In late September, shortly after the USS Kearsarge (LHD-3) had transited through the Danish Straits out of the Baltic Sea, one of my intelligence specialists came to me with information he had found online accusing the Kearsarge of involvement in the attack on the Nord Stream Pipelines. The attack on 26 September 2022, which damaged the gas pipelines connecting Russia to Germany, occurred in the Swedish and Danish exclusive economic zones in the Baltic Sea near where we had been operating.
Workers World, a publication of the Workers World Party, which was originally “created by the Soviet KGB in 1957, with the initial task of helping the Kremlin create a favorable impression . . . among the . . . population of the United States,” argued that “the presence of the USS Kearsarge until just days before the explosions is highly suspicious. Modern explosive devices can be detonated remotely.” The Monthly Review, an organization calling itself “an independent socialist magazine,” claimed to have found evidence that our embarked MH-60Ss “either flew along the Nord Stream-2 highway, or even between the points where the accident occurred.” The Schiller Institute, an organization noted by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation for its involvement in spreading Russian viewpoints, claimed that the Russian ambassador to the U.N. endorsed these theories about the involvement of the Kearsarge’s helicopters in the pipeline attack, and also claimed that President Joseph Biden had specifically threatened to end the Nord Stream 2 back in February. SouthFront, an “online disinformation site registered in Russia” that “attempts to appeal to military enthusiasts, veterans, and conspiracy theorists,” insinuated that the Kearsarge’s alleged attack on the pipelines was motivated by a desire to “finally stop the gas supplies to Germany from Russia” and fuel the “energy crisis in Europe.”1
Russian Information Warfare Tactics
This incident is a perfect example of the Russian disinformation ecosystem at work to undermine faith in the United States as an ally to European nations, cast doubt on the U.S. Navy’s activities in the Baltic Sea during a period of increased tensions, and suggest that the United States is uninterested in helping end Europe’s energy crisis. To do this, Russia employs a broad network of proxy sites that pose as legitimate news organizations or far-right/far-left think tanks to manufacture and disseminate falsified or misleading information that aims to undermine faith in Western institutions.
These sites trick readers into believing their claims in a variety of ways. First, messages gain credibility by appearing on a variety of sites. According to a RAND study on Russian propaganda, “Messages received in greater volume and from more sources will be more persuasive. Quantity does indeed have a quality all its own.” In this case, the messages about the Kearsarge’s involvement in the Nord Stream attack were disseminated by several different proxy sites, then shared on Reddit, Twitter, and various personal blogs. The variety and quantity of sources made the message about the Kearsarge’s alleged pipeline attack more believable.
Second, the false story gained credibility through manufactured or misrepresented “evidence.” The writers used information from Marine Traffic, a website that displays AIS ship location data, which showed the Kearsarge’s position near the pipelines at the time in question. Several writers also used screenshots of “flight tracks of MH-60Ss flying from Kearsarge” (not actually from aircraft associated with the ship) and overlaid them on a map of the explosions to show that our helicopters had flown along the attack route. Monthly Review then went into an explanation of the undersea warfare capabilities of the MH-60S, confusing it with the MH-60R—a platform not embarked on the Kearsarge. Manufactured evidence is what makes the conspiracy theories believable—after all, “false statements are more likely to be accepted if backed by evidence, even if that evidence is false.” Readers looking for more information about the Kearsarge’s culpability need only encounter the same shreds of circumstantial, fabricated, and misleading “facts” presented in different ways in a variety of forums to be convinced by the sheer volume of “evidence.”
The third way this fake accusation gained traction was through what the State Department’s Global Engagement Center calls the “media multiplier effect.” When many different sources peddle variations on the same message, they can each individually finetune their version to suit target audiences, allowing them to gain a larger impact with each audience. They can also link to each other’s websites, enabling them to “boost their reach and resonance.”
It can be very difficult to figure out whether the sources involved in disseminating disinformation are affiliated with Russia or not. Proxy sites go to pains to hide Russian affiliation to appear more credible to a Western public. Furthermore, it is unlikely all the accounts and websites that shared the Kearsarge-Nord Stream story are directly associated with the Russian propaganda machine. Some of these accounts might be what experts call “useful idiots”—members of the online public convinced by Russian narratives and who unwittingly propagate them. In other cases, the organizations spreading the story were certainly members of the Russian disinformation ecosystem—SouthFront, Workers World, and the Schiller Institute are all organizations that were named by either the U.S. Global Engagement Center or the Ukrainian Centre for Countering Disinformation as Russian proxy organizations. The obfuscation of the affiliations of these actors, as well as their ability to blend in with “useful idiots,” make their stories more believable to Western audiences.
All these strategies combine to what researchers call Moscow’s “firehose of falsehood.” A multitude of Western-appearing sources telling variations of the same narrative, using falsified or misrepresented “evidence,” and repeating each other’s stories to create an illusion of consensus and amplify each other’s voices creates a powerful and convincing engine to spread disinformation.
The Dangers of Russian Disinformation
The goal of Russian disinformation about the United States is, ultimately, to undermine public faith in American institutions. There is a long history of this kind of activity. According to an article in Prospect Magazine, “During the Cold War, the KGB did not just gather intelligence but it also undertook a wide variety of what it called ‘active measures’” to “discredit and undermine the influence of the United States.” The KGB specifically spread conspiracy theories about the U.S. military and “one of the KGB’s most successful anti-American measures of the entire Cold War was its . . . fabrication . . . of the story that the AIDS virus had been ‘manufactured’ by the U.S. Army at a biological warfare facility in Maryland.” The Nord Stream story about the Kearsarge is no different.
Public perception has real consequences on modern battlefields. Ukraine is currently faring better in the war against Russia than most experts originally expected in large part because of the amount of Western aid it has received. However, that Western aid is costly for the countries that are sending it. If Ukraine loses popularity among the citizens of Western countries, they will be less willing to bear the costs to support Ukraine, their elected representatives could ease sanctions and send less aid, and there will be dire consequences for Ukrainian forces.
Russia recognizes the importance of the information space to modern warfare. General Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, has articulated a new geopolitical strategy that emphasizes the importance of information warfare, noting that “the information space opens wide asymmetrical possibilities for reducing the fighting potential of the enemy.” It is Russia’s goal to weaken the perception of the United States so that allies do not trust either U.S. abilities or motivations. If Russia succeeds, the United States and its allies will not be able to act as a united front to counter Russian aggression, and Russia will have won.
Countering Russian Disinformation
The Navy should take a much more direct role in countering online disinformation about its activities. Studies show that “comments attacking a proponent’s expertise or trustworthiness diminish credibility and decrease the likelihood that readers will take action based on what they have read.” The Navy can decrease the effectiveness of falsified Russian accounts of its activities by commenting on those posts and revealing that the information presented is false or misleading, exposing the source as a Russian proxy, and providing a correct account of the facts. It is important the Navy include an accurate account of a unit’s activities in these comments because “corrections that provide an alternative story” are much more convincing than refutations that simply attack the credibility of the poster or original story. For example, in the case of the Kearsarge-Nord Stream accusations, the Navy could have commented directly on the posts to provide a correct account of what the Kearsarge had been doing in the area, point out the ways in which the evidence presented was false or misleading, and note the Russian affiliations of the websites peddling the story. Commenting directly on these posts would increase the likelihood that readers are presented with a correct and persuasive account of the facts up front. Such direct responses to disinformation would enable the Navy to effectively counter Russia’s most effective information warfare tool.
The Navy can also mitigate the effects of Russian disinformation by spreading messages counter to the goals of Russian disinformation about its activities. Western governments did this during the Cold War; both Britain and the United States had organizations dedicated to sponsoring anti-communist publications and spreading positive information about democracy and Western institutions. The Navy’s public affairs team already disseminates pro-United States and pro-Navy messages, but the flow of those messages should be increased, and tailored to address Kremlin propaganda themes. In this case, the Navy could have disseminated a large volume of pro-U.S. information about what the Kearsarge actually had been doing in the Baltic Sea, our commitment to our allies, and the many ways we worked to strengthen our partnerships with the countries in that part of the world. This would increase public trust in the U.S. Navy as a positive actor in the region and bolster the faith of European allies.
The Navy needs a more proactive effort to identify and counter threats to the public perception of its operations around the world. While there must be a clear delineation between information warfare (IW) and public affairs, the IW community’s role could be to provide indications and warning of adversary disinformation, and the public affairs community could then respond with truthful information about the Navy’s activities. Russia sees tremendous value in spreading disinformation about U.S. activities and has a massive yet nuanced and coordinated effort to do so. It is time the Navy saw the value in countering disinformation and developed a well-coordinated strategy to do just that.
1. Global Engagement Center, GEC Special Report: Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem, U.S. Department of State (August 2020), 37.