SDA’s Foreign Malign Influence Plans for the 2024 U.S. Election

1. The Good Old U.S.A, Project
2. SDA records show that, starting in the fall of 2023, SDA began developing a campaign targeting the 2024 U.S. federal elections which it called “The Good Old U.S.A. Project.”[i] See Exhibit 8. According to the planning document, the project’s goal was to influence U.S. public opinion to align with the viewpoint “that the US should target their effort towards addressing its domestic issues instead of wasting money in Ukraine and other ‘problem’regions.” The document laid out objectives and specific demographics for targeting U.S. audiences (including specific messaging to voters in six swing states) through social media groups, social media advertising, and influencers. The document specifically refers to the content to be distributed by SDA as “bogus stories disguised as newsworthy events.” These “bogus” stories would be complimented by “Mass distribution of text comnents and memes in Facebook and X (Twitter) discussion threads.” This commentary campaign” would spread “false reworked project narratives supported by facts ” and engage in “targeted social engineering based on information trends and users ‘emotional attitude towards them.”
3. The Good Old U.S.A Project specifically highlighted the use of “Targeted advertising” on social media that would enable SDA to track Americans reactions “to the distributed material in real time, and directing the psychological response group to contribute to comments thereof. With the help of a network of bots, the psychological response moderates top discussions and adjust further launches depending on which group was affected the most.”
4. The use of targeted advertising by Doppelganger is corroborated by records obtained from Meta pursuant to a warrant, which identified Meta pages and advertisements linked to the Doppelganger campaign. Notably, those records revealed Doppelganger’s apparent use of artificial intelligence tools to generate content, including images and videos, for use in negative advertisements about U.S. politicians. Several of these Meta accounts were registered with account names that approximate legitimate news media organizations, such as CNN California, Sacramento Inside, California News, and California BBC (screenshots from the Meta pages created by Doppelganger are contained below). The CNN California Facebook Page’s profile picture displayed a blue version of the legitimate CNN logo with California written underneath in the same shade of blue. The Page was listed on Facebook as a News and Media website and had a banner in blue with the CNN logo also in blue that read BREAKING HOT NEWS I/ HOT NEWS Ill and LIVEHD // TODAY. Meta records also revealed that Doppelganger used credit cards issued by U.S. financial institutions to purchase Facebook advertisements.

[i] In the original Russian-language document, the words “The Good Old U.S.A.” were written in English This document followed a design template frequently used by SDA, featuring a red and black color scheme; a common Cyrillic font; bolded, numerical section headers; and logo in the bottom left of cach page. Based on my review of documents obtained during this investigation, I know this template is frequently used by SDA employees.