It sounds like Tom Cruise. But narrating a film smearing the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would seem an odd career choice for the Hollywood actor, who normally headlines action-packed, global blockbusters.
It's not Cruise, of course. However, when it appeared in the summer of 2023, Olympics Has Fallen and its AI-generated Cruise narration became among the first, and perhaps slickest, salvoes in a yearslong, pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign targeting the IOC and France ahead of the Paris Summer Olympics that open on July 26.
Since then, fake-news monitors have detected a stream of such videos, text reports, and other misinformation material, much of it allegedly crafted by what the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) has called "prolific Russian influence actors." Nearly all of the content ends up seeding social media and popping up on bogus websites made to look like legitimate news outlets.
In a recent report, the MTAC said two Russian influence teams that it dubbed Storm-1679 and Storm-1099 were behind a disinformation campaign not only to tar the IOC but to stoke security fears ahead of the Olympics.
Russia and its embassy in France deny any such campaign, but Moscow has long been credibly linked to fake-news efforts, especially since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, in an attempt to blur the lines of its unprovoked aggression.
Russian Olympic meddling is also not something new. Russian hackers posed as North Korean hackers to disrupt drone and telecast operations during the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. A Russian cyberespionage group called the Tsar Team, also known as APT28 or Fancy Bear, allegedly hacked the World Anti-Doping Agency, stole athletes' confidential medical data, and leaked some of it after the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.
This time, however, alleged Russian Olympic efforts appear to be more malicious, explains Clint Watts, author of the June 2 MTAC report.
"In the past, it was really about undermining the integrity of the IOC. Now, I think it's about undermining the integrity and the conduct of the Games to really create havoc or panic potentially in Paris," Watts, who is also author of Messing With The Enemy: Surviving In A Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News, told RFE/RL this week.
Others have raised similar alarms. A report also issued in June by Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm owned by Google, predicted with "high confidence" that cyberespionage, hacktivism, and disinformation campaigns, likely linked to Russia, would target France and the Paris Olympics.
And there are even more worrying signs. A Russian national and alleged Federal Security Service (FSB) agent working as a chef and living in France for 14 years was arrested on suspicion of planning with an unspecified foreign power to carry out "large-scale" acts of "destabilization" during the Paris Olympics, Le Monde reported on July 24.
Russian athletes will largely be absent as a result of past state-sponsored cheating. Only those with no ties to the Russian military or intelligence (a vetting process that is already proving controversial) will be allowed to compete, and even then only as neutral athletes; meaning minus national symbols, colors, or anthems. (This also applies to athletes from Russia's close ally, Belarus, whose authoritarian leader allowed Russia to stage part of its Ukraine invasion from Belarusian territory.)
That is nothing new for Russia, which has faced similar restrictions at previous Olympic Games over doping that gave its athletes a competitive advantage.
Beyond its Olympic snub, analysts say Russia may have extra motivation to target France, one of Ukraine's more vocal allies. French officials have complained of being in the crosshairs of a stepped-up Russian disinformation campaign since last year.
"We've been under, I would say under attack," Christophe Lemoine, acting French Foreign Ministry spokesman, said of Russian disinformation campaigns. "There has been an increase since last year, and we know that with the Olympics approaching, it's something that is going to be speeding up," Lemoine told Politico in June.
Viginum, the French government cybersecurity watchdog, has published multiple reports singling out Russian efforts to sow divisions in France and elsewhere since late 2023.
The 'Matriochka' Strategy
"This modus operandi, known in open sources as 'Matriochka' (Russian for nesting dolls), has been active since at least September 2023. It relies on the publication of false content (reports, graffiti, memes, etc.), which is then subject to coordinated dissemination in the response space of publications of X accounts of media, personalities, and fact-checking cells from more than 60 countries," Vignium said in one of its reports.
The faux-Cruise film Olympics Has Fallen was made to look like a Netflix production, including corporate branding and logo. It was promoted by multiple video clips on social-media platforms, including Telegram accounts that normally promote pro-Kremlin narratives, the MTAC said in its June report.
"Users were encouraged to scan a QR code that directed them to a Telegram channel of the same name" to watch Olympics Has Fallen, a play on the title of the U.S. action thriller Olympus Has Fallen, released more than a decade ago.
For all its sophistication, the disinformation flick was a flop, Watts says.
"As much as they tried to get different individuals, mostly through Telegram channels, to watch it, it never took off for a couple of reasons. One of the ways they tried to host it was as a Netflix documentary, and the Netflix logo resulted in it being easily taken down if it was posted onto YouTube or any of the social-media channels because it violates trademark. So from that perspective they made some mistakes," Watts said.
"But in in terms of employing generative AI, it was really the first time we'd seen an actor try and do that full-scale, you know, across an entire piece of content."
Other fake-news efforts targeted not the IOC but France, with fear as the goal, Watts' latest report says.
A short video, packaged to look like Brussels-based Euro News, falsely claimed that Parisians, spooked by the threat of terrorism linked to the Games, were scrambling to buy property insurance, Watts' report notes.
Another bogus clip, this one falsely attributed to French broadcaster France24, claimed that nearly one-quarter of all purchased Olympic tickets had been returned due to fears of terrorism.
A blunter attempt to scare spectators away contained a false CIA warning to Americans about traveling to Paris, citing a fake warning about the "high risk" of an attack, CBS News reported on June 19. CBS said it had originated on "Russian channels before making its way to X and Facebook."
The video is "a fabrication, has no connection to CIA, and does not represent CIA's view," a CIA spokesperson told CBS News.
Countdown To Games Signals Switch To Bot
With the countdown to the Paris Olympics well under way, the MTAC predicted "a tactical shift towards online bots and automated social media accounts as Kremlin-affiliated actors seek to disseminate their messaging more effectively."
Intelligence officials from three countries recently flagged a Russian influence campaign that used artificial intelligence to create nearly 1,000 fake -- or bot -- accounts on social-media platform X.
The U.S. Justice Department said on July 9 that Russia's state-run RT News network developed the bot farm, which the FSB operated to "sow discord" in the United States and elsewhere.
While such efforts may slow the spread of fake news, ending it is unlikely. Public awareness, however, can blunt it, Watts says.
"That's why we issued the public report last month," he said. "It was just to make people aware that if you are seeing and hearing things related to these Russian actors, be aware that it could be disinformation just designed to scare you."
