Good morning. Yesterday, the Guardian published the results of an eight-month investigation into a team of Israeli contractors who claim to have covertly influenced more than 30 elections around the world through hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media.
The Disinfo black ops project, produced in partnership with journalists from 30 outlets including Haaretz, Le Monde and Der Spiegel, exposed the workings of “Team Jorge”, and, partly through undercover reporting, identified the former Israeli special forces operative who runs it, Tal Hanan. He denies any wrongdoing.
This morning, a new story reveals one example of how Hanan’s team worked: a campaign to influence a vital 2015 presidential election in Nigeria, which occurred alongside a tandem campaign by the notorious political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. One slide from a presentation about Team Jorge’s work, describing how opposition political advisers in Nigeria were bombarded with calls to render their phones useless, reads: “Wrecking havoc during African election day”.
These revelations are important for the specific light they shed on Team Jorge’s influence on elections and commercial disputes. But they also have a wider significance: as a shaft of light on a global online disinformation industry whose influence largely goes unseen.
Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s investigations correspondent Manisha Ganguly, is about what we’ve learned – and how much is still going on in the shadows. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Scotland | Nicola Sturgeon has resigned as Scotland’s first minister in a surprise decision that has thrown the Scottish National party into turmoil, triggering its first leadership contest in nearly 20 years. See Severin Carrell and Libby Brooks’ analysis of the impact of Sturgeon’s decision here, and the runners and riders to succeed her here.
Labour | Jeremy Corbyn has accused Keir Starmer of a “flagrant attack” on democracy after his successor as party leader barred him from standing as a Labour candidate at the next election. Allies say that Corbyn, who was suspended from being a Labour MP because of a row over the extent of antisemitism in the party, is now likely to run as an independent.
UK news | Two teenagers have been charged with the murder of the transgender girl Brianna Ghey. Both defendants were refused bail and remanded into youth detention accommodation. Police are pursuing several lines of inquiry, including whether the 16-year-old’s killing was a hate crime.
UK news | Nicola Bulley was graded as a “high-risk” missing person the day she disappeared, owing to “some significant issues with alcohol”, police said. Lancashire constabulary said there was no evidence of a crime and it was taking the “unusual step” of providing private details to avoid “speculation or misinterpretation”.
Social media | Twitter chief executive Elon Musk ordered engineers to reconfigure the platform’s algorithm so his tweets would be more widely viewed, it has been reported. A disgruntled Musk made the move after a tweet he sent during the Super Bowl failed to achieve as much engagement as one from Joe Biden.
In depth: Five key takeaways from the Disinfo black ops investigation
In recent years, the disinformation-for-hire business – where private companies take on contracts to create or amplify misleading narratives online to the benefit of their clients – has been booming. In 2021, the Oxford Internet Institute found evidence of private firms running social media manipulation campaigns in 48 countries the previous year, nearly double the figure for 2019. But by its covert nature, this is an industry whose true impact, and practices, are difficult to pin down.
That’s part of why the revelations from the Guardian and its partners about Team Jorge are so important. “This is the first time we’ve really seen, close up, how disinformation mercenaries work,” said Manisha Ganguly, one of the reporters on the Disinfo black ops project. “We’ve been aware of bots operating on Twitter and Facebook, but the sheer scale of this operation, just from one unit, is staggering.”
Here are some of the key insights to emerge from the investigation.
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It isn’t just about elections
As stories about work by Team Jorge to meddle in presidential votes in Nigeria and Kenya make clear, disinformation poses a direct threat to the trustworthy operation of electoral democracy. Founder Tal Hanan (above) claims to have influenced 33 “presidential-level elections”.
But there is also a booming trade in assignments for corporate clients that appear to enjoy insidious influence over democracy in a wider sense, by secretly shaping public opinion on everything from the yachting industry in Monaco to the awarding of PPE contracts in the UK. Team Jorge does not appear to have discriminated – and even where there is now evidence of the impact, the original client may remain unaccountable.
“We see everything from election talking points to commercial disputes to private individuals with a vendetta,” Manisha said. “Even where there are clues as to who is behind it, the evidence is still circumstantial.”
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Social media disinformation doesn’t exist in a vacuum
“In the past, online disinformation campaigns appeared to work in isolation,” Manisha said. “What’s so powerful about this example is that they’re not just doing the disinformation, they’re also involved in ‘on the ground’ operations. That’s a really dangerous combination.”
As an example: reporters were able to identify a fake protest staged outside a company headquarters in London where masked protesters filmed themselves waving placards – a stunt that was then circulated on social media.
If it was ever sensible to treat social media as a discrete venue that can be ignored while continuing to trust other channels of information, the revelations about Team Jorge explode that idea. In one case, France’s most watched news channel, BFMTV, has suspended anchor Rachid M’Barki and launched an internal investigation over a news package which Tal Hanan claimed to have influenced, and a number of others broadcast by the channel. (It is not clear if Hanan’s team truly planted the stories, while M’Barki has denied any intentional misconduct and said his stories were “real and verified”.)
“That goes to show how insidious this network is,” Manisha said. “Let’s say a client approaches Team Jorge, they start a bot campaign, then use contacts in the media to run these news reports, and then this report is again amplified by the bot network. From the outside, it really looks like legitimate media coverage being shared by a specific group of angry citizens. There is a direct link between the online and offline world.“
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Disinformation networks keep getting more sophisticated
By comparing two versions of the software used by Team Jorge to create and control fake online profiles, Advanced Impact Media Solutions (Aims), it is possible to see how quickly the field is progressing – and getting harder for social networks to catch.
“In six years, you can really see the evolution of the technology,” Manisha said. “The posts by the early version are very ‘bot like’, and you have to manually add friends or contacts and accept requests. With the new version, it’s all automated, and according to Hanan, the bots are harnessing AI to put out more convincing posts.”
Part of what’s remarkable about the bots created by Aims, many of which Manisha analysed, is how they are bolstered by an entire fake online identity – linking a variety of social media accounts to an SMS-verified phone number and Amazon profile with an attached credit card, for example. You might think of spy thrillers where agents are given a “legend”, with everything from a passport to a fake family. This isn’t about Twitter eggs any more.
“It’s very good at mimicking how human beings genuinely behave online,” Manisha said. “So, for example, a British account is made to amplify everything from the BBC to posts about the queen or the weather – even a stolen photo of someone getting engaged, or posts about having panic attacks. Once the credibility is cemented, they start attacking an entity – and it looks like a real person becoming enraged by reading the news. It seems organic.”
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Social networks and communication systems are still vulnerable
Hanan claims to have created a network of 30,000 fake social media profiles, and in collaboration with reporters at Le Monde and Der Spiegel, Manisha was able to identify 2,000 of them on Facebook and Twitter. (Meta, Facebook’s owner, took down Aims-linked bots, while Twitter asked the Guardian for details of the bots post-publication so they can investigate.) “This is a very difficult and recurring problem,” Manisha said. “But there are questions over whether social media platforms are paying as much attention as they should.”
Again – it’s not just about social media. Hanan told undercover reporters that he was able to hack into highly sensitive document drives and messaging systems, suggesting he did so by exploiting vulnerabilities in the global telecoms signalling system SS7 – regarded as a weak spot for years.
“When you set up an online account, two-factor authentication is often the security,” Manisha said. “But if that occurs over SMS, that can be intercepted, and anyone anywhere can hijack your account.” (Useful advice for anyone: two-factor authentication is essential, but it’s much safer to use an authenticator app on your phone than a code from an SMS message.)
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The impact is far-reaching
In this piece by Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Nir Grinberg, an assistant professor at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, argues that the biggest impact of campaigns like the ones conducted by Team Jorge is the doubt they sow about all kinds of online interactions and information – even the stuff that’s real. They have, he said, a “facade of effectiveness that is larger than life”.
Anyone following the story, said Manisha, “should and will be looking at social media with a lot of scepticism, wondering what’s real. But it doesn’t end there. This kind of activity does so much damage – not just to our faith in social media, but also the mainstream – and this is the real threat to democracy.”
What else we’ve been reading
In the town of Jinderes, north-west Syria, Martin Chulov hears from residents about their despair at how slow aid has been to arrive since the earthquake (above). “Where was the world when it mattered?” asks Ruqaya, 58. “Why tell our stories when there’s nothing left?” Archie
After appearing on Channel 4’s The Last Leg, Kate Stanforth started receiving hateful comments online because she is an ambulatory wheelchair user, meaning that she can use her legs in certain limited circumstances. Stanforth writes about her conditions and the impact ableist prejudice can have on disabled people in daily life. Nimo
In My Best Shot, photographer Steve Bloom tells the amazing story of a picture he took in South Africa during apartheid, of a Black man caring for his sick partner as a smartly-dressed white woman walks past. That photo and others like it meant he couldn’t return to the country for 13 years. Archie
Zoe Williams spoke to 50-year-old personal trainer Anna Jenkins about why she decided to set up an alternative photoshoot to combat the endless amount of fitness stock photos online that depict older women as incapable or weak. Nimo
“There are lots of good reasons to interrogate the cute logic of the 15-minute city,” writes Oliver Wainwright, in this great piece about how a “mundane theory of urbanism” became fuel for a conspiracy theory – but “the threat of our rights being curtailed by travel permits isn’t one of them”. If you haven’t heard about this yet, strap in! Archie
Sport
Football | Manchester City secured a crucial 3-1 victory away to Arsenal with goals from Kevin De Bruyne, Jack Grealish (above) and Erling Haaland taking them top of the table at the expense of their opponents, who scored through a Bukayo Saka penalty. Meanwhile, Borussia Dortmund beat a wasteful Chelsea 1-0 in the first leg of their Champions League last 16 tie.
Cricket | On the first day of England’s first test against New Zealand, the tourists batted first and declared on 325-9 a few minutes ago. Ben Duckett and Harry Brook led the way for England with 84 and 89 respectively. Follow the final session live here.
Football | England captain Leah Williamson has said that she wants the Lionesses to wear OneLove armbands at the World Cup in July, despite warnings by Fifa that teams they could face sanctions and even be forced to leave the pitch for doing so.
The front pages
You can see all the front page coverage of Nicola Sturgeon’s exit here. We’ve led today’s Guardian print edition with “Sturgeon quits citing brutality in politics”, with the disinformation investigation also featuring. Scotland’s Daily Record splashes with “I want my independence” and says “physical and mental” aspects of the job were at play. Scotland’s Herald quotes Sturgeon: “I am a human being as well as a politician”. The Daily Mail leads with “Tearful Sturgeon quits … with her dreams in tatters” while the i has “Independence dream fades as Sturgeon quits”.
The Times says “Huge boost to unionism as Sturgeon steps down”, while the FT leads with “SNP at the crossroads after Sturgeon steps aside as Scotland’s first minister”. “Sturgeon brought down by trans row” is the Daily Telegraph’s verdict. The Metro runs pictures of Sturgeon and the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with its headline “Sturgone … Corbinned”. The Daily Express leads with developments in the search for Nicola Bulley – the FM’s resignation is headed “Is the future of our union safer now Sturgeon has gone?”
Today in Focus
Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation: the end of an era for Scotland
On Wednesday morning, Nicola Sturgeon called a press conference to announce she would be stepping down as the first minister of Scotland. Severin Carrell reports
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
The face of agriculture in the US has been changing over the past few years, with more and more women at the centre of production on farms.
Leslie Wiser is one of these women who have entered the agricultural world, who started working on creating her mixed Asian vegetable farm in 2018. She notes that while regenerative, smart farming takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money, it is worth it. She has rejected the traditional monoculture that is expected in farming, instead growing “specialty crops” and vegetables that reflect her heritage and teach her children where their food comes from.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Also try out the Guardian’s daily word game, Wordiply. Until tomorrow.
• Due to an error, some links to crosswords this week were incorrect. Here are Tuesday’s quick crossword and cryptic crosswords; and here are Wednesday’s quick crossword and cryptic crossword.
