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The following analysis was authored by Tablet Magazine columnist and CAM editorial advisor Lee Smith:
After Ukrainian forces struck Russian data centers this week, word spread quickly on the internet that social media interaction with pro-Moscow influencers and institutions dropped precipitously. It appeared to be evidence that the popularity of, for instance, antisemitic podcaster Tucker Carlson and the pro-Russian German political party AfD were due less to their intrinsic appeal than to Moscow’s manipulation of social media algorithms through the use of automated accounts, or bots.
And the fact that a country under Russian attack for more than four years managed to pull the curtain back from Vladmir Putin’s propaganda machine was reason for celebration. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put it, “It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms.” There was, he continued, “less hate, less division, and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots. And it’s pretty clear where those bots were coming from.”
But it seems that the bots disabled by the strikes on the Yandex data centers were not the ones responsible for proliferating Russian propaganda. After a thorough investigation into the initial claims, researchers found that the Ukrainian strikes had little effect on how Russia’s bot army weaponizes fear and hate to incite paranoia and undermine social cohesion.
Nonetheless, Zelensky deserves credit for pulling off a successful information operation of his own. By seizing on the opportunity created by his country’s military strikes on Russian data centers, and the attention they generated throughout Europe and North America, he illuminated a very dark corner of the globe’s communications ecosystem — the conspiracy theories, the anti-US, anti-Ukraine, anti-Israel messaging, and the antisemitism filling the online sewer are typically the work of foreign powers hostile to the West. And Russia is only one of the culprits.
Younger social media users who trawl platforms like X and Instagram regularly know very well that much of the content pushed on to their feed isn’t organic. But other users who have increasingly come to rely on social media as a news source are likely to be deceived by accounts whose purpose is not to inform customers but rather influence them, and often in very destructive ways.
For instance, according to a new study published by the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Antisemitism Research Center (ARC), more than 40% of the accounts engaging with the most widely shared posts by prominent X news aggregator Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) are bots or fake profiles.
Nawfal is a Lebanese-Australian crypto entrepreneur whose X account, with some four million followers, regularly relays propaganda originating from Russia, Qatar, and other regimes that push anti-American and anti-Israel narratives. The accounts promoting his posts ensure broader reach, which is further supplemented by the fake profiles and bots laundering propaganda back into the communications ecosystem where it is designed to deceive unsuspecting users.
The stakes are high. For instance, consider that fact that so many MAGA social media accounts, many anonymous, evince anti-Ukraine sentiment or anti-Israel hostility, even as the vast majority of real-life Donald Trump voters tell pollsters and journalists that their support for Israel is as strong as ever and their worries about Putin are unchanged. The divide between those two positions, one manufactured and the other organic, is evidence of a foreign propaganda campaign purposed to sway American opinion in a direction that will damage U.S. interests.
The adversaries of the West are getting more sophisticated in their efforts to divide us. A report last week from OpenAI documented an Iranian operation that used artificial intelligence to disguise its origins, create fake journalists, and disseminate anti-U.S. and anti-Israel talking points regarding the war against Iran and its proxies.
OpenAI calls this information operation “Bogus Bylines,” because of the make-believe journalists Iran used as false fronts to launder propaganda about U.S. military operations, Israeli political instability, etc. that had been through ChatGPT. According to the report, nearly 100 articles purposed to undermine support for Trump’s Iran policy, that were supposedly written by journalists with Western-sounding names including Ervin B. Hoskins, Noah Lamington, and Sophia Gonzalez, were published or syndicated by news outlets around the world. The earliest phony stories appeared in July 2025, or shortly after the 12-day war in June 2025, and production noticeably increased after the outbreak of the 2026 conflict.
Once a fabricated article appeared under the banner of a legitimate publication, it acquired credibility that an openly Iranian propaganda outlet could never command. Further, the operation piggybacked on the targeted publication’s social media channels, which carried the material to unsuspecting X or Instagram users. In other words, the Iranians and other hostile actors are taking their propaganda one step further, by making their messages appear to originate inside the societies they are targeting.
Social media platforms know that hostile actors are keen to subvert Western societies. According to X’s Global Government Affairs team, the platform “recently identified and suspended more than 13,000 accounts involved in three suspected foreign influence operations linked to Iran, Russia, and China that targeted U.S. political conversation. The networks used inauthentic accounts to post and amplify content about US politics, targeting candidates and public figures across the political spectrum.”
The problem is that the big platforms aren’t doing enough to protect what the early tech optimists called a global public square. Because the platforms too frequently fail to enforce their safety and speech policies, they’ve allowed their spaces to become more like kill zones where users are targeted by hostile actors at home and abroad with the result that our peace and prosperity are under attack.
Foreign intelligence services have no First Amendment rights to destabilize American society by promoting antisemitism, or jeopardize U.S. interests by disseminating Russian, Iranian, and Chinese propaganda. Even before Zelensky shined a light on foreign information operations this week, X and others knew where the bots were coming from, and who was sowing hate and discord.
Read more:
The Kremlin’s Antisemitism Machine and Its War Against the West: A Q&A With Author David Reaboi
On Epstein-Mossad Conspiracy Theories, All Roads Lead to Moscow
From the ‘Protocols’ to Podcasts: How Russia Turned Antisemitism Into a Weapon Against America
