Following the misinformation spread about the Southport attacker, questions have been raised about the role state actors, particularly Russia, could have played in spreading rumours and pushing divisive content. Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent, even came forward to say there was ‘clear Russian involvement’ in instigating the far-right riots on social media following the attacks in Southport.
However, subsequent investigations found the original rumour claiming the Southport attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker had no clear link to Russia. All accusations against Russia were quickly forgotten and we slowly saw the rhetoric change towards how we must stop blaming Russia for all our problems.
One such example was an article in Spiked claiming that it is ‘a very self-absorbed, UK-centric view to assume that a Putin priority is to destabilise the UK’ and that the country ‘has rather bigger and more urgent concerns than to exploit a terrible crime in an English seaside town’.
Are we thinking of the same country? If I recall correctly, this is the same country that two months ago deposited fake coffins under the Eiffel Tower with the inscription ‘French soldiers of Ukraine’. The Russian state absolutely does have better things to do, but that does not stop them from meddling in Western affairs and it never has.
The Soviets were well-known to be the ultimate masters of this art. The Kremlin has previously led people to believe AIDS was a virus created by the US Government and that the CIA was responsible for JFK’s assassination. Spreading disinformation has only become easier since then with social media. Before, the Soviets had to rely on slowly feeding false stories to different media publications. Now, just one post can wreak chaos across continents, and few resources are needed to make it happen.
The existence of ‘bot farms’ in Russia, which hire people to spread disinformation deliberately, should be evidence enough of the Kremlin’s less than honourable intentions. With artificial intelligence, these have only become more sophisticated and easier to manage. Just last month, US officials uncovered a ‘bot farm’ which used AI to create fake accounts posing as Americans and sharing pro-Kremlin content. The farm was created by the deputy editor of the state-owned RT which the US Justice Department described as an attempt ‘to sow discord in the United States by spreading disinformation’.
Russian attempts to destabilise Western countries are not confined to social media. There’s evidence of Russian influence in all corners of our societies. For example, the German fintech company Wirecard, recently exposed as a fraud, was found to have links to Russian intelligence through its COO, Jan Marsalek.
The investigation BBC Verify did into the rumours surrounding the Southport attacker acknowledges that Russian state actors were involved in pushing forward disinformation surrounding the attack. Russian state-owned media has already capitalised on of the riots across the UK. They use the unrest to fit their narrative of Russia being a haven of peace and common sense in comparison to the chaos of the West. One headline on the Russian-state media site ‘Lenta’ read, ‘Local people beat up migrants after one of them attacked children’. In reality, of course, the attacker was not a migrant.
I still have my suspicions about the origin of the rumour regarding the Southport attacker as Channel3Now is largely credited with propagating the original rumour about the Southport attacker, a site which uses AI to report stories as quickly as possible and earn as much revenue as possible from it. The Russians have used AI-powered news channels in the past just like Channel3Now to spread their own propaganda.
But whether I’m right or wrong, the fact remains that Russia continues to have inordinate influence on Western societies. This is by no means to say that we don’t have a lot to reflect on as a country following the riots in Southport, but we must remain more vigilant about enemy states seeking to destabilise Western states, particularly with the rise of AI. Russia’s disinformation campaign and efforts to divide and undermine Western societies are some of its biggest successes, and we never seem to realise it even when it’s staring us in the face.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/W. Bulach
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