DISARMframeworks/generated_pages/incidents/I00079.md

Incident I00079: Three thousand fake tanks

• Summary: “How a network of conspiracy sites spread a fake story about US reinforcements in Europe”

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Reference	Pub Date	Authors	Org	Archive
https://medium.com/@DFRLab/three-thousand-fake-tanks-575410c4f64d	2017/01/12	Ben Nimmo	DFRLab	https://web.archive.org/web/20240527191455/https://medium.com/@DFRLab/three-thousand-fake-tanks-575410c4f64d

Technique	Description given for this incident
T0016 Create Clickbait	IT00000275 “On January 4 [2017], however, the Donbas News International (DNI) agency, based in Donetsk, Ukraine, and (since September 2016) an official state media outlet of the unrecognized separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, ran an article under the sensational headline, “US sends 3,600 tanks against Russia — massive NATO deployment under way.” DNI is run by Finnish exile Janus Putkonen, described by the Finnish national broadcaster, YLE, as a “Finnish info warrior”, and the first foreigner to be granted a Donetsk passport. “The equally sensational opening paragraph ran, “The NATO war preparation against Russia, ‘Operation Atlantic Resolve’, is in full swing. 2,000 US tanks will be sent in coming days from Germany to Eastern Europe, and 1,600 US tanks is deployed to storage facilities in the Netherlands. At the same time, NATO countries are sending thousands of soldiers in to Russian borders.” “The report is based around an obvious factual error, conflating the total number of vehicles with the actual number of tanks, and therefore multiplying the actual tank force 20 times over. For context, military website globalfirepower.com puts the total US tank force at 8,848. If the DNI story had been true, it would have meant sending 40% of all the US’ main battle tanks to Europe in one go. “Could this have been an innocent mistake? The simple answer is “no”. The journalist who penned the story had a sufficient command of the details to be able to write, later in the same article, “In January, 26 tanks, 100 other vehicles and 120 containers will be transported by train to Lithuania. Germany will send the 122nd Infantry Battalion.” Yet the same author apparently believed, in the headline and first paragraph, that every single vehicle in Atlantic Resolve is a tank. To call this an innocent mistake is simply not plausible. “The DNI story can only realistically be considered a deliberate fake designed to caricaturize and demonize NATO, the United States and Germany (tactfully referred to in the report as having “rolled over Eastern Europe in its war of extermination 75 years ago”) by grossly overstating the number of MBTs involved.” This behaviour matches T0016: Create Clickbait because the person who wrote the story is shown to be aware of the fact that there were non-tank vehicles later in their story, but still chose to give the article a sensationalist headline claiming that all vehicles being sent were tanks.
T0023 Distort Facts	IT00000272 “On January 4 [2017], a little-known news site based in Donetsk, Ukraine published an article claiming that the United States was sending 3,600 tanks to Europe as part of “the NATO war preparation against Russia”. “Like much fake news, this story started with a grain of truth: the US was about to reinforce its armored units in Europe. However, the article converted literally thousands of other vehicles — including hundreds of Humvees and trailers — into tanks, building the US force into something 20 times more powerful than it actually was. “The story caught on online. Within three days it had been repeated by a dozen websites in the United States, Canada and Europe, and shared some 40,000 times. It was translated into Norwegian; quoted, unchallenged, by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti; and spread among Russian-language websites. “It was also an obvious fake, as any Google news search would have revealed. Yet despite its evident falsehood, it spread widely, and not just in directly Kremlin-run media. Tracking the spread of this fake therefore shines a light on the wider question of how fake stories are dispersed.” Russian state news agency RIA Novosti presents themselves as a news outlet (T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). RIO Novosti is a real news outlet (T0143.001: Authentic Persona), but it did not carry out a basic investigation into the veracity of the narrative they published implicitly expected of institutions presenting themselves as news outlets. We can’t know how or why this narrative ended up being published by RIA Novosti, but we know that it presented a distorted reality as authentic information (T0023: Distort Facts), claiming that the US was sending 3,600 tanks, instead of 3,600 vehicles which included ~180 tanks.
T0084.002 Plagiarise Content	IT00000278 “The sixth [website to repost a confirmed false narrative investigated in this report] is an apparent think tank, the Center for Global Strategic Monitoring. This website describes itself, in English apparently written by a non-native speaker, as a “nonprofit and nonpartisan research and analysis institution dedicated to providing insights of the think tank community publications”. It does, indeed, publish think-tank reports on issues such as Turkey and US-China relations; however, the reports are the work of other think tanks, often unattributed (the two mentioned in this sentence were actually produced by the Brookings Institution, although the website makes no mention of the fact). It also fails to provide an address, or any other contact details other than an email, and its (long) list of experts includes entries apparently copied and pasted from other institutions. Thus, the “think tank” website which shared the fake story appears to be a fake itself.” In this example a website which amplified a false narrative presented itself as a think tank (T0097.204: Think Tank Persona). This is an entirely fabricated persona (T0143.002: Fabricated Persona); it republished content from other think tanks without attribution (T0084.002: Plagiarise Content) and fabricated experts (T0097.108: Expert Persona, T0143.002: Fabricated Persona) to make it more believable that they were a real think tank.
T0097.108 Expert Persona	IT00000277 “The sixth [website to repost a confirmed false narrative investigated in this report] is an apparent think tank, the Center for Global Strategic Monitoring. This website describes itself, in English apparently written by a non-native speaker, as a “nonprofit and nonpartisan research and analysis institution dedicated to providing insights of the think tank community publications”. It does, indeed, publish think-tank reports on issues such as Turkey and US-China relations; however, the reports are the work of other think tanks, often unattributed (the two mentioned in this sentence were actually produced by the Brookings Institution, although the website makes no mention of the fact). It also fails to provide an address, or any other contact details other than an email, and its (long) list of experts includes entries apparently copied and pasted from other institutions. Thus, the “think tank” website which shared the fake story appears to be a fake itself.” In this example a website which amplified a false narrative presented itself as a think tank (T0097.204: Think Tank Persona). This is an entirely fabricated persona (T0143.002: Fabricated Persona); it republished content from other think tanks without attribution (T0084.002: Plagiarise Content) and fabricated experts (T0097.108: Expert Persona, T0143.002: Fabricated Persona) to make it more believable that they were a real think tank.
T0097.202 News Outlet Persona	IT00000274 “On January 4 [2017], a little-known news site based in Donetsk, Ukraine published an article claiming that the United States was sending 3,600 tanks to Europe as part of “the NATO war preparation against Russia”. “Like much fake news, this story started with a grain of truth: the US was about to reinforce its armored units in Europe. However, the article converted literally thousands of other vehicles — including hundreds of Humvees and trailers — into tanks, building the US force into something 20 times more powerful than it actually was. “The story caught on online. Within three days it had been repeated by a dozen websites in the United States, Canada and Europe, and shared some 40,000 times. It was translated into Norwegian; quoted, unchallenged, by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti; and spread among Russian-language websites. “It was also an obvious fake, as any Google news search would have revealed. Yet despite its evident falsehood, it spread widely, and not just in directly Kremlin-run media. Tracking the spread of this fake therefore shines a light on the wider question of how fake stories are dispersed.” Russian state news agency RIA Novosti presents themselves as a news outlet (T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). RIO Novosti is a real news outlet (T0143.001: Authentic Persona), but it did not carry out a basic investigation into the veracity of the narrative they published implicitly expected of institutions presenting themselves as news outlets. We can’t know how or why this narrative ended up being published by RIA Novosti, but we know that it presented a distorted reality as authentic information (T0023: Distort Facts), claiming that the US was sending 3,600 tanks, instead of 3,600 vehicles which included ~180 tanks.
T0097.204 Think Tank Persona	IT00000276 “The sixth [website to repost a confirmed false narrative investigated in this report] is an apparent think tank, the Center for Global Strategic Monitoring. This website describes itself, in English apparently written by a non-native speaker, as a “nonprofit and nonpartisan research and analysis institution dedicated to providing insights of the think tank community publications”. It does, indeed, publish think-tank reports on issues such as Turkey and US-China relations; however, the reports are the work of other think tanks, often unattributed (the two mentioned in this sentence were actually produced by the Brookings Institution, although the website makes no mention of the fact). It also fails to provide an address, or any other contact details other than an email, and its (long) list of experts includes entries apparently copied and pasted from other institutions. Thus, the “think tank” website which shared the fake story appears to be a fake itself.” In this example a website which amplified a false narrative presented itself as a think tank (T0097.204: Think Tank Persona). This is an entirely fabricated persona (T0143.002: Fabricated Persona); it republished content from other think tanks without attribution (T0084.002: Plagiarise Content) and fabricated experts (T0097.108: Expert Persona, T0143.002: Fabricated Persona) to make it more believable that they were a real think tank.
T0143.001 Authentic Persona	IT00000273 “On January 4 [2017], a little-known news site based in Donetsk, Ukraine published an article claiming that the United States was sending 3,600 tanks to Europe as part of “the NATO war preparation against Russia”. “Like much fake news, this story started with a grain of truth: the US was about to reinforce its armored units in Europe. However, the article converted literally thousands of other vehicles — including hundreds of Humvees and trailers — into tanks, building the US force into something 20 times more powerful than it actually was. “The story caught on online. Within three days it had been repeated by a dozen websites in the United States, Canada and Europe, and shared some 40,000 times. It was translated into Norwegian; quoted, unchallenged, by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti; and spread among Russian-language websites. “It was also an obvious fake, as any Google news search would have revealed. Yet despite its evident falsehood, it spread widely, and not just in directly Kremlin-run media. Tracking the spread of this fake therefore shines a light on the wider question of how fake stories are dispersed.” Russian state news agency RIA Novosti presents themselves as a news outlet (T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). RIO Novosti is a real news outlet (T0143.001: Authentic Persona), but it did not carry out a basic investigation into the veracity of the narrative they published implicitly expected of institutions presenting themselves as news outlets. We can’t know how or why this narrative ended up being published by RIA Novosti, but we know that it presented a distorted reality as authentic information (T0023: Distort Facts), claiming that the US was sending 3,600 tanks, instead of 3,600 vehicles which included ~180 tanks.
T0143.002 Fabricated Persona	IT00000279 “The sixth [website to repost a confirmed false narrative investigated in this report] is an apparent think tank, the Center for Global Strategic Monitoring. This website describes itself, in English apparently written by a non-native speaker, as a “nonprofit and nonpartisan research and analysis institution dedicated to providing insights of the think tank community publications”. It does, indeed, publish think-tank reports on issues such as Turkey and US-China relations; however, the reports are the work of other think tanks, often unattributed (the two mentioned in this sentence were actually produced by the Brookings Institution, although the website makes no mention of the fact). It also fails to provide an address, or any other contact details other than an email, and its (long) list of experts includes entries apparently copied and pasted from other institutions. Thus, the “think tank” website which shared the fake story appears to be a fake itself.” In this example a website which amplified a false narrative presented itself as a think tank (T0097.204: Think Tank Persona). This is an entirely fabricated persona (T0143.002: Fabricated Persona); it republished content from other think tanks without attribution (T0084.002: Plagiarise Content) and fabricated experts (T0097.108: Expert Persona, T0143.002: Fabricated Persona) to make it more believable that they were a real think tank.

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