Keep pulling the thread on Stephanie Baker.
Elon Musk's October 2022 acquisition of X and subsequent dismantling of its trust and safety measures enabled the Storm 1516 disinformation operation to expand significantly.
The Storm 1516 operation spread fake stories about U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Western officials believe the Storm 1516 operation is backed by Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU.
A Ukrainian intelligence assessment linked the Storm 1516 operation to GRU unit 29155, which was also responsible for the 2018 attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in the UK.
Bloomberg journalists Stephanie Baker and Pri Bengani linked nearly 200 disinformation posts to a Russian influence operation that researchers call Storm 1516.
The number of posts identified with Storm 1516's characteristics doubled in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year.
Russia's overall disinformation campaign is overseen by Sergei Kirienko, Vladimir Putin's first deputy chief of the presidential administration.
In the week after a false story about Olena Zelenska buying Cartier jewelry was released, it accounted for 11% of the online conversation about the Zelenskys, according to research from Clemson University.
Less than 20% of the nearly 200 narratives spread by Storm 1516 on X were flagged with a "Community Note" warning readers of their falsehood.
U.S. government task forces at the FBI, intelligence agencies, and the State Department that were established to expose disinformation have all been dismantled.
The European Union fined X 120 million euros in December as part of a broader investigation into misinformation.
Stephanie Baker predicts that Russian disinformation operations will aggressively target the upcoming U.S. midterm elections.