Adversary Intelligence — 2026-10-17

Russian Troll Farms Resume Operations Boosting Republican Candidates Ahead of US Midterm Elections

BLUFDismantled federal tracking units and active Russian influence networks leave U.S. midterm defenses materially weaker than in 2024, shifting detection burden onto under-resourced state officials and private researchers.

The New York Times, as relayed by Alternet 1, reported that the Russian-backed "Doppelgänger" operation, run by the Social Design Agency, used more than 50 fake personas posing as Israeli women beginning October 7, with a network of over 1,000 accounts inserting the posts into high-traffic conversations for an estimated 150,000 posts 1. Bloomberg Government reported that researchers attribute a separate bot-driven effort, the Matryoshka (Operation Overload) operation, to Russian state backing, inflating views of AI-fabricated celebrity and Democratic-candidate videos 2. Mother Jones reported that a fake Mother Jones-branded video claiming the DNC paid CNN's chief $259 million drew 155,000 views in a day before X removed it for a trademark violation 3. Mother Jones also reported the Trump administration has shuttered the FBI, ODNI and State Department units that tracked Russian disinformation 3, and the Times reported that a classified briefing for state officials failed Thursday when a secure connection could not be established 1.

Analysis
Russian influence operations are again targeting Democratic candidates before the midterms, and U.S. defenses are thinner than in 2024. Doppelgänger's Israel-themed wave, begun October 7, and the Matryoshka network's bot-inflated fabricated videos are running at the same time, while shuttered federal tracking units and a failed classified briefing for state officials leave election administrators with less warning and little attribution support. X's ban of 13,000 accounts linked to Iran, Russia and China this week shows platforms are carrying more of the load. Confidence is moderate: three outlets agree on the activity, but all rely on the same few researcher groups and one anonymous tracker, with no government, platform or forensic corroboration. The activity may instead be low-impact noise, since bot-inflated views and removed posts show little authentic engagement.

3 sources

Russian troll farms are back — and they're boosting the GOP: NYT - Alternet
Russia Is Using an Army of Bots to Push Fake US Election Videos - Bloomberg Government
How Russia Is Attacking the Midterms with a Mother Jones Deepfake