Russia-linked bots hone attack plans for 2018
Midterm elections to be battleground
Bloomberg News
WASHINGTON — After violent protests rocked Charlottesville, Va., last month, Republican Sen. JohnMcCain took to Twitter to condemn hatred and bigotry and urge President Donald Trump to speak out more forcefully.
Then pro-Russian bots got activated on social media.
Within hours, an online campaign attacking Mr. McCain — a frequent Mr. Trump critic — began circulating, amplified with the help of automated and human-coordinated networks known as bots and cyborgs linking to blogs on “Traitor McCain” and the hashtag #ExplainMcCain.
After the 2016 U.S. presidential race was subject to Russian cybermeddling, analysts say the ferocity of more recent assaults is a preview of what could be coming in the 2018 elections, when Republicans will be defending their control of both chambers of Congress.
“They haven’t stood still since 2016,” said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow in information defense at the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council in Washington, which tracked the activity. “People have woken up to the idea that bots equal influence and lots of people will be wanting to be influencing the midterms.”
While special counsel and former FBI chief Robert Mueller keeps investigating the 2016 race, Mr. Nimmo’s work is among a number of initiatives cropping up at think tanks, startups, and even the Pentagon seeking to grasp how bots and influence operations are rapidly evolving. Blamed for steering political debate last year, bots used for Russian propaganda and other causes are only becoming more emboldened, researchers say.
“They’re prepping the battlefield and sowing seeds of discord” and “potentially laying the groundwork for what they’re going to do in 2018 or 2020,” said Laura Rosenberger, senior fellow and director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund.
The alliance last month unveiled Hamilton 68, an online dashboard designed to track Russian influence operations on Twitter with the hope of better highlighting sources of information.
The site culls real-time data from 600 Twitter users, analyzing trending hashtags, topics and links. The dashboard’s developers say the accounts they selected cover those likely controlled by Russian government influence operations. Other accounts are pro-Russia users that may be loosely connected to the government and some are people influenced by the first two groups and who are active in bolstering Russian media themes. Some are bot accounts.
“Our view is that exposure is a really important element of beginning to push back on some of these efforts,” said Ms. Rosenberger, who served at the National Security Council and the State Department in the Obama administration.
Short for “robot,” internet bots come in a couple of forms. There are automated versions in which software pumps out posts from social media accounts, often at rates that a human couldn’t conceivably do. Others are dubbed cyborgs — some of their content is automatically spit out, but a person also takes over posting at times. They can also be human-run accounts that are hacked or taken over by a robot.
Not all bots are nefarious. Although researchers say pro-Russian operatives exploiting social media have made headlines lately, the use of bots is broadening as they prove they can be influential in moving narratives from niche circles and the fringes of the internet to a wider audience.