers and phones.
***
While there is no expectation of a “Red Dawn”-style Russian invasion of the United States, the Kremlin’s active measures campaign has the potential to blunt the military’s ability and weaken its resolve to counter future Russian military aggression elsewhere.
The active measures are not targeting the military and political system in isolation, but as part of a broader effort to subvert Western institutions including the news media, financial markets and intelligence agencies. Because of its multidimensional nature and use of unconventional tactics the U.S. government has struggled to effectively combat the effort. “This is obviously a really difficult challenge and a lot of people are worried that our response to date hasn’t been effective,” said one expert on active measures who recently testified on the issue before Congress.
And rather than abating after the presidential election, these campaigns have only continued to get more brazen, according to Strategic Cyber Ventures CEO Tom Kellermann, who has watched them closely.
In May and June of 2015, Kellermann, who was then the chief cybersecurity officer at Trend Micro, said the firm warned the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that Kremlin hackers had drawn up a list of 2,300 people comprising the most powerful leaders in Washington and New York along with their spouses and lovers to target with a concerted hacking campaign. Kellerman said he does not know whether the government acted on the tip, which warned that the hackers had the ability to turn on microphones and cameras on the personal devices of their targets to obtain sensitive information about their personal lives. But he believes the campaign has successfully compromised American leaders, emboldening the Kremlin. “When you wonder why certain people act certain ways,” he said, “You have to remember these people have been warned that their dirty laundry could be aired.” (Spokespeople for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI declined to comment.)
Kellermann cited the activities of the Shadow Brokers, a hacking group believed to be Kremlin-backed that began publishing data stolen from the NSA last summer and most recently published a leak in April. The upticks in online attacks are harbingers of armed aggression, said Kellerman, who predicted that conflict between the United States and Russia was most likely to break out in the Baltic region.
“I’m very, very concerned,” he said. “Cyberspace is always the precursor to kinetic reality,”
Shawn Musgrave and Andrew Hanna contributed to this report.
Ben Schreckinger is a reporter for Politico.
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In October 2015, Veterans Today also partnered with a slickly designed, anonymously authored military affairs website called South Front that had been registered in Moscow that April just as Russia was ramping up its influence operations in response to Western sanctions.
Since then, the site has consistently published articles that push the Kremlin party line, both from its Russian partner and its own contributors. Now, in addition to learning about “The Coming Shift to Cosmic Fascism,” readers who cruise to Veterans Today — which has 45,000 Facebook followers and claims over 900,000 unique visitors per month — to catch up on the news or to check out the free services offered to veterans can read headlines like “Pravda: Ukraine indignant at 80% of Jews in power” and “Trump Humiliated: Syria Shoots Down 34 of 59 Cruise Missiles, Russia to Upgrade System Soon.” Recent contributions from South Front include “U.S. Suffers Reverses as Trump’s Plan to Aid Terrorists is Realized by Russia” and “The Political Uses Of Russophobia.” And recent contributions from New Eastern Outlook include, “If NATO wants peace and stability it should stay home” and “Brussels, NATO and the Globalists in Total Disarray.”
In late 2014, Duff and Dean attended a counterterrorism conference in Damascus at which Duff proclaimed to delegates from Russia, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon his theory that “the U.S. government is subservient to a worldwide criminal organization.” This March, the Veterans Today chairman attended a “VT Reception” in Damascus at which attendees gave speeches flanked by over-sized portraits of Assad and Putin, according to video he published to YouTube. Duff did not respond to a question about whether any foreign entities had been involved in funding his travel to Syria.
A State Department expert in Russian influence campaigns who was not authorized to speak on the record said he had taken note of Veterans Today’s partnership with New Eastern Outlook and that Southfront appears to be a Russian front that deliberately obscures its origins. The expert also described the Strategic Culture Foundation as a part of the Kremlin’s influence apparatus and noted that Russia has long sought to amplify the voices of Western conspiracy theorists.
Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington who has studied the role of Veterans Today in the Russia-aligned “alternative media ecosystem,” described the website as an “active partner” in the dissemination of Russian propaganda.
Despite the often far-fetched claims and clunky feel of Veterans Today and other outlets used by Russian propagandists, Starbird said she has come to consider them potentially potent vehicles for disinformation. “I used to think it, and others like it, were quite fringe,” she said. “But the intentional targeting of U.S. military, active and retired, seems to be a strategy of information war. I have anecdotes from friends, family members and now strangers who tell me about their family members who are deeply engrossed in this information ecosystem.”
Joel Harding, a former Army intelligence officer who now works as independent researcher, describes Veterans Today, Veterans News Now and South Front as “Russian proxy sites.” Harding said that in combination with other components of Russian influence efforts, the sites could successfully influence the military community over the long term. “Veterans Today and Veterans News Now will not cause soldiers, marines, airmen, or seamen to defect or become pro-Russian, not by themselves,” he said. “But if someone regards them as a reliable source of truthful information, does not recognize that they are pushing Russian propaganda or information with a pro-Russian perspective, over time they will change.”
In an email, representatives of South Front who did not provide their names said the site has no links to the Russian government. They suggested that identifying South Front as part of the Kremlin’s influence apparatus would run contrary to the principles of freedom of speech and be discriminatory against Russians (one common tactic of Russian influence operations is to invoke Western values in their efforts to undermine Western societies). The Strategic Culture Foundation did not respond to messages requesting comment and emails sent to the contact address provided by New Eastern Outlook were rejected by the journal’s web servers.
Dean said he was not aware that researchers had identified Veterans Today as a vehicle for Russian propaganda. “We appreciate the publicity,” he wrote in an email. “Please ask them to keep up the good work.” He did not address a question about whether the site received funding from foreign entities. Debbie Menon, the Dubai-based, recently departed editor-in-chief of Veterans News Now did not respond to an email seeking comment.
***
In addition to influence operations, military personnel and veterans have been the subject of a disproportionate share of hacking attempts in Russia’s active measures campaign against the United States.
In fact, the Russian military hackers who breached the DNC appear to expend as much effort on current and former military personnel as on political targets. A security oversight by the hacking group, most commonly known as “Fancy Bear,” gave researchers a public window into the targets of thousands of its phishing attempts between March and September of 2015. Of the people targeted by Fancy Bear outside of the former Soviet Union, 41 percent were current or former members of the military, according to a report by cybersecurity firm SecureWorks. Authors and journalists made up 22 percent of Fancy Bear’s targets, NGOs 10 percent, political activists 4 percent and government personnel 8 percent. Of the journalists and authors targeted, more than one-fifth were spouses of military members who blog about military life.
The posting of hacked data, a novel tactic used in Russia’s assault on the American political system, has also been a component of the country’s active measures against the American military. Last summer, Russian hackers leaked emails stolen from Breedlove in an effort to embarrass NATO. And in 2015, a group calling itself Cyber Caliphate hijacked the Twitter account of the United States Central Command, directing the account’s followers to a site where the group had posted data stolen from the military. Cyber Caliphate purported to be supporters of ISIS, but in fact this was a “false flag” designed to obscure the true identity of the perpetrator, which was Fancy Bear, according to a report by the Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro that said French authorities confirmed the firm’s own analysis fingering the Russian hacking group.
As Washington comes to terms with the scope of Russian active measures, the hacking campaign against the military continues. Last month, Time reported that American counterintelligence officials concluded in March that Russian hackers were targeting 10,000 Department of Defense employees with highly targeted messages on Twitter designed to trick them into downloading malware that could compromise their Twitter accounts, computers and phones.
***
While there is no expectation of a “Red Dawn”-style Russian invasion of the United States, the Kremlin’s active measures campaign has the potential to blunt the military’s ability and weaken its resolve to counter future Russian military aggression elsewhere.
The active measures are not targeting the military and political system in isolation, but as part of a broader effort to subvert Western institutions including the news media, financial markets and intelligence agencies. Because of its multidimensional nature and use of unconventional tactics the U.S. government has struggled to effectively combat the effort. “This is obviously a really difficult challenge and a lot of people are worried that our response to date hasn’t been effective,” said one expert on active measures who recently testified on the issue before Congress.
And rather than abating after the presidential election, these campaigns have only continued to get more brazen, according to Strategic Cyber Ventures CEO Tom Kellermann, who has watched them closely.
In May and June of 2015, Kellermann, who was then the chief cybersecurity officer at Trend Micro, said the firm warned the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that Kremlin hackers had drawn up a list of 2,300 people comprising the most powerful leaders in Washington and New York along with their spouses and lovers to target with a concerted hacking campaign. Kellerman said he does not know whether the government acted on the tip, which warned that the hackers had the ability to turn on microphones and cameras on the personal devices of their targets to obtain sensitive information about their personal lives. But he believes the campaign has successfully compromised American leaders, emboldening the Kremlin. “When you wonder why certain people act certain ways,” he said, “You have to remember these people have been warned that their dirty laundry could be aired.” (Spokespeople for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI declined to comment.)
Kellermann cited the activities of the Shadow Brokers, a hacking group believed to be Kremlin-backed that began publishing data stolen from the NSA last summer and most recently published a leak in April. The upticks in online attacks are harbingers of armed aggression, said Kellerman, who predicted that conflict between the United States and Russia was most likely to break out in the Baltic region.
“I’m very, very concerned,” he said. “Cyberspace is always the precursor to kinetic reality,”
Shawn Musgrave and Andrew Hanna contributed to this report.
Ben Schreckinger is a reporter for Politico.
Show Comments
