Adversary Intelligence — 2026-07-20

Russia's FSB Developed AI Tool 'PAUK' to Merge Public Media Monitoring With Restricted Databases, Leaked Documents Reveal

BLUFPAUK's failure reflects contractor shortcomings rather than diminished FSB intent, and the documented requirements will migrate to a more capable vendor.

Leaked documents from Kazan-based contractor Mikord, obtained after a December 2025 hack and shared with iStories through the rights group Idite Lesom, show the FSB's Second Service commissioned an AI system called PAUK in spring 2024 to merge public media monitoring with restricted internal databases 12. The FSB's Center for Information Protection and Special Communications contracted the Kvant Research Institute, which subcontracted Mikord, on May 30, 2025, targeting completion by October 2026 1. PAUK combined a web crawler covering more than 1,000 outlets with a Meta Llama 2 chatbot designed to return a subject's full name, date of birth, phone number, and license plate 23. iStories found independent media, led by Aktivatika, supplied over 10 percent of roughly 5,000 news items in the FSB digests used to build the system 23. Mikord's internal task tracker shows the project was halted in fall 2025; Meduza reported an outside reviewer attributed this to the team's inexperience with large language models 2.

Analysis
The pilot's collapse reflects the contractor's inexperience with large language models rather than an abandoned requirement, and the specifications, planned scale of up to 400 users, and Kvant-Mikord contracting chain remain available to a more capable vendor. The outsized share of Aktivatika and other independent outlets in the training corpus shows the unit treats civic-activism reporting as a primary intelligence feed rather than press coverage. Assessment rests on iStories' original review of the leak, with OCCRP and Meduza offering convergent but non-independent secondary accounts. The system may instead have been meant mainly to replace the outsourced Kribrum monitoring service, meaning its failure changes little about the Second Service's actual surveillance reach.

3 sources