WaPo - (archived: https://archive.ph/GNsbH ) American creating deep fakes targeting Harris works with Russian intel, documents show

Russian documents reviewed by The Post expose the workings of a Moscow network that has become a potent source of fake news targeting American voters.



By Catherine Belton
October 23, 2024 at 5:34 p.m. EDT

A former deputy Palm Beach County sheriff who fled to Moscow and became one of the Kremlin’s most prolific propagandists is working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to Russian documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post.

The documents show that John Mark Dougan, who also served in the U.S. Marines and has long claimed to be working independently of the Russian government, was provided funding by an officer from the GRU, the country’s military intelligence service. Some of the payments were made after fake news sites he created began to have difficulty accessing Western artificial intelligence systems this spring and he needed an AI generator — a tool that can be prompted to create text, photos and video.

Dougan’s liaison at the GRU is a senior figure in Russian military intelligence working under the cover name Yury Khoroshevsky, the documents show. The officer’s real name is Yury Khoroshenky, though he is only referred to as Khoroshevsky in the documents, and he serves in the GRU’s Unit 29155, which oversees sabotage, political interference operations and cyberwarfare targeting the West, according to two European security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

The more than 150 documents — which were shared with The Post to demonstrate the extent of Russian interference through Dougan and focus mostly on the period between March 2021 and August 2024 — for the first time expose some of the inner workings of a network that researchers and intelligence officials say has become the most potent source of fake news emanating from Russia and targeting American voters over the past year.

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