January 9, 2025: The Soviet Union and its successor, the Russian Federation, depend on disinformation campaigns to cover their tracks when their espionage, sabotage or special operations activities were exposed and reported on in nations with free media. Socialist dictatorships like North Korea, China, Cuba and the Soviet Union as well as Islamic terrorists groups and radical groups of all sorts see the media as a means of protection, deception, agitation and recruitment. The Soviet Union had a large bureaucracy dedicated to dezinformatsiya or disinformation and propaganda. China has the largest internet based disinformation operation. China tried to keep this secret, but in 2022 widespread protests and demonstrations in China against strict covid19 controls were widely reported outside China because they involved an unprecedented breakdown of China's enormous Internet censorship operation often called the Great Firewall of China. For over a decade China has had the largest population of Internet users in the world. Between September and November 2022 China experienced a major breakdown of its Internet censorship operation as an unprecedented number of Chinese protested the censorship online employing numerous techniques that had emerged over the last decade to evade the censorship. These methods were never used on a massive scale before and, when that finally happened, the Great Firewall was unable to cope. As more Chinese users realized that the internet controls were overwhelmed and breaking down, more people joined in. All this was mainly in support of public demonstrations against the months of increasingly restrictive covid19 lockdowns. These cracks in internet censorship meant more Chinese became aware of how damaging the lockdowns were. The Great Firewall was supposed to prevent that from happening. The government and the Chinese people both discovered how much bad news the Great Firewall had been hiding. This did permanent damage to Chinese censorship efforts and after that incident a growing number of Chinese knew ways to successfully and consistently evade the Great Firewall.

China eventually backed down on the covid19 lockups as this was the only way to regain some control over Chinese Internet users. Substantial damage had been done to the Great Firewall organization and that has still not been completely repaired. It will take longer to resolve. For decades Chinese Internet users have learned how to use puns, code words and such to maintain limited ability to discuss items the censors blocked. After the recent massive Chinese internet-based protests, many more Chinese users discovered still more effective ways to evade censorship. This includes the effective use of VPNs and encrypted apps like Telegram that are widely used in the rest of the world, including Russia. With these encrypted apps, Chinese can access and share information found on Western Internet sources like Instagram and Twitter. Thus equipped, even Chinese Islamic terrorist users can work more effectively with each other to stay ahead of upgraded government censorship efforts. The government is eager to cripple these new user capabilities if only to prevent embarrassing videos and pictures from quickly reaching the outside world.

The rapid growth of Internet use in China is something the Communist government did not expect. By 2008 China had the largest Internet population in the world, with 25 percent of the more than a billion Chinese using the internet. In 2008 the U.S. was second with 223 million users. Currently 97 percent of Americans have access to the internet. Only 70 percent were online in 2008 and only about 20 percent of Chinese were.

Fifteen years ago, a greater proportion of Chinese users got online via Internet cafes or from work. Back then Americans had access to work and home internet-equipped laptop and desktop computers. A constantly growing number of people worldwide have since used their smartphones for internet access. In wealthier nations smartphone internet access is a convenience while in less affluent nations smartphone internet service has transformed work and lifestyles. In poor areas of Africa, India and other parts of the world, smartphones are seen as a necessity and China floods the market with hundred dollar smart phones while Western entrepreneurs buy older model phones users are discarding as they upgrade every year or so. These phones are sold overseas for fifty to a hundred dollars.

In many poor countries banking is now done via cheap smartphones, Money can be quickly sent via the phones and many local merchants can be paid this way. These are countries where most people could never afford a traditional bank. Now they don’t need those banks because using the phone is much easier. In areas where there was no or just irregular electrical power, one solar panel could keep a dozen phones charged. The cheap smartphone revolutionized lives throughout the world by enabling everyone to plug into the worldwide information and media network. For those who are illiterate, there are apps that will turn text into speech the phone user can listen to while viewing related images on his phone. There are apps on phones that teach the illiterate how to read and write.

The downside of all this is the smartphone provides a larger market for nations like Russia and China that use a lot of disinformation to get what they want. That includes turning people against their governments or persuading many to believe cleverly disguised lies. Before smartphones, Russian disinformation managed to persuade many people that AIDs and Covid19 were invented by the Americans. That seems absurd to most Westerners but in less affluent parts of the world those lies are persuasive.

By 2024 Russian propaganda specialists were using Artificial Intelligence or AI software that can search the internet in minutes to find information to assist in whatever you are doing. In this case Russian propaganda specialists are seeking information that would be useful for a disinformation campaign in NATO countries that would generate popular opposition to NATO efforts to support Ukraine. The Russian efforts also make use of rapidly establishing new websites in different languages to represent the manor NATO countries. A media expert can quickly determine if these websites are fake, but such experts are not always available to debunk disinformation sites that suddenly appeared but claimed to have been around for a long time.

The Russian disinformation had some success, but nothing decisive. That’s because Russia was the invader of Ukraine, not the victim of any non-existent NATO conspiracy. There is ample evidence of Russian misbehavior in Ukraine and scant material supporting claims of NATO misbehavior against Russia.

Even with the help of AI software, Russia was unable to change enough attitudes in NATO countries to make a difference. There was a similar result during the Cold War, in an era that lacked the internet, 24/7 news media on television and radio or any effective AI apps. Those did not show up until the 21st century.

The current Russian disinformation efforts depend on gaining access to Russian and some western news agencies and major media outlets that can be coerced or deceived into carrying Russian disinformation. These arrangements rarely last long because, in an age of instant news available everywhere at all times, it is impossible to maintain a disinformation campaign for long. That was where the AI apps came in because the AI could be programmed to continually revise and rewrite Russian disinformation so it could be reinserted into international news media. That worked for a while until the infected news outlets became aware of their problem and developed methods, some using AI apps, to detect and delete the Russian disinformation.

Russian disinformation specialists keep trying even though their fake news survives for shorter and shorter periods. If Russia is willing to continue devoting money and resources to this AI powered disinformation effort, it will have some impact. The impact will diminish as media victimized by the Russian disinformation campaigns increase their denunciations of the Russian efforts. At that point, all the Russian disinformation efforts are more annoying than effective. This is very similar to what happened to pre-AI disinformation efforts during the Cold War. With AI, you can do it faster and more frequently but with similar lack of success.