The Russian Operation Using AI Fakes to Target Voters

Summary

The Big Take – May 13, 2026

Episode: The Russian Operation Using AI Fakes to Target Voters
Host: Sarah Holder, Bloomberg News
Guest: Stephanie Baker, Bloomberg Investigative Reporter

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into "Storm 1516," a Russian-backed disinformation campaign harnessing AI-generated fake videos and narratives to sway public opinion and undermine trust in democratic institutions. Host Sarah Holder speaks with investigative journalist Stephanie Baker about the operation’s tactics, its rapid spread thanks to advances in AI and weakened social media moderation, and the serious implications for global elections.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Catalyst: A Viral Bugatti Hoax (02:07–04:03)

• Description of Hoax:
  A video featured a car dealer claiming Olena Zelenska (Ukraine’s First Lady) purchased a €4.5m Bugatti, accompanied by a doctored receipt. The video went viral, designed to paint Ukraine’s leaders as corrupt and hypocritical during wartime.
• Stephanie Baker notes:
  “If you look at it closely, you see there's something wrong with the video. It looks like it's been altered.” (03:01)
• Investigative Follow-Up:
  Bugatti debunked the story:
  “Bugatti actually said, we normally do not comment on clients, but we feel that this is so wrong... she is not a client. And this is not a true story.” (03:36)

2. Pattern Recognition and ‘Storm 1516’ (04:03–06:02)

• Operation Identified:
  Stephanie and colleagues traced nearly 200 similar disinformation posts to “Storm 1516,” a Russian influence operation.
• Tactics Identified:
  • Consistent pro-Kremlin narratives
  • Allegations of corruption against pro-Ukraine politicians
  • Faked “leaked” evidence
  • Claims are unverifiable and not corroborated by reputable sources
    “They usually carry some kind of pro Kremlin narrative alleging Ukrainian corruption or corruption allegations against Western politicians...” (04:50)

3. Disinformation at Scale: The Role of AI and Social Media (05:20–06:23)

• Surge in Volume:
  The volume of these posts doubled year-over-year, enabled by sophisticated AI and laxer platform moderation.
  • “They've used social media and the lack of regulation of social media to really churn out these narratives on an industrial scale.” (05:51)

4. The Genesis and Spread of Storm 1516 (06:23–09:19)

• Launch & Context:
  • Began August 2023, escalated after Elon Musk’s acquisition of X (formerly Twitter) and reduction of content moderation.
  • Initially targeted Ukraine, then shifted to US elections (2024), and later to European elections.
• Fake Stories:
  Examples included fake allegations against US VP Kamala Harris, claims of illegal voting in Georgia, and outlandish falsehoods about French President Macron.
  • “...President Macron was spending 148 million euros to build a private underground base bunker...” (07:31)

5. Who’s Behind It? (07:55–09:31)

• Suspected Orchestrators:
  • Russian military intelligence (GRU), specifically unit 29155.
  • Overseen by Sergey Kirienko from the Kremlin.
  • Involvement of Russian influencers, and even an ex-Florida police officer spreading content.
• Distribution Focus:
  Targeting influencers to seed and spread narratives is a key tactic for reach and impact.

6. Research Collaboration (09:19–09:59)

• Team Approach:
  Baker collaborated with Darren Linville at Clemson, cross-validating findings with multiple academic and research groups.

7. What’s New in Disinformation? (09:59–11:01)

• Innovation:
  • Use of advanced AI for increasingly undetectable deepfakes.
  • Exploiting US social media’s regulatory gaps.
  • Tactics reinforce pre-existing suspicions rather than planting entirely new ideas.
  • “People are really willing to believe a lot. They are not necessarily trying to convince people to believe in things that they don't already think might be true.” (10:12)

8. Case Study: The Cartier Jewelry Hoax (11:07–12:39)

• Chain Reaction:
  • An Instagram video alleging a €1.1m Cartier purchase by Olena Zelenska (while she was in Canada) spread via paid content and Russian-run fake news sites, then exploded via influencers.
  • This story accounted for 11% of online conversation about the Zelensky family in the week after, a tangible shift in public discourse.
  • “...it accounted for 11% of the conversation about those Zelenskys... being able to change the nature of the conversation online.” (12:22)

9. AI’s Evolution & Social Media Moderation Breakdown (12:39–14:14)

• Technological Leap:
  AI deepfakes have become nearly indistinguishable from reality in just a year.
• X (formerly Twitter):
  Shifted from active moderation to a user-driven ‘community notes’ system.
  • Less than 20% of identified Storm 1516 posts had any warning attached.
  • “It’s very hard for an ordinary user who’s scrolling on a phone to identify what is fake and what is real.” (13:19)
• X's Response:
  The company did not comment directly, only claimed to have removed 800 million accounts in 2024, not clarifying how many were Russian disinformation actors.

10. Storm 1516’s Broader Geopolitical Role (18:18–20:14)

• Kremlin’s Objectives:
  • Sow distrust in Ukraine and the West.
  • Undermine Western political institutions and support for Ukraine.
  • Act as “chaos agents”—destabilizing democracies regardless of political leaning.
  • “They really want to disrupt, and it doesn't really matter necessarily if it's left or right. They want to just encourage people to question established truths.” (18:25)
• Effectiveness:
  • Difficult to quantify, but narratives have influenced online conversations and likely nudged electoral sentiment.
  • “It’s kind of like small doses of poison in a water supply. You don’t really know how it’s affecting you until it builds up.” (20:10)

11. Targeting European Elections (20:14–21:27)

• Specific Examples:
  • Hungary: Ramp-up of negative content targeting opposition leader Petar Magyar; he won in a landslide.
  • Germany: Far-right AfD party doubled its vote share, with Kremlin narratives supporting them.
• Attribution Difficulty:
  Impossible to draw a straight line from one fake to an election result, but sustained narrative pushes shift the debate.

12. Official Responses & Regulatory Gaps (21:27–22:33)

• Kremlin:
  Refused comment when approached by Bloomberg.
• US & EU:
  US has dismantled key counter-disinformation agencies, leaving a vacuum in monitoring and coordination.
  • “All of those have now been dismantled.” (21:47) EU fined X €120m as part of an ongoing investigation into digital misinformation.

13. Risks to Future Elections (22:33–23:43)

• Impending Threats:
  • Russia is expected to target the US midterms as aggressively as past elections.
  • Absence of dedicated government watchguards increases vulnerability.
  • “Unless someone’s calling out these videos or narratives, many people will believe them.” (22:55)
  • Official warnings about fake narratives are crucial but less likely this year.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On detection of fakes:
  “It's very hard for an ordinary user who's scrolling on a phone to identify what is fake and what is real.” — Stephanie Baker (13:19)

• On intent:
  “They want to just encourage people to question established truths.” — Stephanie Baker (18:25)

• On impact:
  “It's kind of like small doses of poison in a water supply. You don't really know how it's affecting you until it builds up.” — Stephanie Baker (20:10)

• On governmental response:
  “All of those [US agencies] have now been dismantled.” — Stephanie Baker (21:47)

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Theme | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:07 | Bugatti hoax exposé and breakdown | | 04:03 | Introduction to Storm 1516, tracing activity | | 06:23 | Storm 1516’s launch, post-X acquisition, focus on Ukraine/US/Europe | | 07:55 | Who is behind the operation? | | 09:59 | What's new? AI deepfakes, US vulnerability | | 11:07 | Cartier jewelry hoax, viral spread explained | | 12:39 | Leap in AI realism, platform moderation breakdown | | 18:18 | Kremlin objectives, chaos agent strategy | | 20:14 | Electoral impact: Hungary, Germany, attribution limits | | 21:27 | Official responses (Kremlin, US, EU) | | 22:33 | Implications and predictions for upcoming US midterms |

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Conclusion

This episode illuminates the alarming technological and tactical evolution of Russian disinformation—from relatively amateur hoaxes to a coordinated, AI-powered operation with global reach. Stephanie Baker’s reporting makes it clear that as deepfakes become ever more convincing and social media guardrails vanish, democracies worldwide face an unprecedented challenge. The vacuum left by dismantled US oversight agencies and tepid EU responses leaves information ecosystems vulnerable—just as another round of critical elections looms.

Bottom Line:
Storm 1516 exemplifies how powerful, AI-driven disinformation can deeply distort public discourse, weaponize suspicion, and manipulate democratic processes unless urgently and diligently addressed.

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Transcript

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[Stephanie Baker]

Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio news the

[Sarah Holder]

video shows a man in a car, seatbelt on, talking directly to the camera. He says he sells Bugattis and that a famous woman just bought one. Olena Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The man said he was pleased to welcome Zelenska into the Bugatti family. The video, bolstered by a picture of a receipt for four and a half million euros, took off. It was scandalous. The Ukrainian president's wife buying a luxury sports car while her country is at war and asked for Western aid. It also wasn't true.

[Stephanie Baker]

If you look at it closely, you see there's something wrong with the video. It looks like it's been altered.

[Sarah Holder]

Stephanie Baker is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg.

[Stephanie Baker]

There are weird skips in the video, his head doesn't look like it's moving together with the rest of his body. And the video shows an invoice from Bugatti, but it has misspellings, including the town where this sale took place.

[Sarah Holder]

When Stephanie reached out to Bugatti, they confirmed that the report was a fabrication.

[Stephanie Baker]

Bugatti actually said, we normally do not comment on clients, but we feel that this is so wrong that we're going to come out and say, she is not a client. And this is not a true story.

[Sarah Holder]

But the video had already done its job.

[Stephanie Baker]

It was picked up by quite a few people, it was shared by an influencer, and it came in the context of a few other stories alleging luxury spending by Olena Zelenska.

[Sarah Holder]

The Bugatti video, Stephanie found, was just one piece of a much broader disinformation campaign. Stephanie has written extensively about Russia and over months of reporting, Xi and Bloomberg data journalist Prei Bengani linked nearly 200 posts like this one to a Russian influence operation that researchers call Storm 1516.

[Stephanie Baker]

We've just been monitoring this operation for the past year, cataloging and mapping how many fake stories that they've spread. Who are the network of influencers, and what are the sort of characteristics, or fingerprints, if you will, of one of these Storm 1516 videos?

[Sarah Holder]

And what are those fingerprints?

[Stephanie Baker]

They usually carry some kind of pro Kremlin narrative alleging Ukrainian corruption or corruption allegations against Western politicians who've been very supportive of Ukraine. They often are presented as news reports or whistleblowers who have uncovered information that other news outlets don't want to report on. And generally they are claims that cannot be verified through other means from reputable sources.

[Sarah Holder]

Stephanie says post by post, Storm 1516 is waging a global disinformation campaign, seeding doubts about Zelenskyy, Western politicians and reality itself. And the volume of this disinformation has been going up thanks to better and cheaper AI and fewer online guardrails. Stephanie found that twice as many posts bearing Storm 1516's fingerprints went out in the first quarter of this year compared to last.

[Stephanie Baker]

They've used social media and the lack of regulation of social media to really churn out these narratives on an industrial scale.

[Sarah Holder]

I'm Sarah Holder and this is the big take from Bloomberg News today on the show Inside the Russian influence operation, storm 1516. When exactly did Storm 1516 start disseminating disinformation and why?

[Stephanie Baker]

They started in August 2023. Elon Musk buys X in October of 2022 and dismantles a lot of the trust and safety measures that X had put into place under the previous ownership fires a lot of content. And this Russian disinformation operation really takes off. And they really started with Ukraine, which is, of course, Russia's most important target, because they know that if military aid continues flowing to Kyiv, that's going to make it much harder for the Kremlin to win this war. But after Ukraine, they started broadening it out. They did target the US election. They spread numerous fake stories about Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz ahead of the 2024 US presidential election. They made false allegori that there were illegal immigrants voting in the state of Georgia. But then when Trump won, they really turned their focus to Europe. And then they started targeting European leaders with allegations of corruption.

[Sarah Holder]

And to be clear, none of these stories are true.

[Stephanie Baker]

None of them are true. No. I mean, the most ridiculous of them is that President Macron was spending 148 million euros to build a private underground base bunker in the event of World War three. And again, they produced a fake document. They alleged a Swiss company that had already gone into bankruptcy was involved. So these are false tales, but they go viral.

[Sarah Holder]

Who is behind Storm 1516?

[Stephanie Baker]

It's a very murky operation, and I'll tell you what we know, and there's a lot that we don't know. Western officials believe it is backed by Russia's military intelligence agency, the gru, a Ukrainian intelligence assessment that I saw tied at specifically. Specifically to a GRU unit called 29155 that has been responsible for various sabotage operations and assassinations, including the attempted assassination of Sergei skripal in the UK in 2018. And they have provided funding for servers and AI software to produce a lot of these narratives. It's overseen overall from the Kremlin by Putin's first deputy chief of the presidential administration, a man named Sergey Kirienko, who kind of sets the overall broad goals for the Russia's disinformation campaign. And then there are specific individuals in Russia that are helping to carry it out, including an ex Florida cop. But, of course, the key people in this operation are the influencers. Several influencers are known to share Storm 1516 content. You know, there's the production side and then there's the distribution side. So the distribution side is one of the things we tried to focus on, because I think that's where you can get the most kind of accountability.

[Sarah Holder]

And you worked with other researchers on this analysis. Tell me a little bit about the team that was tracking storm 1516 alongside you and Bloomberg reporters.

[Stephanie Baker]

We worked with Clemson University's Darren Linville, who runs a media lab, and he was the first to identify this as a distinct new operation in late 2023. So we were tracking everything and we were double checking everything that we found with other researchers to make sure that, you know, others were in agreement that a particular narrative or video that we had found was indeed the work of Storm 1516.

[Sarah Holder]

And of course, Stephanie, Russia has a pretty long history of misinformation and disinformation. I'm wondering what's new about what you found and about Storm 1516's tactics and reach.

[Stephanie Baker]

The history of this is fascinating. The most famous conspiracy theory that Moscow planted was in the Soviet period when they spread the lie that HIV was cooked up in a US lab. So they've been doing this for years and years. But I think the new thing is the use of AI and exploiting what is really a weakness, I think, particularly in the US tech system, which is the lack of regulation of social media. And people are really willing to believe a lot. They are not necessarily trying to convince people to believe in things that they don't already think might be true. They're trying to reinforce ideas and views that they know a US audience or a European audience would find very receptive.

[Sarah Holder]

I'm wondering if you could walk us through a typical storm 1516 post.

[Stephanie Baker]

The one I'll go through is a false story about Olena Zelenska. And so that story started with an Instagram video from a woman who claimed to be a former Cartier employee. She brandished a receipt that she claimed proved that Olena Zelenska spent 1.1 million on jewelry during a trip to New York. But Olena Zelenska and her husband were actually in Canada on the day of the receipt. But the Instagram video was picked up by a Nigerian website and they ran it as a factual story, but it was run under a label of paid content. So someone paid them to post that a phony website run from Moscow with a lot of just generic news and fake news called DC Weekly picked up the story and. And it was picked up by various influencers on social media and spread from there. And that was one of the cases where Darren Linville at Clemson University documented how it actually changed the conversation online. And he measured that in the week after that story ran, it accounted for 11% of the conversation about those Zelensky's, which is a huge number if you think about it in terms of being able to change the nature of the conversation online. About who were the Zelensky's, what were they doing? And crucially, with a false allegation that they were misspending Western aid money.

[Sarah Holder]

And Stephanie, you've identified two kind of recent game changers for Storm 1516. There's the fact that X has pulled back on content moderation and the advent of more highly sophisticated AI technology. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about how these two factors really work to expand Storm 1516's reach and elevate their tactics.

[Stephanie Baker]

It's one of the most fascinating parts of this story. When I started looking at this a year ago, some of the AI doctored videos that we came across were, with a trained eye, pretty crude. And I think the technology has gotten so sophisticated now it's so much harder to spot just in the past year. And it's very hard for an ordinary user who's scrolling on a phone to identify what is fake and what is real. I think X had a pretty good content moderation system in place a few years ago. But what X has decided to do in lieu of content moderation is to rely principally on community notes, which is a user generated system of marking a particular post or video and raising questions about the factual accuracy of it. But what we found in our reporting is that less than 20% of the almost 200 narratives that Storm 1516 spread had any kind of community note warning readers that this was false.

[Sarah Holder]

And what has X said in response to your reporting and the issue that you've identified with the system?

[Stephanie Baker]

They did not respond. One of X's top government affairs officials testified before the UK Parliament in March and he said that that X had taken down 800 million accounts in 2024 alone. Now, he did not identify how many of those were related to Russia, but he said that there was a coordinated campaign by Russia to flood the zone with a particular narrative. X has taken down about 20 accounts that we identified as frequent shares of Storm 1516 content from the time that we started this investigation to when we published. But there are dozens of users of accounts out there that have regularly spread Storm 1516 material that is patently false and there's been no action taken against them.

[Sarah Holder]

So how does Storm 1516 fit into the Kremlin's broader geopolitical aims? What impact has it had and can it be stopped? That's next.

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[Sarah Holder]

Stephanie, what are the goals of Storm 1516? Are their aims primarily political?

[Stephanie Baker]

I think Russia's goal is really to advance a pro Kremlin narrative that Ukraine is corrupt, that Europe is corrupt and doomed to failure, and that support for Ukraine should stop because Russia's going to win the war anyway. And I think they really want to undermine democracy in Europe and the US because I think they view that as a threat to Putin's own rule. But ultimately they are chaos agents. I think they really want to disrupt, and it doesn't really matter necessarily if it's left or right. They want to just encourage people to question established truths.

[Sarah Holder]

Why is that useful for Russia?

[Stephanie Baker]

Well, anything that undermines European and US democracy would therefore undermine those politicians that have been very staunch in their support for Ukraine and who have repeatedly called Russia a security threat.

[Sarah Holder]

And how effective has this disinformation been been in advancing those goals, both in terms of sowing chaos and pushing particular political candidates?

[Stephanie Baker]

It's really hard to assess impact and how much a particular narrative has changed people's views. Pollsters generally don't ask questions about debunked claims. And you can't really draw a direct line between one particular video advancing a false narrative and an electoral outcome. However, I think that that doubt that maybe for instance in the US that the election wasn't fair, that some of their stories feed into that narrative and reinforce it. I think they've been more successful in some cases than in others.

[Sarah Holder]

They backed Viktor Orban, who lost Hungary's election in a resounding vote.

[Stephanie Baker]

And we documented how the number of false narratives and videos targeting Petar Magyar, the then opposition leader and now leader, really ramped up right ahead of the Hungarian election. So obviously he won by a landslide. But I think even where pro Kremlin candidates lost, I think those narratives did influence voters on the margin and they shifted the conversation to really highlight anti EU debates. The AfD, for instance. In Germany, the far right party doubled their vote share compared to the last election. And we know that there were various narratives coming from Russia trying to support them. Now, is that down to a particular video? I think it's really hard to say, but it's kind of like small doses of poison in a water supply. You don't really know how it's affecting you until it builds up. And I think that's why it's so dangerous that there's been so little action taken against some of these disinformation videos.

[Sarah Holder]

How has the Kremlin responded to your reporting. What do they say about storm 1516?

[Stephanie Baker]

I've gotten denials from Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman before on other things. So I was expecting a denial on this and he just declined to comment.

[Sarah Holder]

What is the role of governments and regulators in this space?

[Stephanie Baker]

The US has really stepped back in terms of doing anything on tech regulation or exposing covert nation state disinformation. The US Government had several agencies that they'd set up to expose this stuff. The FBI had a task force, the US Intelligence agencies had a task force, and the State Department had an agency as well. And all of those have now been dismantled. And the EU did fine x 120 million euros in December as part of a broader investigation into misinformation. That investigation is still ongoing, but I think it's really down to the EU and the Digital Services act to really police some of these big social media firms.

[Sarah Holder]

And Stephanie, what you've identified is a global problem. You found that about a third of these fabricated stories targeted elections. So I'm wondering what your takeaway is when it comes to future elections in the US Specifically like the midterms that are coming up in November. What role could disinformation play?

[Stephanie Baker]

I think they're going to target the midterms aggressively. There's no reason to think that they wouldn't. There's a lot riding on that election and we saw them do it in 2024. I don't see any reason why they they would hold back this year. And I think the real concern is that there are no dedicated government agencies monitoring this in the way that we had before. Unless someone's calling out these videos or narratives, many people will believe them. You did see in 2024 the FBI and several other government agencies issuing public statements warning about these narratives about immigrants voting in Georgia, false out allegations against candidates. But I don't know if that's going to happen this time and I think it's really important that it does.

[Sarah Holder]

This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. To get more from the Big Take and unlimited access to all of bloomberg.com, subscribe [e-mail] podcastoffer if you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review the Big Take. Wherever you listen to podcasts, it helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

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