“Putin’s Russia uses methods from the Soviet era” – L’Express

For Nicolas Quénel, the affair illustrates the return of very Soviet methods. In his investigation released in bookstores Hello Paris? Here Moscow published by Denoël, the journalist traces the history of Russian interference operations in France, their means of action and recruitment methods – from French Youtubers targeted by Russian propaganda to the Dopplegänger network, which usurps the visual identity of European news sites to insidiously spread Kremlin propaganda. The journalist finally analyzes the French response to this asymmetrical information war led by Russia. Interview.

L’Express: Released on November 2, the annual report of the parliamentary intelligence delegation on foreign interference lists 4,000 people suspected of being agents of foreign influence, mainly Russian and Chinese. Does this report symbolize a greater awareness of foreign interference in France or does it show an intensification of the threat?

Nicolas Quénel : Both. I would like to keep a certain distance from this figure of 4,000 people, because I cannot verify it. But what we must remember from this report is that the DGSI [NDLR : Direction générale de la Sécurité intérieure] pushes for the establishment of a law on the registration of foreign agents, like the American Foreign Agents Registration Act, that is to say a register for the agents of influence of a foreign power, in the goal of fight more effectively against these interferences. Or, at least, to make them more difficult.

When did this realization take place?

It depends who you ask. Some early Macronists mention the presidential election in the United States in 2016. This is an answer that seems questionable to me: during his first term, did Emmanuel Macron not want to normalize his relations with Vladimir Putin, an approach which reached its peak during his speech in Brégançon held in 2019? For their part, the military says they became aware of the risk of Russian interference in 2018, the date of the publication of a report entitled “Information manipulation”, produced jointly by the Center for Analysis, Forecasting and Strategy and the Strategic Research Institute of the Military School.

When this question is asked at the Quai d’Orsay, diplomats rather mention the assassination of Samuel Paty, in 2020. After his death, large waves of foreign disinformation took place: in Pakistan for example, messages on social networks said that in France, Muslim children were tattooed… It was also after the death of Samuel Paty that the Honfleur Task Force was created, which became the Vigilance and Protection Service against Foreign Digital Interference, Viginum, which fights against foreign digital interference.

However, in France, foreign influence operations are not a new phenomenon…

Since the Soviet Union, France has always been a victim and a privileged target of Russian interference, a kind of “soft underbelly” in Europe. At the end of the Second World War, there was a very strong Communist Party in France and a powerful anti-Americanism among the French elites. We also find a tradition of combat press with, in French newspapers, a large place given to opinion texts, and therefore a tendency to mix facts and opinions. So many doors open to carry out influence operations.

Finally, we cannot deny that Gaullism, which wanted to make France a power “halfway” between the United States and the USSR, was interpreted as a weakness for the Soviets, who judged that the Hexagon was an interesting territory to work in. As proof, in 1961, the KGB branch in Paris boasted in a report sent to Moscow of having influenced in one year some 230 press articles, 11 books and 32 parliamentary questions.

Is there a significant difference in the way influence operations are conducted today compared to the Cold War?

The biggest development in Russia is the increasing privatization of this sector, which makes the attribution of these operations more difficult, because it is difficult to identify the sponsor. These companies which carry out propaganda campaigns act in the same way as shell companies which want to hide their money from the tax authorities: we add an additional layer of opacity.

We can cite the example of Russian companies which approached French YouTubers to offer to broadcast Russian propaganda on European vaccines against Covid-19 or the war in Ukraine, all for remuneration. We still do not know who is behind these operations, although heavy suspicion weighs on the Russian state.

Can we take stock of France’s actions to counter Russian influence?

There is a real battle order among ministries, and an awareness of the threats weighing on our rule of law. Things are evolving and being put in place, but there is still a lot of work and areas to improve. The challenge is to go beyond the simple mobilization of the public sector and to raise awareness among French citizens, who are the direct targets of these influence operations.

If we are in the process of adapting to the threat, is there, at the same time, an evolution in Russian methods?

Yes, the DGSI already identifies a sort of return of “dad influence”, because the digital tool on which Russia has relied for many years is less and less effective. After the 2016 American presidential election, the platforms, for example, modified their algorithms to hinder the action of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s troll farms. Russia is therefore increasingly resorting to methods used during the Cold War against the West, and the Star of David tags in Paris are the perfect example. This mode of action resembles that used in 1959 and 1960 in West Germany, during the “swastika epidemic”, when these symbols were drawn by the hundreds on city walls. It was in reality the work of the KGB to create disorder in West Germany, undermine Western confidence in Germany and manipulate the country’s media agenda, while investing few resources…

Putin’s regime has no moral limits, so we are fully in an asymmetrical struggle, because France remains a state of law and cannot respond in the same way. This is the real risk – that France gives in to the desire to fight fire with fire. The French army was already caught in 2020, whenshe participated in anti-Russian propaganda operations in Mali by creating fake accounts.

In your book, you also mention the risks of the democratization of artificial intelligence (AI) and the opportunities it can offer Russian propaganda.

Russian interference operations have evolved at the same time as new information and communication technologies, like all influence operations in the world. Today, the latest major development is the democratization of AI tools which can help industrialize disinformation and facilitate the creation of entire networks of influence. Before, when Russian actors wanted to create entire galaxies of fake news websites and feed them with content to be shared massively on social networks, they were obliged to mobilize a lot of human, technical and financial resources to carry out their mission. .

Today, tools like ChatGPT help automate website creation and can automatically write fake news articles in different languages. As a direct consequence of this development, operations that could take months now only take a few hours. Conversely, we must understand that the appearance of these new tools will change our uses as Internet users. The assumption of being exposed to artificially generated content will be more and more present and we will certainly be more wary of what we are exposed to on the web.

Do citizens seem sufficiently alerted to the risks caused to their lives by this information war?

There will always be people who tell you that the Cold War is over and that Russian interference in the West represents a false problem. Naivety is, on this point, always present. In my book, I place a lot of emphasis on the real consequences in the daily lives of citizens – in particular the influence on their political choices and the image that we can have of this or that conflict.

For example, I recently spoke with someone who believed that Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA. However, this rumor is [NDLR : comme le montrent les archives Mitrokhine] the work of a vast KGB influence operation… carried out directly after the assassination of the American president! We can clearly see that operations carried out more than 60 years ago can still have resonance today…