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SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE UNITED STATES SENATE

COMMITTEE SENSITIVE -RUSSIA investigation ONLY 116TH CONGRESS 1st Session SENATE (U)REPOR T OF THE REPORT 116-XX SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE UNITED STATES SENATE ON RUSSIAN ACTIVE MEASURE;S CAMPAIGNS AND INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 ELECTION ' VOLUME 2: RUSSIA'S USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA WITH ADDITIONAL VIEWS 1 COMMITTEE SENSITIVE -RUSSIA investigation ONLY COMMITTEE SENSITIVE-RUSSIA investigation ONLY CONTENTS I. (U) INTRODUCTION .. 3 II. (U) FINDINGS .. 4 III. (U) THE REACH OF SOCIAL MEDIA .. 8 IV. (U) RUSSIAN USE OF DISINFORMATION.

committee sensitive - russia investigation only 116th congress 1st session senate (u)repor t of the report 116-xx select committee on intelligence united states senate on russian active measure;s campaigns and interference in the 2016 u.s. election volume 2: ' russia's use of social media with additional views 1

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Transcription of SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE UNITED STATES SENATE

1 COMMITTEE SENSITIVE -RUSSIA investigation ONLY 116TH CONGRESS 1st Session SENATE (U)REPOR T OF THE REPORT 116-XX SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE UNITED STATES SENATE ON RUSSIAN ACTIVE MEASURE;S CAMPAIGNS AND INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 ELECTION ' VOLUME 2: RUSSIA'S USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA WITH ADDITIONAL VIEWS 1 COMMITTEE SENSITIVE -RUSSIA investigation ONLY COMMITTEE SENSITIVE-RUSSIA investigation ONLY CONTENTS I. (U) INTRODUCTION .. 3 II. (U) FINDINGS .. 4 III. (U) THE REACH OF SOCIAL MEDIA .. 8 IV. (U) RUSSIAN USE OF DISINFORMATION.

2 11 A. (U) Russian Active Measures.. 12 B. (U) Russia's Military and Information Warfare .. 13 C. (U) Russia's Weaponization of Social Media .. 14 D. (U) Russian Social Media Tactics .. : .. 15 E. (U) Features of Russian Active Measures .. 20 V. (U) THE INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY .. 22 A. (U) Y evgeniy Prigozhin and the Kremlin .. 23 B. (U) IRA Operations ..' .. 24 C. (U) The Role of the IRA Troll .. 25 D. (U) Troll Narratives .. 28 VI. (U) IRA ACTIVITIES AGAINST THE UNITED STATES IN 2016 .. 29 A. (U) Origins of IRA Activity in the UNITED STATES .

3 29 B. (U) IRA Operations Explicitly Targeting the 2016 Election .. 32 C. (U) Other IRA Operations Targeting Politicians and Society .. 37 D. (U) IRA Use of Paid Advertisements .. 40 E. (U) The IRA Information Warfare Campaign .. 41 F. (U) Ongoing IRA Activities .. 42 VII. (U) IRA USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA BY PLATFORM .. 43 VIII. (U) OTHER RUSSIAN SOCIAL MEDIA INFORMATION WARFARE EFFORTS .. :. 63 A. (U) Main INTELLIGENCE Directorate (GRU) .. 63 B.. 69 C. (U) Other Russian Government Activities .. 70 IX. (U) GOVERNMENT RESPONSE.

4 71 X. (U) THE COMMITTEE 'S REVIEW OF RUSSIA'S USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA .. 76 XI. (U) RECOMMENPATIONS .. 78 A. (U) Industry Measures .. 78 B. (U) Congressional Measures .. 80 C. (U) Executive Branch Measures .. 81 D. (U) Other Measures .. : .. 81 XII. (U) Additional Views of Senator Wyd~n .. , .. 83 2 COMMITTEE SENSITIVE -RUSSIA investigation ONLY L_ COMMITTEE SENSITIVE -RUSSIA investigation ONLY I. (U) INTRODUCTION In 2016, Russian operatives associated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) used social media to conduct an information warfare campaign designed to spread disinformation and societal division in the UNITED STATES .

5 1 Masquerading as Americans, these operatives used targeted advertisements, intentionally falsified news articles, self-generated content, and social media platform tools to interact with and attempt to deceive tens of millions of social media users in the UNITED STATES . This campaign sought to polarize Americans on the basis of societal, ideological, and racial differences, provoked real world events, and was part of a foreign government's covert support of Russia's favored candidate in the presidential election.

6 -~ ' < -,' , ~ ~' ,I - , ~ , , < (U) The SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE on INTELLIGENCE undertook a study of these events, consistent with its congressional mandate to oversee and conduct oversight of the INTELLIGENCE activities and programs of the UNITED STATES Government, to include the effectiveness of the INTELLIGENCE Community's counterintelligence function. In addition to the work of the professional staff of the COMMITTEE , the COMMITTEE 's findings drew from the input of cybersecurity professionals, social media companies, law enforcement and INTELLIGENCE agencies, and researchers and experts in social network analysis, political content, disinformation, hate speech, algorithms, and automation, working under the auspices of the COMMITTEE 's Technical Advisory Group (TAG).

7 3 The efforts of these TAG researchers led to I the release of two public reports on the IRA's information warfare campaign, based on data provided to the COMMITTEE by the social media companies. 4 These reports provided the 1 (U) For purposes of this Volume, "information warfare" refers to Russia's strategy for the use and management of information to pursue a competitive advantage. See Congressional Research Service, Defense Primer: Information Operations, December 18, 2018. 2 3 (U) The TAG is an external group of experts the COMMITTEE consults for substantive technical advice on topics of importance to COMMITTEE activities and oversight.

8 In this case, the COMMITTEE requested the assistance of two independent working groups, each with the technical capabilities and expertise required to analyze the data. The two working groups were led by three TAG members, with John Kelly, the founder and CEO of the social media analytics firm Graphika, and Phil Howard, an expert academic researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, leading . one working group, and Renee DiResta, the Director of Research at New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company dedicated to protecting the public sphere from disinformation attacks, leading the other.

9 4 (U) Renee DiResta, Dr. Kris Shaffer, Becky Ruppel, David Sullivan, Robert Matney, Ryan Fox, Dr. Jonathan Albright, and Ben Johnson, "The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency," New Knowledge, December 17, 2018, ; Phil Howard, Bharath Ganesh, Dimitra Liotsiou, John Kelly, and Camille Francois, "The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the UNITED STATES , 2012-2018," Computational Propaganda Research Project, Oxford Internet Institute, December 2018, 3 COMMITTEE SENSITIVE -RUSSIA investigation ONLY COMMITTEE SENSITIVE -RUSSIA investigation ONLY COMMITTEE , social media companies, law enforcement, international partners, fellow researchers and academics.

10 And the American public with an enhanced understanding of how Russia-based actors, at the direction of the Russian government, effectuated a sustained campaign of information warfare against the UNITED STATES aimed at influencing how this nation's citizens think about themselves, their government, and their fellow Americans. The COMMITTEE supports the findings therein. (U) The COMMITTEE also engaged directly with a number of social media companies in the course of this study. The willingness of these companies to meet with Members and ~taff, share the results of internal investigations, and provide evidence of foreign influence activity collected from their platforms was indispensable to this study.


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