The Daily - “I Am Not an Internet Troll”

Episode Date: November 1, 2018

A Russian news organization with ties to the 2016 election interference operation started a website called USAReally. Its stated purpose was for Americans to get uncensored news about their own country — from Russia. We spoke to the man behind it. Guest Host: Kevin Roose, who writes about technology for The New York Times, talks to Alexander Malkevich, the founder of USAReally, and David E. Sanger, a national security correspondent for The Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Is he here? He's here. He says he's downstairs. He just left me a voice message on WhatsApp. I'm at the desk. He's at the desk. From the New York Times, I'm not Michael Barbaro. I'm Kevin Roos.

This is The Daily. Is this a bad idea, bringing a possible Russian troll into the New York Times building? I've had some questions myself about why this is. It's probably a bad idea. Yeah. It's Thursday, November 1st. So, for the past two years, since the 2016 election, I've been kind of obsessed with this idea of Russian interference and Russian internet trolls. Russian internet trolls used social media during the 2016 presidential election.

Paid internet provocateurs distorting the U.S. political debate. And as I've been looking into this, I came across something pretty interesting and kind of bizarre. Earlier this year, the Federal News Agency of Russia, which is basically sort of the parent company of the troll farms that interfered in the 2016 election, they sent out a press release. And they were basically announcing that they were starting a new media project for Americans called Wake Up America. starting a new media project for Americans called Wake Up America. And the reason for it, according to them, was so that Americans would get real uncensored news from Russia.

So the flagship website of this new media project is called USA Really. And it's essentially a collection of stories, news articles, opinion articles. And the theme that runs through all of them is this kind of dark and dysfunctional picture of America. Grocery store shooting leaves two dead in Kentucky, many more in shock. They post a lot of stories about sort of gruesome and violent rapists given pass by Alaska court. Violent and broken things happening in the U.S. The scourge of drug addiction is spreading over the U.S. And if you just stumbled onto this site, if someone sent you an article and you clicked around a little bit, you wouldn't necessarily find any trace that this is owned and operated by Russians. There's no labeling on the site

that says this thing is based in Moscow. Rabid Squirrels is terrorizing Florida, with the exception of the occasional piece of broken English. Hi. Hi. I'm Kevin. Alexander. Nice to meet you.

I'm Andy. I'm the audio producer today. And so, got in touch with the guy who runs this. His name is Alexander Malkovich. I am ready to talk about all things. He is very open to talking to us. What's on your shirt here? Motherland is hearing.

So Motherland is listening, something like that? I just want to know, like, what he's doing. Is this a joke? Is he a Sacha Baron Cohen character? But of course, my English is not so well to explain all my thoughts and all my feelings. But I will try. Is this some updated version of the Russian government

paying people to troll Americans on Facebook? I'm not afraid. Is this part of some larger Kremlin plot to influence yet another U.S. election? Should we go upstairs? I think the time's come. All right. Like, what is this thing?

Yeah, it's nothing. So we make our way to a small conference room. And that's the first question I ask him. What is USA Really? What is USA Really? USA Really is a professional challenge for a little group of Russian journalists because we want to try to build

some kind of media platform for Americans in America, something like that. That's all. We don't want to interfere in the political life. We did and we do nothing bad. We do not publish fake news on our website. They're all real from the states of the United States. So you are a website that is publishing news for Americans from a Russian perspective? Not from a Russian perspective.

Real American news for Americans at first steps produced by Russian hands. And we have to change our plans. Kevin, could you help me understand a few things here? Right away in this interview, he started talking about the troubles that his site was having. Because of fighting with social media and with other people from the deep state. Mentioned something about the deep state. Yeah. So the site got off to a pretty rocky start because right after it launched, it got flagged by Facebook and Twitter as being suspicious and its accounts were taken down. Because remember, this site was literally funded by the same people who interfered in

the 2016 election. Some of these people are actually under sanctions and have faced criminal charges for that stuff. And so it sort of made sense that they got blacklisted from the big tech platforms. And because of that, USA really hasn't been able to gain much of an audience. They're not getting any traction on social media. American officials, American social media, those deep state people, they are doing all their best to show that they are frightened with the USA Really. I think it's so strange. Do you get that part of what is concerning people about USA Really is that it doesn't make any mention anywhere on the website of the fact that you are Russian, that this is being run

out of Moscow, that you are receiving funding from the Federal News Agency and Russia, and it's called USA Really. And there's no mention anywhere on the website that this is not an American project. Do you think that's misleading to people? people? So, it's very humorous to speak about, you see, really as a plot to

destroy American democracy or something like that. If we can provide interesting news, people can read them and that's all. To be clear, you work for the government. You are paid by the government.

No, no. You're paid by the federal news agency in Russia. Special Counsel Mueller here in the U.S., in his indictment of some Russian nationals for interfering in the 2016 election, said that this organization that you have received support from was part of the troll farm in Russia that interfered in the U.S. election. So is USA really a project run by the same people as the troll farm from 2016?

You know, in Russia, we have a proverb that says that And what does that mean? It means that son is not responsible for all things that his father did. So, yes, federal news agency gives us support, and they also write about us and people from federal news agency give us some kind of advice. But does it mean that I have to be arrested or withdrawn from the United States? Why? Because I know them. Very strange. Kevin, it felt like there was definitely a shift in the conversation

where I started to feel weird. How did you feel as this thing was progressing? I also felt pretty weird. I am not a spy. I am not an internet troll. I am not an internet bot. I'm not an internet bot. As I've told you, I am very open. And I am interested, of course, in American life.

I'm interested in American media. Yes, I can write, but not secret reports for somebody. I will write articles with my feelings about social media, about all this witch hunt. And people all over the world can see that a great American political system is somehow afraid of little Russian media news agency.

And this is very strange. And I think it's not good. To be clear, I don't know that people would be upset if you said, I'm Alexander Malkovich, and I'm going to go around America and write about America from a Russian perspective. And I'm going to label it, you know, I'm a Russian journalist in America who's getting funded from the federal news agency. If there were more sort of truth in labeling, I don't know that people would be upset. I think it's the fact that people think that you're trying to fool them into thinking that you are actually American and

actually producing stories inside the United States. And that's where I think a lot of the suspicion comes from, is not that you're doing journalism about America, it's that you're not being honest about who you are. I am thankful for your words, and I am planning to change a lot in the work of USA Really. We don't have enough time to make all the improvements. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thanks a lot. Okay, first question. Yeah. Do you really think he believes that stuff he was saying? About all of it? The deep state? No, I think he's in trouble. You don't think he believed any of that? No. I mean, maybe he believed some of it,

but I mean, the fact that he kept saying deep state and witch hunt and I'm so confused. I've got to make some calls. I've got to try to figure out what this guy's deal is because that raised more questions than it answered. We'll be right back. And are Kevin and I chatting just between us, or are we doing this with a moderator?

Kevin is actually hosting today. Oh, cool, Kevin. I know. Lucky me. Do you realize that this is, like, you're going to be, like, the most popular guy in the entire Valley? Or, like, a poor man's Michael Barbaro. That could be it it too, yeah. This is like when they're out of Oreos at the store,

so you get the like off-brand, you know, Schmorios. David Sanger is a national security correspondent. He's the author of The Perfect Weapon, and he's our resident expert on cyber espionage. So going into the midterms, what do you think the Russians are up to? So the way to think about the 2018 election for the Russians is that it's their spring training. They're out there trying some different moves, recognizing that the plays that worked two seasons ago probably aren't going to work now

because everybody else in the big leagues has seen them. So they have to try some new plays, but they don't want to show too much because they need to leave some new techniques in reserve for 2020. So if the 2018 elections are the sort of preseason training, the main season is 2020, the presidential election. Yes. So is Alexander Malkovich the kind of guy we should think of when we think about how Russia might be interfering in the midterm elections? He's one of the kind of guys you should think of. He's not the kind of guy who's going in to steal emails from the Democratic National Committee or some other political entity. But instead, he's on the propaganda information warfare side of the equation. He's the kind of person who lives in this gray zone between fact and fiction, whose website picks up on real news stories in America, whether it's Megyn Kelly, which they've leapt on,

or Brett Kavanaugh, which they spent a lot of time on in recent weeks. And he's taking what are some clear, familiar facts and then bending them in another direction. And that's the most subtle and effective form of propaganda. And if it turns out that there are several million Americans who are really pulling down the USA Really stuff the way there are millions of Americans who drive around listening to right-wing radio or left-wing blogs or whatever, then they're going to say this is a pretty cost-effective way to get through. So what other tests might they be

running or what other things might the Russians be experimenting with this year? The first thing they're doing is they're looking for generic divisive issues. So in 2016, that was the Black Lives Matter debate. Or whether Hillary Clinton, by using her email at home, was actually a national security threat to the United States. Although none of the emails were marked classified at the time they were sent, it's more evidence that classified information may have been mishandled. Hillary Clinton's corruption is on a scale we have never seen before.

So they're just amplifying existing schisms in the American debate. Skip forward to the 2018 election. And the problem the Russians have right now is midterm elections are really hard to figure out. There are roughly 470 candidates, right? And the Russians don't want to sit around and debate, is Heidi Heitkamp good for me or bad for me? If flood insurance is $500 a month, that pretty much locks people out of home ownership.

We can't have that happen. So we need to have flood protection in Minot, and we need to get going on it. So they are once again looking for divisive issues, and we're busy providing them. The Democrat Party is openly inviting millions of illegal aliens to break our laws, violate our borders, and overwhelm our nation. This will be. This is a circus. An election.

Boy, y'all want power. God, I hope you never get it. Of Kavanaugh. I hope the American people can see through this champ. The caravan. This invasion of our sovereignty, it's, we've got to stop it. Law and order. A Florida man suspected of mailing bombs to high-profile Democrats.

And common sense. That's what it's going to be. The Trump administration officials are considering legally defining gender as somebody's biological sex at birth. A move that could jeopardize the rights of more than a million transgender Americans. It's going to be an election of those things. Secondly, the Russians are fabulous at getting inside email systems. But what they discovered in 2016 was that they didn't cover their tracks very well as they made the emails public. They know that people will be on the lookout in the future for the mass release of emails and probably call the Russians out. and probably call the Russians out.

So what the Russians are looking for is, are there more subtle things that they could do with information that they gleaned from breaking into computer systems and computer networks? Maybe next time you don't release the entire email, but you tip off reporters to stories that are found from those emails and try to get something up and running. So that would be a second category.

The third category could well be physical attacks. If you can figure out how to turn off the lights in a certain city or a certain congressional district, you might have a significant capability in depressing the turnout in areas where you think there's going to be a close race. And that just seems crazy. Could they actually do that? Could they turn off the lights in a polling station in a contested district somewhere in America? They've certainly positioned themselves to. Somewhere in America?

They've certainly positioned themselves to. You know, it was only last spring that the Department of Homeland Security came out with this very detailed report about how the Russians had placed malware in the major nuclear plants and other parts of the electric utility grid. And, of course, what they couldn't tell you is what the Russians plan to do with that. Maybe they're just there monitoring our energy efficiency. But the fear, of course, is that they want to be in a position to flip the lights off. And there's a record for this. All you have to do is go to Ukraine. There were two significant attacks that the Russians organized against power grids in different parts of Ukraine simply to make the point that they could turn off

the power whenever they wanted. And the stories that come out of that are pretty chilling. I went out and interviewed operators of power plants in Ukraine who had been sitting at their computers and suddenly discovering that the mouse was operating by itself, that an arrow was moving around on their screens and flipping off substations all around their district of Ukraine, turning off the power until finally at the end, it turned off the power inside the control room. And it was all being done by remote control, probably from Russia. And I want you to sort of try to help me close this gap that I'm feeling where it feels like there's kind of a tension here where on one hand, we now have all these reasons, given what we saw in 2016 and what we've heard about so far in 2018, for people to be very skeptical of the integrity of the election process. You know, you have no idea which posts on your feed

are written by foreign nationals in which influence operation. You know, we can't necessarily trust our voter data. We can't necessarily trust our polling places to be safe. On the other hand, what some of this interference is trying to do is sort of sow that distrust, that it might actually be the point of what

they're doing to create that distrust. And I'm wondering, how should our listeners, how should we think about going to the polls on Tuesday? What should people be feeling as they go to vote? Well, you've touched, Kevin, on the great information warfare paradox, which is you don't have to do a successful cyber attack on a voting system or even on the communications we have about where candidates stand, what kind of positions people are taking on the divisive issues of our day. All you need to do is sow fear into the system. And the Russians were successful of doing that in 2016, and to some degree, they are reaping the benefits of that in 2018.

So if you're sitting around repeating the rumors, oh, my vote's been manipulated, it won't count, and so forth, First of all, you're probably wrong, because the hardest thing for the Russians to do is to get into the voting system itself. But secondly, you're playing into their hands. You know, so it's not just the sabotage of the system. It's the fear that the sabotage could be successful that is the Russians' greatest weapon. Thanks, David. Thanks so much, guys.

Thanks. Bye-bye. That's it for The Daily. I'm Kevin Roos. Michael Barbaro will be back tomorrow. Thank you.