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- [00:04]
David McLoskey
For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com this episode.
- [00:18]
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- [01:36]
Gordon Carrera
Carvana.
- [01:37]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [02:17]
David McLoskey
Internet operators need IT work in a glamorous office in Ogino 3/clamation points 25,960 rubles per month. The job Placing comments on Internet sites, writing thematic posts, blogs, social media. Well, welcome to the Rest is classified. I'm David McLoskey.
- [02:38]
Gordon Carrera
And I'm Gordon Carrera.
- [02:39]
David McLoskey
And that is a job advert that appeared, maybe somewhat mysteriously, in St. Petersburg in 2013 for work with Yevgeny Prigozhin or under Yevgeny Prigozhin at what is going to be known as the Internet Research Agency we should say Gordon, I guess. We left Yevgeny Prigozhin last time, of course, as Putin's caterer. He's won big contracts to feed schools, to feed the Russian military. He's kind of building a presence as a supplier of food services to important Russians. And this chapter is going to show how this guy, who frankly, has been running a food service business, is going to get connected with the world of Russian politics, disinformation, and I think really elevate himself on kind of the international stage.
- [03:39]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. This is, in a way, what made him first famous, notorious, particularly if you're in the United States, is his role in disinformation and election interference. But it, interestingly enough, does connect up to his life as a caterer and onto his life as a mercenary warlord, as we'll see. And I think that's one of the kind of curious things about this, is.
- [04:03]
David McLoskey
The missing chapter, the missing link between. Between caterer and mercenary warlord is, of course, a supplier of disinformation services.
- [04:13]
Gordon Carrera
But bear with us, bear with us, because we left him, yes, as a kind of restaurateur and getting these big contracts for catering and things like that. But here's the interesting thing. As anyone who runs a restaurant will know, pr, public relations, you know, is a big deal in the restaurant world. You need to have good pr. And what's interesting is Prigozhin, early on has understood you need very good public relations. And he's very invested in his own public relations and the public relations of his restaurants and then his firms and his catering supply groups. So he spends a lot of time, money, you know, resources, promoting himself. He's big on early social media. He's kind of an early adopter of the world of being a kind of content creator, influencer, brand builder for his businesses. You know, he's at the leading edge of that. That's what's interesting about.
- [05:08]
David McLoskey
Yeah, yeah. And if you were around today, he'd be posting thirst traps on Instagram, but instead, you know, he's. He's just these early. Early stages.
- [05:17]
Gordon Carrera
Early stages, yeah. And so he's built this kind of PR machine and a department doing public relations to help his businesses and go after his critics. Interestingly enough, he's also big on the kind of dark arts to go after anyone who's critical of him or his businesses, including journalists. So he'll smear some, he'll intimidate them. You know, he'll plant stories, he'll do underhand things. And this is going to be a theme that we'll kind of come back to is the way he kind of has quite almost a personal obsession with journalists and people who were critical of him. One example of the Dark Arts. June 15, 2012. A roundtable is being held to launch a new business publication and all the bigwigs are being invited. But actually the whole thing had been organized by Prigozhin's team, many of whom are posing as part of this new publication. So the new publication is kind of fake, but what they've done is they've ordered in catering from Prigozhin's rival for big catering contracts. And he's his rival for doing big events, government contracts, things like that. And then what happens is the guests who are Prigozhin's people, who are supposedly amongst the VIPs there and working the publication, start vomiting and being incredibly sick, faking it, we assume, or, you know, inducing it. Private ambulances come and rush them away. And of course, it's all blamed on his rival's catering for this event. And his rival loses loads of contracts. You know, that's the kind of weird stuff and stunt that Prigozhin is doing. And you know, he's gonna use this kind of media machine to kind of go after anyone who's critical of him. He puts infiltrators into newspapers to gather dirt on people. He puts his critics under surveillance. So what you then get is you get your own kind of security service within your company who can carry out surveillance on journalists and pressure them. And you are kind of, if you. You see how you're kind of merging security work with PR work. And I find that quite interesting. So you'll follow people, you beat them up, you'll, you know, you'll spread rumors about them. It's even this talk, it's a bit unconfirmed that he had a team of poisoners. He actually had people who could poison his rivals, you know, and they were developing poisons. Journalists who investigate him. Like there's a guy called Dennis Carol who's co written a very good book called Our Business's Death about it. You know, he gets funeral wreaths delivered to his flat and a severed lamb's head sent to his office. Never good. As a journalist, I can tell you when A severed lamb's head, when I was at the BBC, I hated it. I hated it when that happened.
- [08:01]
David McLoskey
You're just having to clean them off your doorstep. This makes me think that they really did make themselves sick. I don't think they were faking it. They probably had some Low level members of their own team. Yeah.
- [08:14]
Gordon Carrera
In order to. Yeah. Vomit and then screw up the contract.
- [08:16]
David McLoskey
That's right.
- [08:17]
Gordon Carrera
And it's also, I think this also says something about the media world in Russia at this time. It's a world in which you can say one thing one day and the opposite the next, and that's just kind of accepted as fine. Peter Pomerantsev, friends, a great writer, captured this in his book. And the title of the book captures it. Cause it's called Nothing Is True, Everything Is Possible. And it's a title which is a great book.
- [08:40]
David McLoskey
It's a great book.
- [08:40]
Gordon Carrera
Comes from his time working in Russian reality TV in the 90s. You know what he says is that this kind of world in which you can say, black is white, white is black one day and then another and change your views creates a kind of apathy about the truth amongst the public where they just go, well, just everything's a lie. And this is a kind of something which develops, I think, in this Russian media ecosystem at the time. And as we'll see, what's going to happen in some ways is that Russia and Prigozhin personally will export that to other countries. This particularly Russian apathetic media style, which has been built over years in there.
- [09:18]
David McLoskey
And Prigozhin here is going to, again, kind of work these, I guess, really, personal contacts to find this kind of seam where he can provide a service that's helpful to Putin.
- [09:32]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. So in 2012, it looks like one of Putin's top kind of political advisors, Vyashev Volodin, meets Prigozhin. Now, Putin's advisors seem to think that the Kremlin is not very good at pr. You know, they're worried about protests, they think they're on the back foot. But Prigozhin's team seem pretty good at this kind of manipulation and dark arts. And so they're going to ask Prigozhin to help. There's a slight ambiguity over how far people are asking for help and how far he's knocking on the door, offering himself up for help. You know.
- [10:06]
David McLoskey
Well, that's, we should say. I mean, that'll be a theme. Spoiler alert here. Of all of the Wagner story.
- [10:12]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [10:12]
David McLoskey
Is how much of this is sort of directed by the Kremlin and how much of it is Prigozhin's kind of entrepreneurial spirit. It just so happens to overlap with the interests and preferences of the Russian state.
- [10:26]
Gordon Carrera
And to me, you know, this is a key theme because I think it goes back to his days as a restaurateur, he knows what people want. He's got this instinctive sense of a kind of business entrepreneur.
- [10:36]
David McLoskey
Before you even order it.
- [10:37]
Gordon Carrera
Before you even order it, he's got this feeling, I know what you want.
- [10:40]
David McLoskey
And I'm going to offer it to you. He's got the Penkan tomato.
- [10:43]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. On the menu ready for you. Or a disinformation campaign.
- [10:47]
David McLoskey
Or a disinformation campaign.
- [10:48]
Gordon Carrera
And so there's a big focus in Russia on what are called political technologists. So people who can manipulate.
- [10:53]
David McLoskey
Great job.
- [10:55]
Gordon Carrera
But it's kind of. It's a peculiar Russian job title. I mean, it's not quite spin doctor, it's not quite someone who's just managing the press day to day. It's someone who thinks about, I suppose you call it strategic communications. Like how do you manipulate the public to get a message out? How do you create certain narratives? And in Russian politics, it's a kind of big thing. Used to be about tv, but now it's moving online into social media. And I think they can see in the Kremlin Prigozhin has got the expertise, so they're going to start turning to him for help. Dirty tricks, including like organizing protests, fake protests. Sometimes, you know, they seem to do this when Obama, President Obama visits for a summit in 2013 and there's some activists out there supporting him pro gay rights. And this seems to have been created by Prigozhin to kind of control the protests. Also spread disinformation about social media, discredit the protests. Again, this is a kind of interesting fusion between security work and media work which Prigozhin has kind of pioneered in his company, which is now spreading. And this leads crucially to Project Lakhta, run out of a squat building in St. Petersburg, home to this organization now notorious, called the Internet research agency, registered July 2013. A very famous important institution which Prigozhin is going to be kind of mysteriously behind, I think.
- [12:25]
David McLoskey
And he is very adamant throughout much of his life that he doesn't really have a role to play with the Internet Research Agency. Right.
- [12:33]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [12:34]
David McLoskey
Which is.
- [12:35]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [12:35]
David McLoskey
For it. For a very self promoting character. But I guess this is a point where maybe he. He's getting the kind of contracts that require him to be slightly more discreet.
- [12:47]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [12:47]
David McLoskey
Than he was as a caterer. The Internet Research Agency has of course now become famous, but I mean, I guess it's. What's the best way to think about this? It's a PR agency.
- [12:59]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. I think it's a PR agency? Yeah, I think it's a kind of slightly dark PR agency. It's got different divisions. There's also a news agency, Prigozhin, it's got, which is called the Federal News Agency, which looks like a kind of regular news website and things. But it's basically a means of getting, you know, material out. Propaganda channel. But there's also kind of data analytics. There's people who study public opinion. It's a professional outfit to understand and manipulate public opinion. That's what it is. And it's going to start recruiting in 2013. You read from this job advert, you know, people can earn $1,000 a month. It's pretty good money in some cases writing comments and blog posts for websites in a nice office. I mean, that sounds like quite a good job, but.
- [13:44]
David McLoskey
But really it's a bit of a farm, isn't it?
- [13:46]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, it's really like a factory job. You're working a 12 hour shift every day. You've got strict quotas to write at least 10 posts of 750 words across three accounts. Normally it's kind of attacking people. Sometimes they'll have like one post saying, I think this, and then you'll have two other identities maybe written by the same person attacking it and having a different view and then the first person going, oh, okay, I agree with you. The idea is you're showing that people have had their minds changed. A lot of it is attacking people or trolling them online, which is why of course becomes known as a troll factory. But it's doing it on an industrial scale. It's not automated, it's not the world of AI yet. It's all just done by these individuals. And by 2015 it's going to have 800 to 900 people. Bloggers and commentary management departments, rapid response departments, you know, department of social media specialists. All these kind of different things. You know, it's a proper, proper place.
- [14:46]
David McLoskey
And I guess it's one of these places where, especially now, looking back, we sort of color it with these very sinister tones. And yet most of the people who are working here are like, it's a thousand bucks a month. Yeah, I just, I needed work.
- [15:00]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [15:00]
David McLoskey
You know, and I kind of had to sit down and post this stuff. I mean, I love this teacher who started working at the agency in late 2014. He said, I immediately felt like a character in the book 1984. The agency was a place where you have to write that white is black and black is white, which again, you know, nothing is true and everything Is possible. The title of that great Peter Pomerantzet book, the Sense of Just the Truth.
- [15:25]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [15:26]
David McLoskey
It just doesn't matter. And it maybe doesn't even exist.
- [15:29]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. And he says your first feeling when you ended up there was that you were in some kind of factory that turned lying, telling truths into an industrial assembly line. And he'd just been a teacher who needed the money, you know, and he's a bit unemployed. One more detail from this person I think is good. He said, even though it wasn't public, everyone knew Prigozhin was behind it. And he said he's known as the main chef of the Kremlin. And yet in this huge building, the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, there was no cafe, no cafeteria, nothing. Everyone brought their own little jars and flasks. I love that.
- [16:02]
David McLoskey
I mean, given the dysentery that he was subjecting Russia, schoolchildren too, I think maybe they should be grateful.
- [16:08]
Gordon Carrera
They were grateful.
- [16:08]
David McLoskey
Yeah.
- [16:09]
Gordon Carrera
They weren't getting the white truffle menu, they would have been getting the school menu, I think. So what are they doing? I mean, the initial targets of all this trolling are close to home. And I think that's worth saying. Cause we think of it interfering abroad, but actually the first target is at home. The Kremlin sees itself as engaged in a kind of political warfare with the West. The west is trying to stir up protests in Russia and in its neighborhood, and. And their job is to stop that. So the idea is you control the information space to prevent the CIA through the Internet, which Putin says the Internet's a CIA project, undermining the grip on power. The aim is domestic stability. So you're going to get Twitter accounts supporting the government narrative, supporting Russian culture. Interestingly, lots of focus on. On going after Alexei Navalny, who's just starting out then as a kind of blogger, and, you know, someone who's going on YouTube doing videos about corruption in Russia. And a lot of the kind of trolls seem to be going after him. He's pointing out corruption in the Defense Ministry, and these videos are going to get watched by millions. Now, of course, we know eventually he's going to get imprisoned, hunted down, and everyone assumes killed by the Kremlin. But, you know, this issue of corruption is obviously very sensitive in Russia. And so the trolls are kind of unleashed to go after him, kind of discredit him, because they kind of know that's a weak spot.
- [17:37]
David McLoskey
But then I guess around 2014, as Russia takes Crimea, little green men going into Ukraine, you get this kind of hybrid war, where the Russians have starting to kind of set their sights on destabilizing Ukraine as a political project. Those tools get turned abroad for the first time.
- [17:59]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, that's right. And I think that's the interesting moment. Starts domestic, then you get the Ukraine crisis, and we'll do a bit more about Ukraine crisis, you know, as we look at the mercenary group, as we come onto that. But it's a big moment, a kind of big break with the West. They're worried about Western sanctions and what the west might be doing. So it starts to expand the foreign desks. There's a bit of it which is obviously into Ukraine itself, but they're also trying to press certain narratives into Western media, into European media, about what's happening in Ukraine and about attacking the idea that Russia has somehow invaded or tried to take parts of Ukraine and trying to kind of push back against the possibility of sanctions and the narrative that Russia's the aggressor here. So that's the kind of next shift as it starts to kind of move abroad. But then crucially, it's going to start turning its focus not just to Europe, but to the United States, because now we're into kind of 2014. But already they've got their eyes on an American election coming up in 2016, and President Obama has done his two terms. It's going to be an open contest. If you put yourself in the mindset of Putin, the Kremlin and these people, they go, well, the CIA has been interfering in our politics. They were behind these protests against Putin's return to power in the elections. Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, who they're going to blame for some of that. She's potentially running for President 2016. Let's see what we can kind of mess with when it comes to them. So you can see the kind of evolution of how the Internet Research Agency is kind of pushing from domestic to kind of Ukraine, the West, and then thinking, let's take the fight to them.
- [19:45]
David McLoskey
And I guess it's probably still a bit of an open question, at least, you know, sort of outside of. Outside of intelligence agencies, to what extent Prigozhin was being. And. And the Internet Research Agency was being tasked with specific targets by the Kremlin. And I guess maybe, I mean, what you're saying is you don't need to be, because you kind of know, just by virtue of being connected, politically connected, you kind of know what's of interest to Putin and the advisors around him who's disliked the targets are. So you don't need someone to tell you or to be directly controlling this project from the Kremlin. You can kind of freelance yourself and provide useful services to them without them even needing to ask.
- [20:34]
Gordon Carrera
That election is 2016, and yet already in April 2014, the Internet Research Agency is going to create a department which goes by different names, but one was the translator project. Kind of good cover name, but it's going to focus on the US it's going to be okay. Let's see how we can use these kind of dark arts of PR, social media, trolling and push them on US social media platforms, things like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. It's going to have eventually more than 80 employees in that one department. And they're immediately going to start thinking, how can we mess with the American election?
- [21:11]
David McLoskey
And we should say here we're going to talk, of course, a little bit about this now, but we are going to do a proper broader series on Russian involvement in and interference in the 2016 election. There's a lot of different aspects, you know, sort of storylines to that. This is one of them, which we'll talk a little bit about now. But we're going to. We'll treat that in kind of the full detail that it's due at some point later.
- [21:39]
Gordon Carrera
Because I think we're interested here from the point of view of the Internet Research Agency in Prigozhin and his role. I think the key point is that they're starting to think about this in April 2014, so kind of two and a half years out about this kind of information warfare. They've understood social media. Huge impact in the US at that point. Huge audiences in which you can claim to be anonymous or you can create a different identity without any real checks. You can pose as an American without being an American. So you can create different entities and dive into social media and affect it. And of course, this is the bit I think is really interesting, is that if you want to play in that space, you need to understand American culture. And so one of the things they do is they go out and do field research. They send four staff members from the Internet Research Agency out to the United States. In the summer of 2014, they do a 22 day tour of the US which is basically a kind of intelligence gathering operation. I mean, it's not spying, but they're going to go to.
- [22:46]
David McLoskey
Sounds like a boondoggle.
- [22:47]
Gordon Carrera
It does sound like a good trip because they're going to go Nevada. I bet they went to Vegas. California, how nice. New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana Texas, Texas. Texas and New York. All of that in this 22 day trip to basically to understand America so that you know how to do the social media influence. That is a good trip.
- [23:09]
David McLoskey
It's a great trip.
- [23:10]
Gordon Carrera
It's a trip.
- [23:10]
David McLoskey
It depends on where they stayed. My guess is this was not particularly well capitalized by the Internet Research Agency. So who knows where they were staying. I also think, I mean, is this espionage, do you think, Gordon?
- [23:23]
Gordon Carrera
Not really.
- [23:24]
David McLoskey
Right.
- [23:25]
Gordon Carrera
They're literally traveling around talking to Americans. I mean, because they're trying to get a feel for the place to know how they can then manipulate it and play to it. Is it espionage? I don't know. What is it? I think at this point especially it's.
- [23:40]
David McLoskey
I guess, is it, is it espionage if they are undercover Russian intelligence officers?
- [23:45]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. Is it?
- [23:46]
David McLoskey
Well, yes, but not in this case because it's a bunch of, you know, pr. Yahoo. Yeah.
- [23:52]
Gordon Carrera
Pr.
- [23:53]
David McLoskey
Yahoo. From the Internet Research Agency. I, I think it's not. I do think maybe who the person is does matter. So, yeah, if you're working at an entity that is not an intelligent service, even if it's subcontracted in a way that makes it adjacent, maybe it's not. I also think, you know, there's a broader question about in an open society like the States, things that maybe elsewhere could be considered espionage or not. Because, you know, if you get the visa, you're not stealing secrets.
- [24:27]
Gordon Carrera
No.
- [24:27]
David McLoskey
You're just talking to people and interacting with an open society. You know, I think that's, that's not.
- [24:34]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [24:35]
David McLoskey
It's not espionage. Even if the report ends up getting filtered into, you know, an effort to widen cracks that exist in a society that they went to study.
- [24:43]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. So they're going to write up these reports from the trip and they're going to be incredibly valuable. Other people are going to go to Atlanta or other places and it's going to feed into the Data analysis group. So what you can see is they are, they're doing something new here and it's something which I think is off the radar at that point and which no one quite understands or sees and yet is going to be, as we'll see, hugely controversial.
- [25:08]
David McLoskey
I would bet that this information was not being collected by the svr, Russia's Foreign Intelligence service.
- [25:17]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [25:18]
David McLoskey
So I would bet that this is something that was actually, even if the findings might have been somewhat high level or even kind of obvious, a lot of the facts that I presume that they would have included in this report, conversations with ordinary Americans, things like that, whatever that color is probably not making its way into the Kremlin through official intelligence channels. And it reminds me a little bit of some of the types of, like, academic or field reports that the agency might get its hands on that are coming from parts of the world that are of interest to us where there's such a high bar for foreign intelligence that your spy service gathering, it's not secret. It's not. It's not secret. But it's also, if you're an intelligence officer, you're an analyst, you know, you're, you're operating in this world of all of the stuff that you're reading is it's stolen secrets. And yet there's huge swaths of the, the society, the culture that are sort of open but that you might not really have a lot of great information on and actually think it's. It's one of the weaknesses of a spy service is that you end up in these bubbles.
- [26:30]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [26:30]
David McLoskey
Of really classified information that isn't always the most useful stuff, depending on the question you're trying to answer. And I think in this case, again, this gets to the point of, like, Prigozhin as an entrepreneur. This is probably stuff that inside the Kremlin or inside these kind of corridors of power around Putin is really interesting.
- [26:49]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [26:50]
David McLoskey
You know, and I think we'll talk, of course, later about, well, how impactful was any of this stuff really on the election? But you can see how it would have been really, really useful to Prigozhin. And so maybe there, Gordon, with Canada, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton squaring off in really the final weeks and months of the 2016 campaign. Let's take our break. When we come back, we will see how Yevgeny Prigozhin and in the Internet Research Agency Medal to potentially affect the outcome of that election. This episode is brought to you by attio, the CRM for the AI era.
- [27:33]
Gordon Carrera
Now, David, people think that spycraft is just car chases and secret codes, but an awful lot of it is just idling around waiting for the action.
- [27:42]
David McLoskey
It's a bit like starting your own business. You think it's going to be as easy as creating and selling a product, but the reality is business owners spend far too long trying to get their CRM to fit a system not built for them.
- [27:55]
Gordon Carrera
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- [28:04]
David McLoskey
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- [28:19]
Gordon Carrera
Attio even has something called agent collaboration.
- [28:23]
David McLoskey
Yes, but in this case, that means giving people the ability to let AI work seamlessly in the background for them.
- [28:30]
Gordon Carrera
Try Attio for free@attio.com trick.
- [28:42]
David McLoskey
Well, welcome back. We're in the middle of the 2016 election and Yevgeny Prigozhin's trolls at the Internet Research Agency are hard at work. What are they up to, Gordon?
- [28:54]
Gordon Carrera
Well, a lot of it is on Facebook. Remember that? Kids might not know what Facebook is. It was this social media platform.
- [29:01]
David McLoskey
Gordon.
- [29:02]
Gordon Carrera
Gordon.
- [29:02]
David McLoskey
We have a Facebook for the Declassified Club.
- [29:06]
Gordon Carrera
Sorry. Which hopefully Yevgeny Prigozhin's successors are not interfering with as we speak.
- [29:11]
David McLoskey
Yes, I'm apologizing to all of our secret squirrels on behalf of my co host Gordon Carrera. And I will add this to his nut file.
- [29:20]
Gordon Carrera
Thank you very much. There are people creating fake email accounts to go on these Facebook pages, like all4usaoohoo.com and then they purchase yahoo.com yahoo.com.
- [29:33]
David McLoskey
You'Re exposing your vast ignorance about the early stages of the interwebs here.
- [29:41]
Gordon Carrera
They're creating fake accounts, purchasing ads on Facebook and other companies. One of the points is they're pushing ads, particular messages, often division. One of the things we should say is they're kind of pushing both sides, often of an argument. They're just trying to divide.
- [29:58]
David McLoskey
Yeah, that's the point. It's division.
- [30:01]
Gordon Carrera
It's division. And it's also within the kind of playbook of the kgb. You know, if you go back planting stories, smearing candidates, smearing people. You know, there's a long history of that by the KGB in American elections. You know, they tried to undermine Ronald Reagan's candidacy. At various points they spread smear stories about aids. They spread claim that the CIA was.
- [30:23]
David McLoskey
Behind the JFK act, which infected your brain. Listeners to our miniseries, Declassified Club miniseries on the conspiracy theories that sort of come out of this relationship between JFK and the CIA in Cuba.
- [30:37]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. Well, no.
- [30:38]
David McLoskey
Gordon Carrera's synapses were fired and gray matter were fired by KGB conspiracy theories.
- [30:46]
Gordon Carrera
Because that was a kind of KGB planting fake stories, trying to engineer division in American society in the 60s. So they, you know, in a way, they've always done that. That is the kind of KGB Russian playbook. The difference is now they've got a mechanism to do it through social media, which they can use remotely and anonymously which is very effective and largely unpoliced at this time.
- [31:10]
David McLoskey
And I think this says something interesting about the relationship between spy services and contractors eventually. I mean, we'll see when we, when we deal with the story in full that Russia's intel services are involved in this. But it's also being contracted out to the Internet Research Agency.
- [31:27]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [31:27]
David McLoskey
This ostensibly private sector company that's doing this on behalf of the Russian state. So you kind of, you see this blend of. It's essentially a contract effort. Right.
- [31:37]
Gordon Carrera
And that's the Prigozhin story, isn't it?
- [31:39]
David McLoskey
Which would have never happened in the 60s, 70s, 80s in Russia. Very controlled and centralized by the KGB and it's not anymore.
- [31:47]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. And that's the nature of the kind of new Russian state in a way. So, yeah, you get all these posts fostering division. You get kind of blacktivist masquerading as part of the Black Lives matter movement, drawing 350,000 followers. And then you get Heart of Texas, don't know if you remember that one, 250,000 followers. They're playing both sides. One of the bits that's interesting is, you know, they're playing both sides, fostering division, putting out messages. They also organize real world stunts, you know, and I think this is also interesting. It's a bit like, you know, the fact he was organizing fake demos, poisoning people. He's doing. They're doing the same stuff in the American election. You can see the playbook. So they'll have someone in St. Petersburg who'll create a fake identity, say called Matt Skyber, who's 1. He's going to create a Facebook account and then he's going to contact a real American to ask them as a recruiter for a march for Trump rally in New York. They're going to pay for ads for this and they're going to contact this person and give them money to print posters and also get a megaphone. They're kind of organizing flash mobs, you know, protests remotely by engaging with real Americans. All the way from this kind of office in St. Petersburg. This same kind of Russian posing up Matt Skyber. An American is going to recruit a real American to acquire a prison costume. Another person is paid to build a cage for a pickup truck. And then a Twitter account organizes for an actress to dress up as a caged Hillary Clinton in prison uniform in West Palm Beach. So it's interesting, you know, you can see them organizing stunts, basically PR stunts.
- [33:27]
David McLoskey
That's very Prigozhin.
- [33:28]
Gordon Carrera
It's very Prigozhin and this is what's interesting is promoting these rallies using real Americans doing all of this, and they contact about 100 real Americans through these fake accounts. And these people, of course, have got no idea they're dealing with Russians. So it is interesting how ambitious it was and how in some ways how Russian it was. But I guess this is the question, how much difference does it make? I mean, I think it's very, very hard to say how much difference that makes. How many minds did it change? Did it sway an election? I think it's, I don't know. I mean, it's estimated that I think 126 million Americans might have seen the Facebook posts. Now, that sounds like a lot, but when I see a post on social media, does it change my mind? Does it change my view?
- [34:14]
David McLoskey
Unless it's a Kennedy conspiracy that's unlikely to. Then you're hooked. So my hot take on this is that it has very little impact. Some impact, but very little. And I think in, I mean, you know, the decade since almost, there have been a number of leaked reports that have come out from the Internet Research Agency and other sort of disinformation efforts on the part of the Russian state. And what's, what strikes me as, I think is really fascinating about them is how bureaucratic these efforts are and how much of it is a self licking ice cream cone.
- [34:48]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [34:48]
David McLoskey
Where essentially the proof of impact is just the activity itself.
- [34:53]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [34:53]
David McLoskey
And it's often a way, and I think it's a, it's a high profile way. And this is why someone like Yevgeny Prigozhin, I think, would see value in this.
- [35:01]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [35:01]
David McLoskey
Again, think about him, Prigozhin, as this sort of courtier on the outskirts of Putin's medieval sort of center of power. Having these kind of videos is a great way to show that you're, you're important and you're doing something. The actual impact that it has on the outcome in the states or the extent to which Americans are divided.
- [35:23]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [35:24]
David McLoskey
You know, is almost irrelevant. Yeah. And, and a lot of what you see in these leaked documents is this kind of self congratulation on the part of, of, you know, the Russians who are involved in these efforts. And it's, it's very bureaucratic. You know, they're showing this stuff as a way to get more funding.
- [35:39]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [35:39]
David McLoskey
And more access and, you know, sort of, you know, spotlight shown on these efforts internally in Russia. I kind of think, you know, we'll get to the bigger 2016 story. And there were some other elements to the campaign that I think probably had more of an impact. Yeah, but this kind of social media posting, I'm pretty skeptical.
- [35:57]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, no, I think I'm the same. And I agree. I think some of the other stuff that actually Russian intelligence did in terms of hacking the DNC and some of those issues that possibly had more impact. But the one thing I think it does have an impact on is I think how many votes it changed, I think is almost impossible to know. And I agree it's probably not much. It does kind of sour the information environment because the combination of kind of social media disinformation, the possibility that had an impact, all of this is going to kind of create a kind of confusion, a noise around what's truth, who's who on the Internet, who's trying to manipulate me. And in a way it's exporting that Russian world of, you know, nothing is true, everything is possible from the Russian media environment into the Western media environment. You know, and I think that's one of the big legacies of it is the kind of. Yeah. The disruption and the lack of trust it creates in information which, which is ultimately to the kind of Kremlin's long term benefit, I think.
- [37:03]
David McLoskey
But it really is, I guess in the wake of this effort that Prigozhin becomes known.
- [37:10]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [37:11]
David McLoskey
Inside the US and really it kind of puts a target on his back in a way. Not, not literally, but he's the FBI, the agency sort of become aware that this guy is, is responsible for the souring of this information environment.
- [37:27]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. Nothing is, I mean it's interesting because nothing at the time public links his company concord with the whole interference. He always at this point denies it. There's a kind of maze of shell companies. It looks like the Internet Research Agency is run by some kind of political technologist as they're called, some PR people. But there's a brilliant clue which comes actually from the Internet Research Agency itself. Because at the end of May 2016, some of those people in St. Petersburg, some of the trolls, are going to convince an unnamed American in Washington D.C. to stand in front of the White House holding a sign and to be pictured doing so. And the sign says Happy 55th birthday, dear boss. And the dear boss was Prigozhin, whose birthday was coming up. Because you can imagine it's like the birthday card from the guys at the Internet Research Agency going, look, you know, here's someone in front of the White House saying happy Birthday. But it also kind of makes clear he's the boss.
- [38:28]
David McLoskey
That is sort of classically Prigozhin. Right. I mean, it's. The people below him are essentially mirroring something that he would have done to the people above him. Yeah, it's a Curry favor. Exactly.
- [38:42]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. And I mean, that detail comes from the indictment that the US is going to issue in 2018 over the interference. And that indictment is going to kind of link Prigozhin, Internet Research Agency, Concord Catering, and kind of point to the connections between them all and that he's behind it and he's going to actually appear on the FBI's most wanted list at that point and there's going to be sanctions on him. And that is, I think, uncomfortable for him because I think he has wanted to kind of keep a low profile, at least in this kind of space, that he's doing these kind of things, you know, and he's kept his businesses at arm's length. He is getting rich. Not super rich. You know, the estimate is by 2016, he's worth maybe $110 million, maybe a bit more. Pretty. Pretty good.
- [39:31]
David McLoskey
You consider this to be not super.
- [39:33]
Gordon Carrera
Rich by Russian oligarchs. Okay, okay.
- [39:35]
David McLoskey
That's an important.
- [39:38]
Gordon Carrera
Standard.
- [39:39]
David McLoskey
That's right.
- [39:39]
Gordon Carrera
And I was like, but he's got.
- [39:42]
David McLoskey
The yacht to review that BBC contract.
- [39:44]
Gordon Carrera
He's got the yacht, the private jets. He's got a vintage powder blue Lincoln Continental car, interesting big estate outside St. Petersburg, full basketball court.
- [39:53]
David McLoskey
He doesn't strike me as looking at his physique, that he was a basketball player.
- [39:58]
Gordon Carrera
No, no, because we should say by this point, he's kind of big, balding, bit of swagger, but not.
- [40:05]
David McLoskey
Yeah, not a basketball guy.
- [40:07]
Gordon Carrera
Not a basketball guy. Yeah. No. He's coming into public view. And I think with the indictments, with the US Election, I think that is a problem for him because he's worried about that he's going to lose his private jets. They're going to get impounded. So he goes on the offense and he kind of basically says, I've got nothing to do with the Internet Research Agency. He's going to employ. And this is going to be another thing. He pioneers that kind of thing, which is called lawfare, which is using lawyers to kind of go after your enemies and using the law to go after them. Because he's going to employ DC Lawyers and later he's going to employ London lawyers to both fight the charges, but also go after journalists and others who say that he is behind the Internet Research Agency and he's going to deny any links to the state. One of the interesting things is then Putin starts getting asked about Prigozhin and he compares Prigozhin to George Soros, the Hungarian philanthropist who supports liberal causes around the world. And the point that Putin is making is like, these are just people, rich people pursuing their own private endeavors. And Putin, I love this. Putin kind of mocks the west for falling so low as to suspect a restaurateur from Russia of influencing the US election. He's like, how could you think this chef could possibly influence your election?
- [41:26]
David McLoskey
Sure, he may have a prison tattoo on his back carved in by with soot and urine, but he's just a chef. He's just a chef.
- [41:34]
Gordon Carrera
How can your election be influenced by this chef? And Prigozhin himself kind of denies it. And he's gonna deny it actually until, I mean, the eve of his death only. Don't wanna give that away too much, just plot spoiler.
- [41:47]
David McLoskey
We need our producer Becky to get her bleep gun ready. Get that Next time you issue a.
- [41:52]
Gordon Carrera
Spoiler, a spoiler that Pragoza may not survive. It's only at the very end of this story, let's put it that way, that he'll actually admit he was behind the Internet research agent. He's going to deny it all that time. And that's partly about him trying to, I think, protect his wealth effectively.
- [42:08]
David McLoskey
So, Gordon, I think there with this picture of a man who's a restaurateur, a PR and disinformation tycoon, we obviously have the building blocks of someone who is going to become a mercenary leader. Obvious, obviously, but let's leave it there. Next time we will see how Prigozhin takes this leap into running what will become known as Wagner Group and its forays into Ukraine, Syria and some other really terrible parts of the world. But, but remember, if you don't want to wait and nothing ever good came by waiting, go to thereestisclassified.com join the declassified club. Get early access to this entire series Binge. Listen, we hope you join. We'll see you next time.
- [43:02]
Gordon Carrera
See you next time.