Bots, trolls mess with Texas again
Group says Russians tried stoking tensions in wake of Austin bombings
AUSTIN — Russian bots and trolls tried to stoke racial tensions online this week as police hunted for the Austin bomber terrorizing Texas’ capital city, according to a group that tracks Russian activity in the U.S.
The Alliance for Securing Democracy shows on its website that there was a dramatic spike — a 1,000 percent increase — in activity on social media sites by Russian affiliated accounts starting Monday. On social media platforms like Twitter, Russian bots were fanning suggestions that media weren’t covering the bombings because the first victims of the attacks were black or Hispanic.
The nonprofit, bipartisan group tracks hundreds of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots linked to Russia. That includes those tied to known Russian propaganda outlets as well as automated bots that launch high volumes of posts that closely mirror hundreds of other accounts. Bots are a type of chat tool used in in social media networks to automatically create and send messages.
The fact that the Austin bombing became a target is not totally unexpected.
According to the alliance — housed at the Washington offices of the German Marshall Fund,
fosters trans-Atlantic cooperation — the same thing happened after the Parkland, Fla., school shooting. And in congressional hearings last year, intelligence officials outlined how Russian-linked Facebook pages helped coordinate a dangerous confrontation between antiMuslim groups and their critics in downtown Houston.
Sowing dissension
U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, a Republican from outside of San Antonio, has been trying to sound the alarm over nefarious Russian activities. Last week he lauded new sanctions placed on Russia because of their meddling in U.S. politics and government.
“Russia will stop at nothing to erode trust in our democratic institutions,” said Hurd, a former CIA undercover officer.
Hurd has lamented that the hypercharged political environment in the U.S. these days is making it easier for Russians to achieve their goal of sowing even more dissension.
As in past cases, Russian bots try to amplify posts that create wedges between Americans along racial or religious lines.
The tactics are confusing and difficult to understand, even for foreign policy experts.
On one hand, Russia is trying to show it is still a force that has to be dealt with, and on the other they are becoming more isolated as their activities are condemned around the globe and result in more sanctions, said Joshua Shifrinson, who teaches a course in U.S. foreign relations and international security at Texas A&M University.
“I don’t think anyone fully understands what the Russian end game is here,” Shifrinson said.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is leaving the administration at the end of this month, last week called Russia’s recent activities troubling.
“Russia must assess carefully as to how its actions are in the best interest of the Russian people and of the world more broadly,” Tillerson said.
Yet the activity is still ongoing. Tillerson has warned that the Russians were already attempting to interfere in U.S. midterm elections. And just last week, the Trump administration announced that recent Russian government cyber actions targeted the U.S. energy grid, water resources and critical manufacturing sectors.
Past experience
That announcement came on the same day new sanctions were placed against Russia, including some punishments aimed at the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that is accused of pushing politically divisive posts in America during the 2016 presidential election.
That is what happened in Houston in 2016 outside the Islamic Da’wah Center, according to Congress. In May 2016, a rally that pitted people waving White Lives Matter signs against people with bullhorns denouncing them, was staged by Russianbacked social media groups that were trying to incite unrest.
In the days before the rally, a Russian-linked group calling itself the Heart of Texas called on people in Houston to attend a rally to “Stop the Islamification of Texas.” It included encour agement for people to bring firearms.
At the same time, another Russian-linked group promoted a counter rally at the same location at the same time, urging people to “Save Islamic Knowledge.”
The rally grew raucous at times but was mostly peaceful.
The Texas targets were just a small part of the tidal wave of digital misinformation spread by Russians in 2016. According to congressional testimony from leading internet content platforms, about 126 million Facebook users saw content from Russians during the presidential election year and more than 1,100 videos related to Russian efforts were posted on YouTube. In addition, there were an estimated 1.4 million tweets from more than 36,000 Russian bots.