Secretary of War Pete Hegseth fired a lieutenant general earlier this week for allegedly leaking classified information related to the war with Iran and the Russia-Ukraine war, sources said.
The post Report: Hegseth Fires ‘Top Military Planner’ for Alleged Leaks of Classified Info appeared first on Breitbart.
Si les fausses informations sont un fléau universel, l'Afrique en fait particulièrement les frais. La journaliste franco-congolaise Dominique Tchimbakala, longtemps figure de TV5 Monde, décrypte ce qu'elle qualifie de « véritable virus ». La vulnérabilité du continent provient, notamment, de la fragilité du tissu médiatique (un « désert informationnel ») et de l'utilisation très étendue des plates-formes numériques — « La désinformation s'est industrialisée avec le téléphone portable » ; ses richesses en font un enjeu économique et la cible des campagnes de désinformation venues de Russie, de Chine ou d'anciennes puissances coloniales. Mobilisant exemples et anecdotes, Tchimbakala analyse les ressorts sociaux et psychologiques de la propagation du « virus », comme la « cécité militante » ou l'« indifférence calculée » des pouvoirs publics. Elle met en garde contre les illusions d'un fact checking sans moyens et appelle à « réapprendre collectivement (…) ce qu'est vraiment le journalisme ». Selon elle, l'Union africaine doit contribuer à relever ce défi éducatif, culturel et social.
Riveneuve, Paris, 2026, 190 pages, 10,50 euros.
La saturation progressive du sens de la vue par les écrans a ouvert un nouvel espace à l'ouïe, jusque-là essentiellement sollicitée par la voix humaine et la musique. Diffusés en ligne, chuchotements et sons de contact amplifiés permettent de nouer avec certaines personnes un rapport très particulier.
Un homme apparaît sur un fond noir, devant une toile posée sur un chevalet. Le sourire affable, il s'adresse aux téléspectateurs comme s'il les connaissait chacun personnellement : « Hi, welcome back, I'm glad to see you » (« Salut, content de vous revoir ici »). Il s'emploie alors à peindre montagnes, couchers de soleil ou fermes sous la neige. Le patient professeur conseille et encourage d'une voix douce l'élève invisible.
« The joy of painting » (« La joie de peindre ») est un programme télévisé américain, animé par Robert (« Bob ») Ross et diffusé entre 1983 et 1994. Personne, sans doute, n'aurait pu prédire que les méandres d'Internet lui donneraient une seconde célébrité quelques décennies plus tard, ni qu'il deviendrait le modèle de l'ASMR. Ce sigle — pour autonomous sensory meridian response, « réponse sensorielle autonome culminante » en français — désigne une sensation, voire un sentiment suscité par ces contenus, et par extension ces contenus eux-mêmes. Une étiquette apposée sur certaines vidéos reprenant les codes des émissions de Bob Ross : douceur de la voix, lenteur de l'élocution, adresse directe au spectateur et amplification exagérée de certains bruits d'ordinaire peu perceptibles — en l'occurrence, celui du pinceau.
Grâce à des micros placés tout près de la source sonore, les créateurs accentuent les sons produits par des objets manipulés : une vidéaste met de la mousse à raser sur un micro, découpe avec des ciseaux une balle antistress à paillettes pour en répandre le contenu. Les séquences mettent souvent en scène une personne « guide » qui, explique l'artiste et chercheuse Alice Lenay, « fait mine de prendre soin du “récepteur” ».
Ce « prendre soin » s'incarne dans un jeu de rôle : le ou la vidéaste est une librairie qui te conseille des livres ; une esthéticienne qui te prodigue un soin du visage, etc. Les sons amplifiés exacerbent sa respiration, ses bruits de bouche ; ils mettent mal à l'aise certaines personnes et en ravissent d'autres. Si ce genre compte des millions d'adeptes à travers le monde (la chaîne YouTube américaine Gentle Whispering compte plus de 2 millions d'abonnés), l'ASMR demeure un ovni. « C'est une niche », admet avec un sourire Florian Boullot, alias Paris ASMR. Sa chaîne a fêté ses 10 ans l'année dernière. « Beaucoup de gens n'hésitent pas à me dire qu'ils n'aiment pas. Je crois que j'apprécie ce clivage : sauver les nuits des uns de l'insomnie, et être moqué par les autres. »
« ASMR chuchoté (attention personnelle) », « ASMR spa & face massage », « ASMR tapping, no talking » (ou « tapotement ASMR sans paroles »)… Que vient-on chercher en s'absorbant dans la contemplation de quelqu'un qui, faisant bouger avec des gestes lents une maquette du Système solaire, dit à voix basse le nom et la localisation de chaque planète ? Ou qui mange, sans un mot, des cornichons ou des bonbons colorés près d'un micro ? Alors que ces communautés n'ont cessé de grandir sur différentes plates-formes, certains, comme Florian Boullot, se sont spécialisés dans la production de ces vidéos.
Si les images numériques colorées, saturées, agitées peuplent les réseaux sociaux, « le public ASMR en ligne délimite un espace intime, au rythme ralenti de l'infra-ordinaire, à rebours de la clarté pressante des messages informationnels », souligne Alice Lenay. Elle met l'accent sur l'« ordinaire étrangeté » de l'ASMR, où les objets et situations du quotidien deviennent des supports de relaxation. Pour Sandra Marinelli, qui a créé sa chaîne Sandra ASMR en 2015, il s'agit de « ralentir » : « J'ai découvert l'ASMR, comme beaucoup de gens, parce que je faisais des insomnies. Même si j'ai trouvé ça un peu bizarre au début, je me suis aperçue que ces vidéos me faisaient du bien. J'aimais qu'elles me donnent l'impression de s'adresser à moi. Elles devenaient comme une présence. »
À une époque marquée par un sentiment d'accélération frénétique, l'ASMR se présente telle une bulle, un monde de douceur et de calme, où tous les objets sont bien rangés, où le désagrément n'existe pas, ou alors seulement comme le sujet d'une mise en scène humoristique, passé au tamis d'une voix susurrée. De nombreuses recherches s'intéressent d'ailleurs à la portée thérapeutique du processus et à ses effets sur le cerveau. Les « artistes ASMR » estiment que cette expérience trouve son origine dans les premiers temps de la vie. Dans le langage de la communauté, le mot « triggers » (« déclencheurs ») désigne les sons qui provoquent la sensation de bien-être. Chaque personne ayant ses propres triggers, de nombreux vidéastes s'interrogent sur ce qui pourrait relever de souvenirs de la petite, voire de la très petite enfance. Florian Boullot parle ainsi des traces d'une « éducation au monde » : la voix rassurante d'un parent, le bruit des pages tournées au moment de l'histoire du soir, les lueurs du mobile au-dessus du berceau.
Créatrice de la chaîne Roxane ASMR, Roxane Cathelot, ancienne infirmière en réanimation formée à l'hypnose, utilise à présent cette technique dans ses vidéos. « Je me suis rendu compte que j'aidais peut-être encore plus de gens sur Internet qu'à l'hôpital », estime-t-elle. Une position à la fois valorisante et ambiguë. « Certaines personnes peuvent venir chercher, davantage que de la relaxation, de quoi combler leur solitude », note Florian Boullot. Cette relation unilatérale confronte des personnes souvent sans formation médicale à la souffrance d'autrui. Sur sa chaîne Paris ASMR, le vidéaste a changé de ton au fil des années pour s'adresser à ses abonnés : « J'essaie de nuancer mon propos, de dire aux gens qu'ils ne sont pas seuls, pour les encourager à ne pas trop se réfugier dans cette réalité numérique. Mon ASMR ne peut être qu'une petite pommade. »
L'une des dimensions centrales de la médiation sonore tient au « sentiment d'être touché à distance, analyse Alice Lenay. Quand le doigt de la personne effleure le micro, le son tape mon tympan et me donne l'impression d'une caresse ». La professionnalisation de la pratique s'accompagne d'une sophistication technique. Très présente sur YouTube mais aussi sur la plate-forme Twitch, qui lui permet de faire des sessions live d'ASMR, Roxane Cathelot raconte son enthousiasme pour le travail du son : « Très vite après que j'ai lancé ma chaîne, il y a dix ans, j'ai investi dans des micros de bonne qualité et j'ai une carte spécifique pour traiter les sons en direct. »
Pendant l'épidémie de Covid-19, la youtubeuse française BehindTheMoons a réalisé, en collaboration avec l'artiste Caroline Delieutraz, une performance consistant à toucher et à manipuler une sélection d'œuvres contemporaines. « En général, dans un musée, on interdit de toucher les œuvres. Au contraire, je devais m'en saisir pour essayer d'en tirer des sons et partager, dans une vidéo, une forme de découverte naïve, explique-t-elle. Ainsi, il y a un spectre d'approches qui va d'une pratique face caméra classique à des réalisations visuelles et sonores plus artistiques, se voulant cinématographiques ou encore expérimentales. » Les unes proches de la musique concrète, les autres, au contraire, asservies à l'entreprise marchande.
En 2023, un spot publicitaire pour une automobile de luxe s'inspire de l'ASMR : une jeune femme blonde, un micro à la main, tapote de ses ongles manucurés les jantes de la voiture qu'elle fait ensuite démarrer, caresse le volant, en susurrant le nom de la marque, Bentley. La mise en scène, si elle a donné lieu à de nombreux détournements comiques, met en lumière un autre aspect de l'ASMR : sa confusion avec la pornographie. « Ce lien est réel. L'ASMR est devenue une catégorie à part entière sur les sites pornographiques », constate Roxane Cathelot. Comme beaucoup de ses collègues, la jeune femme veut pourtant éviter toute dimension suggestive dans ses propres vidéos, et qualifie l'ASMR qu'elle pratique de « familial » et « enveloppant ». À son grand dam, sur Twitch, où elle diffuse plusieurs fois par semaine ses vidéos, la catégorie « ASMR » est inondée de contenus à caractère pornographique, à tel point qu'elle a été interdite aux moins de 18 ans.
Dans les années 2010, le terme de brain orgasm (orgasme cérébral) apparaît dans les médias pour désigner l'intensité de la sensation que provoque l'ASMR. « Une chaîne de télévision est un jour venue chez moi, raconte Sandra Marinelli. Quand le reportage est sorti, j'ai découvert qu'il portait sur les “nouveaux types d'orgasme”. Je n'en menais pas large quand je suis arrivée au travail le lendemain de la diffusion… » Cette sexualisation des créatrices d'ASMR les rend plus vulnérables encore aux nombreuses formes de harcèlement que la plupart subissent déjà : certaines reçoivent des messages à caractère sexuel non sollicités, des lettres de menaces de mort ou de viol, d'autres voient leur adresse ou celle de leur famille divulguée sur les réseaux sociaux. « C'est presque une règle qui régit Internet : si quelque chose existe, sa version sexuelle aussi », déplore BehindTheMoons avec un certain fatalisme.
De ce monde dépolitisé du bien-être, l'influenceur Maël Coutand a tiré un autre fil. En 2020, alors qu'il cherche à tourner en dérision une vidéo de Ségolène Royal « racontant n'importe quoi » au micro du journaliste Jean-Jacques Bourdin, ce créateur de vidéos humoristiques s'aperçoit qu'un doublage chuchoté de l'interview produit un effet insolite. « Je me suis rendu compte que les gens prêtaient parfois davantage attention à ce qui était dit grâce au chuchotement, explique celui qui est aussi conseiller en communication et chargé de plaidoyer pour des structures d'intérêt général. Après avoir transformé des engueulades en chuchotements, je suis parfois choqué par le contenu des interviews : “Il a vraiment dit ça ?” »
Pourtant, malgré le caractère très créatif de la production d'ASMR, son modèle économique reste le même que celui de l'influence (1). Le nombre de vues des vidéos génère très peu de revenus, et la rémunération découle surtout des placements de produits et de la publicité insérée en début, milieu ou fin de visionnage. Jusqu'en mars 2026, les créateurs pouvaient obtenir de la part du Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC) une aide financière au projet. Mais, à la suite d'une polémique alimentée par le Rassemblement national, ce fonds a été suspendu. Le financement de ces créations reste donc dépendant des activités commerciales. « Les placements de produits dans l'ASMR ont ceci de particulièrement désagréable qu'ils interviennent non pas seulement dans un moment de disponibilité de l'auditeur, mais de vulnérabilité, alors que nous sommes dans un état proche de l'hypnose », observe Alice Lenay. Pour cette raison, Sandra Marinelli a voulu restreindre les partenariats commerciaux, ce qui, dit-elle, « divise [ses] revenus par trois », en particulier les annonces en milieu ou en fin de visionnage, qui « font vivre presque tous les youtubeurs aujourd'hui ». Un autre mode de financement, les abonnements payants, existe mais reste marginal. L'ASMR reflète au fond l'univers numérique où il s'épanouit. La force de ses triggers ne se résume pas à une simple expérience neurophysiologique. Sur YouTube, « The joy of painting » connaît toujours le même engouement : la chaîne totalise 6,5 millions d'abonnés. « J'espère vous revoir très bientôt. D'ici là, bonne peinture. Merci ! »
(1) Lire Benoît Bréville, « Tous influenceurs ! », Le Monde diplomatique, juin 2025.
À Yaoundé, une petite armée de « microtravailleurs » annote des données pour des plates-formes internationales d'intelligence artificielle comme Appen, Isahit ou Scale AI (à travers Remotasks). Une activité de l'ombre qui s'accomplit sans contrat ni protection sociale. L'État, lui, s'active pour taxer les maigres revenus de cette main-d'œuvre interchangeable.
Il est tard à Ngoa Ékélé. Dans la pénombre d'un cybercafé exigu qui fleure bon la poussière, le visage de Boris L. est inondé par la lumière bleutée d'un écran de seconde main. Dehors, le quartier universitaire de Yaoundé plonge dans l'obscurité en raison de l'un de ces délestages chroniques dont la Société camerounaise d'électricité (Socadel) a le secret. Mais ici, grâce à un vieux groupe électrogène qui gronde dans l'arrière-boutique, la connexion Internet tient bon. Depuis plusieurs mois, une grande partie des soirées de cet étudiant se déroulent ici. Boris est ce qu'on appelle un « microtravailleur », l'un des milliers d'opérateurs invisibles qui, au Cameroun comme ailleurs en Afrique, polissent le miroir de l'intelligence artificielle (IA) mondiale pour un salaire de misère.
Sur Remotasks, une plate-forme de Scale AI, entreprise américaine basée à San Francisco et valorisée à 29 milliards de dollars en 2025 (1), il enchaîne ainsi des microtâches. Elles consistent à repérer des éléments dans des images, à les délimiter et à les identifier afin d'entraîner des systèmes d'IA à les reconnaître. Sur l'écran défilent des scènes du quotidien américain ou européen. Il faut identifier des piétons, des voitures, des panneaux de signalisation. Pour chaque tâche, quelques centimes. « Au bout de quatre heures de travail, j'ai peut-être l'équivalent de 500 francs CFA », confie-t-il. Soit moins de 1 euro. Comme tous les microtravailleurs interrogés pour ce reportage, notre interlocuteur a demandé que l'on change son nom, non par honte d'accomplir une besogne indigne de son niveau d'instruction, mais par peur. Celle de perdre cette source de revenus dérisoires, pourtant précieuse dans un pays où 65 % de la population active vit une forme de sous-emploi, selon l'Institut national de la statistique du Cameroun (2). À des milliers de kilomètres de là, ces données annotées viendront nourrir les algorithmes de voitures autonomes ou les modèles de vision par ordinateur des pays du Nord.
Le discours officiel, lui, semble ignorer ces conditions précaires. Le 7 juillet 2025, la ministre des postes et télécommunications camerounaise, Mme Minette Libom Li Likeng, lançait officiellement la « stratégie nationale d'intelligence artificielle ». L'ambition affichée est de faire du Cameroun « le hub de référence en intelligence artificielle en Afrique » à l'horizon 2040 (3). La stratégie prévoit notamment de créer douze mille emplois directs et de concevoir un modèle de langage local, le « GPT Cameroun », qui valoriserait les quelque trois cents langues nationales. Des discours ont résonné dans les amphithéâtres universitaires, et tous les médias ont relayé la nouvelle avec enthousiasme. L'Afrique allait enfin prendre sa place dans la révolution numérique, non plus comme consommatrice, mais comme productrice. Pourtant, le microtravail de l'IA proposé aux opérateurs camerounais repose sur un principe : fragmenter des travaux en milliers d'opérations élémentaires (cocher une case, identifier un objet, évaluer une phrase) et les distribuer via des plates-formes numériques à des travailleurs dispersés à travers le monde, rémunérés à la tâche. Le terme consacré est ghost work, le « travail fantôme », popularisé par les chercheurs Mary L. Gray et Siddharth Suri, de Microsoft Research dans un ouvrage paru en 2019 (4).
Cette main-d'œuvre indispensable au développement de l'IA n'existe pas pour le droit du travail camerounais. Pas de contrat, pas de protection sociale et encore moins de congés payés. L'illusion d'une collaboration technologique de pointe « gagnant-gagnant » s'effrite dès l'examen des « conditions générales d'utilisation » (CGU) que Boris a dû valider d'un clic. « L'utilisateur reconnaît qu'il agit en tant que prestataire indépendant et qu'aucune relation d'emploi ou de joint-venture n'est établie avec la plate-forme », stipule en anglais le contrat type de Remotasks. Cette ligne de texte minuscule, presque illisible, suffit à reporter toute la responsabilité sociale sur l'individu.
Selon un enseignant-chercheur en économie à l'université de Yaoundé-II, « nous sommes dans une économie de l'extraction pure. On ne mine plus du cobalt ou du pétrole, mais de la cognition humaine. Le Cameroun fournit la matière grise nécessaire à la validation des systèmes d'intelligence artificielle du Nord, sans aucune contrepartie en termes de transfert de technologie ou de protection sociale ». Le modèle n'est pas propre à Remotasks. Appen, Clickworker, UHRS (de Microsoft) : toutes ces plates-formes recrutent massivement en Afrique subsaharienne, attirées par un vivier de jeunes diplômés disposant d'une connexion Internet et subissant un chômage structurel qui les rend disponibles à n'importe quel tarif. Les « travailleurs du clic » qui annotent les données destinées à l'IA ne font l'objet d'aucun décompte continental fiable à ce jour.
Si les autorités camerounaises ne s'intéressent guère à la zone de non-droit dans laquelle baignent ces travailleurs, elles ne renoncent pas pour autant à taxer leurs maigres rémunérations. Ainsi, selon les dispositions réglementaires, « les sociétés locales de téléphonie opérant au Cameroun sont tenues de configurer leurs systèmes de manière à éviter toute connexion au réseau par des appareils de communication non répertoriés (5) ». En d'autres termes, l'opérateur mobile devient le gendarme d'un État qui traque la moindre recette. Pour un jeune dont le revenu mensuel dépasse rarement les 50 000 francs CFA (76,50 euros), la taxe douanière de 33 % sur son terminal représente un lourd fardeau. Selon un spécialiste du droit du travail au barreau de Yaoundé, cette asymétrie est révoltante : « Le gouvernement déploie une ingénierie complexe pour identifier un numéro IMEI [International Mobile Equipment Identity, soit l'identifiant du téléphone] et prélever une taxe douanière, mais il se déclare incapable d'identifier ces plates-formes étrangères qui emploient des milliers de nos jeunes sans verser la moindre cotisation à la Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale. On protège la recette budgétaire, mais on abandonne le travailleur. » La conséquence directe pourrait être un basculement vers une clandestinité numérique accrue, avec le développement de réseaux de falsification d'IMEI pour échapper au blocage prévu par la réglementation.
L'Afrique anglophone (Kenya, Nigeria, Afrique du Sud) est depuis longtemps dans le viseur des grandes plates-formes (6). Mais l'Afrique francophone constitue désormais un nouveau terrain d'investissement. Une société française, Isahit, se positionne explicitement sur ce créneau. Elle se présente comme une plate-forme « socialement responsable » qui « met en relation des travailleurs défavorisés d'Afrique francophone avec des entreprises françaises » pour des tâches d'annotation de données, de modération de contenus et d'analyse d'images destinées à l'entraînement de systèmes d'IA. Parmi celles qu'elle cite figurent Airbus et L'Oréal, des groupes du CAC 40. Le vernis éthique est soigné. Sur son site officiel, Isahit présente son modèle comme de l'« impact sourcing », qui consiste à confier des tâches rémunérées à des jeunes issus de milieux modestes. Ses communications mettent en avant des témoignages de travailleurs « épanouis », des chiffres d'« impact social ». Mais les conditions concrètes demeurent largement opaques. Les travailleurs, appelés « HITers », pour « Human Intelligence Tasks », sont rémunérés à la microtâche, sans contrat de travail au sens classique. Joint par messagerie WhatsApp, un HITer de 27 ans basé à Douala, Hermann, titulaire d'une licence en droit, décrit ainsi son quotidien : « On reçoit des lots de tâches sans préavis. Parfois il y en a, parfois il n'y en a pas pendant des jours entiers. Il n'y a aucun contrat, aucune garantie. On ne sait jamais à l'avance combien on va gagner dans le mois. »
La question de savoir à qui s'adresser en cas de problème reste sans réponse claire. La plate-forme se présente comme un simple intermédiaire, et les entreprises clientes se réfugient derrière les CGU. Contacté sur LinkedIn, Isahit nous a répondu par la voix de son cofondateur et directeur des opérations, M. Philippe Coup-Jambet. L'entreprise compte dix-huit contributeurs actifs au Cameroun, qui travaillent sous le statut d'indépendant et non de salarié. Elle reconnaît que leur activité dépend des commandes : « Les volumes d'activité varient naturellement en fonction des projets confiés par nos clients. » Cette subordination éclaire l'irrégularité des tâches évoquée par Hermann. Côté rémunération, Isahit avance un montant mensuel « de l'ordre de 220 euros pour un mi-temps », soit environ 144 400 francs CFA, tout en précisant que les revenus fluctuent selon les missions réalisées et le temps consacré. L'entreprise indique enfin plafonner l'activité à cent heures par mois, afin de permettre aux contributeurs de la combiner avec d'autres.
Ce qui frappe dans ce système, c'est son architecture d'invisibilité. Entre Meta ou OpenAI et le travailleur de Nairobi, de Yaoundé ou de Dakar, une multitude de sous-traitants (Sama, Scale AI, Appen, Isahit) opèrent dans un vide juridique transnational soigneusement entretenu. Chaque maillon peut se décharger sur le suivant. Le travailleur n'a pas d'employeur clairement identifiable, pas de convention collective applicable, pas d'inspection du travail compétente pour instruire une plainte. Les plates-formes se défendent d'exploiter leurs prestataires. Elles brandissent les chiffres : les salaires versés seraient supérieurs aux salaires minimums locaux. Ce qui est, dans de nombreux cas, factuellement exact et révélateur à la fois. Comparer un salaire de misère à un plancher légal lui-même souvent insuffisant ne dit rien de la valeur réelle produite par ce travail. Selon une étude de l'entreprise de conseil Grand View Research, le marché mondial de l'annotation pour l'IA est estimé à 1,9 milliard de dollars (1,7 milliard d'euros) en 2025 et devrait atteindre 13,1 milliards de dollars (11,7 milliards d'euros) en 2033 (7). La part qui revient aux travailleurs africains qui en constituent une partie de la main-d'œuvre demeure infime et non traçable. Le chercheur Antonio Casilli, spécialiste du travail numérique à l'Institut polytechnique de Paris, décrit un mécanisme structurel délibéré. Les entreprises attirent intentionnellement plus de travailleurs que nécessaire sur leurs plates-formes, maintenant une concurrence permanente entre eux, ce qui tire de fait les rémunérations vers le bas. Il en résulte une alternance de périodes de surcharge et d'absence d'activité que les travailleurs ne peuvent ni prévoir ni négocier. Ce n'est pas un dysfonctionnement du système. C'en est précisément le moteur. Lauriane N., étudiante en master de communication à Yaoundé, affirme avoir travaillé pendant plusieurs mois sur UHRS, la plate-forme de Microsoft, accessible via des sous-traitants. Elle décrit la logique épuisante du système : « Pour accéder aux tâches mieux rémunérées, il faut passer des examens de qualification. Mais ces examens ne sont pas toujours disponibles. Et, quand on a enfin accès à une catégorie, les tâches peuvent disparaître du jour au lendemain sans la moindre explication. »
La contradiction est là, béante, entre les discours et la réalité du terrain. Le Cameroun — comme le Sénégal, la Côte d'Ivoire et le Maroc — investit politiquement dans une rhétorique de souveraineté numérique. Il s'agit de produire une IA « africaine », ancrée dans les valeurs culturelles du continent, capable de répondre aux besoins spécifiques de ses populations. La volonté est réelle. Mais, pendant ce temps, la véritable intégration des Africains dans l'économie mondiale de l'IA se fait par le bas : comme main-d'œuvre jetable, interchangeable, non protégée, opérant hors de tout cadre juridique national. Le paradoxe est d'autant plus cruel que cette main-d'œuvre est souvent hautement qualifiée. Les microtravailleurs africains ne sont pas, dans leur grande majorité, des personnes sans formation. Ce sont des titulaires de licence, de master, de diplôme d'ingénierie qui ne trouvent pas de débouché dans une économie formelle structurellement défaillante et se tournent vers ces plates-formes faute de mieux. Au Cameroun, la prise de conscience collective n'en est qu'à ses balbutiements. Ces soutiers sont dispersés, isolés derrière leurs écrans, souvent tenus par des clauses de confidentialité qui les dissuadent de témoigner.
Il est minuit passé à Yaoundé. Boris vient de terminer son lot de tâches. Son téléphone affiche le total de la soirée. Il pose l'appareil, soupire et dit simplement : « Si on avait le choix, on ne serait pas là. Mais, avec un diplôme et pas d'emploi, tu fais quoi ? » Sans une action coordonnée pour imposer des normes sociales aux plates-formes et une fiscalité plus juste qui ne frappe pas que le maillon faible, Boris et ses compagnons d'infortune resteront les forçats d'une modernité qui se construit sur leur dos.
(1) Cf. Reuters, « Meta investit plusieurs milliards de dollars dans Scale AI et recrute son DG », Les Echos, 13 juin 2025.
(2) « Enquête camerounaise auprès des ménages (ECAM 5). Situation des conditions de vie des ménages en 2021-2022 » (PDF), Institut national de la statistique du Cameroun, Yaoundé, mai 2024.
(3) Ludovic Amara, « Le Cameroun lance sa stratégie d'intelligence artificielle pour générer 12 000 emplois d'ici 2040 », Investir au Cameroun, 10 juillet 2025.
(4) Mary L. Gray et Siddharth Suri, Ghost Work : How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2019.
(5) Article 7 de la « Décision conjointe n° 00000145/Minfi/Minpostel du 25 mars 2026 », signée par les ministres des finances et des postes et télécommunications, scribd.com.
(6) Lire Sabine Cessou, « Fièvre numérique au Kenya », Le Monde diplomatique, décembre 2018.
(7) « AI annotation market (2025-2033) », Grand View Research, San Francisco, octobre 2025, actualisé en mai 2026.
If you have come across messages such as “what Europe needs is a peaceful continent” on Facebook or X, you may have encountered coordinated inauthentic behaviour (CIB).
CIB is a manipulative communication tactic that uses a combination of authentic, fake and duplicated social media accounts to operate as an adversarial network across platforms such as X, Facebook or Bluesky.
By coordinating their activity, these accounts can amplify particular messages and create an online impression that may not reflect the reality of public opinion.
The tactic spread massively during Covid.
In a paper entitled ‘Coordinated inauthentic behavior: An innovative manipulation tactic to amplify Covid-19 anti-vaccine communication outreach via social media’, Monica Murero wrote that such operations could be “one of the greatest threats to freedom of expression and democracy in our society”.
But this distortion becomes particularly visible during elections.
Indeed, with political momentum, spreading messages and content online can influence how voters perceive the strength of an incumbent government and the prospects of its opposition.
The latest example is Serbia.
Ahead of parliamentary elections in Serbia, the Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI), in collaboration with Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, investigated how coordinated networks promoted former Serbian PM and president Aleksandar Vučić while undermining independent media.
“CIB corrupts the public signal that democracies rely on to understand themselves,” head of research at BFMI Vanesa Valcheva told EUobserver.
The findings point to a broader problem for democratic debate: online visibility can be manipulated to sustain an image of political dominance, even when the picture on the ground appears different.
“Incumbents often try to look unbeatable to discourage opposition voters, reassure their supporters, and show outside partners that things are unlikely to change,” Valcheva said.
Before the rise of these coordinated online operations, the digital space offered dissent more room to breathe.
But nowadays, CIB networks can undermine the online space by repeatedly circulating messages that support a particular political interest and make it appear more widely shared than it is.
And indeed, Vučić dominated the space on X and Facebook while the streets suggested otherwise.
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Euromaidan Press has been impersonated as part of a Russian disinformation campaign. A copycat website was created, with a hyphen added to our name, which published a fabricated article alleging a Ukrainian drone had killed civilians in Kramatorsk that cites anonymous "Ukrainian OSINT channels" amid copies of our real news reports. In reality, that 8 October strike was a Russian aerial bombing of two public buses that killed 33 civilians.
The fabrication is part of a years-long Russian disinformation campaign to impersonate and clone trusted news brands, predominantly in Europe, and publish false reports under their names. The disinformation research project Gnida tied our case to Storm-1516, one of several overlapping Russian operations, alongside the older Doppelganger, and NewsGuard, which reached out to us while preparing its own debunk, attributes the fake to the same operation. The fabricated Kramatorsk report comes amid an ongoing effort to erode Western support for Ukraine, as Russia's war goes on, and to sow distrust among Western political elites.
The fake started circulating on 24 October, one day after the forged publication appeared on our website. It started making rounds on X together with a forged video with a version of our logo claiming that "newly obtained footage" featured the remains of a Liutyi drone that "independent OSINT channels" claimed were "quickly removed from the scene." No specific OSINT channels were named; no sources were linked.
The forged video, apparently produced with AI, and the link were spread by X accounts such as @vick55top, @indiaTales7, @TheWorld_Update, @Wonder_star21, @Theunk5555, @SilentBriefHQ1, and @Suriyakmaps, where it was subsequently removed. The videos on those accounts averaged 400,000 to 500,000 views, far more than the accounts' modest follower counts and their usual engagement would produce, a likely sign of inauthentic amplification.
On 25 October, the Russian disinformation monitor Gnida Project flagged this as a case of the Storm-1516 disinformation campaign. Other recent cases flagged by Gnida included advertisements of Russian Geran drones, claims of the Shamonda virus being leaked from a "Ukrainian biolab," smears against US Democratic candidates, and a fake on a similar copycat "toronto-sun.ca" website alleging that President Zelenskyy purchased a nuclear bunker in Nova Scotia.
The latest Storm-1516 disinformation campaign is targeting Ukraine. The campaign promotes a false narrative that a deadly strike in the Ukrainian city Kramatorsk was performed by a Ukrainian drone based on a fake "Ukrainian OSINT investigation" pic.twitter.com/Klpm9UVCf2
— gnida project (@gnidaproject) October 25, 2026
As for the actual content of the fake, the real event is one of the most thoroughly documented atrocities of the month. On 8 October 2026, Russian forces struck two public buses in Kramatorsk with an aerial bomb, killing 33 people and wounding about 18. Such attacks are, sadly, a daily occurrence in cities on the frontline. There was no Ukrainian drone and no removed wreckage. The fabrication simply reassigns a Russian mass killing of civilians to its victim, which is the entire point.
The fake site was not a single page. It scraped our entire website, mirroring our genuine articles, and injected the fabricated one among them, so the lie traveled under the credibility of real reporting. The look-alike domain was registered on 15 October, eight days before the fake appeared, according to who.is data.
Gnida Project identified the fake as part of Storm-1516, a Russian influence operation that clones trusted news brands to spread fabricated stories, and NewsGuard, which contacted us about the impersonation, attributes it to the same operation. NewsGuard has documented the tactic generating some 900 false reports over three years; the same operation has targeted France and Germany and has recently impersonated other outlets, including in Ukraine, such as this fake report on a copycat website pretending to be the New Voice of Ukraine.
Storm-1516 is one of several overlapping Russian operations that impersonate real media. Since 2022, the Doppelganger network has cloned whole Western outlets and government sites, and it is still active, flooding France with more than 200 fake sites before its 2026 elections. Polish fact-checkers literally call the tactic “attack of the clones.” A second operation, Matryoshka, floods social media with cheap fake videos credited to real outlets. Storm-1516, first identified in late 2023 and later named by Microsoft, grew out of Russia's Prigozhin-era troll operations, is the most elaborate of the three, and has overtaken RT and Sputnik as Russia's main disinformation machine. Its attacks combine cloned websites and fake videos.
NewsGuard counts some 906 fabricated reports impersonating 163 outlets from 21 countries since 2023, Euronews, the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and France 24 most of all, as well as the Kyiv Independent. The fakes nearly all bend one way, to erode Western support for Ukraine. Some smear Ukraine's leaders, a fabricated story that 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers evacuated to France had deserted into criminal gangs, invented claims that first lady Olena Zelenska fled abroad. Others, like the one aimed at us, flip Russian actions onto Ukraine. A separate Storm-1516 fabrication, a false claim that Ukrainian officials bought yachts with misappropriated US aid, was repeated in 2023 by JD Vance, then a US senator.
We filed a copyright and abuse complaint with the host, Namecheap, and a phishing report with Cloudflare, and pressed the registrar. The complaints worked: the clone has been taken down.
Impersonation is cheap to set up, and any outlet can be next, so here is the procedure our technical team used, which other newsrooms can follow to take a clone down quickly.
Be sure to read the automated replies from the host and Cloudflare and answer them promptly. Those acknowledgments often ask for specific additional information, and a fast, complete reply keeps the ticket moving instead of stalling in a queue.
Many users on X called out the signs: a look-alike domain (our only website is euromaidanpress.com, with no hyphen), a claim sourced to unnamed "OSINT channels," and a story that reassigns a Russian attack to Ukraine.
We never publish an image or video without crediting its source, and we never cite anonymous OSINT experts: our reporting traces to a first source. Trust only reports that name the first source of a claim and label the origin of their images and video. If you cannot trace the source, you cannot trust the report.
© Alex Kent/The New York Times
The visit, taking place from 26th to 28th October, comes three weeks after parliamentary elections exposed persistent divisions over Bosnia’s political direction and its prospects of joining the European Union.
The mission is being conducted by Parliament’s Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield, chaired by French MEP Nathalie Loiseau. Its purpose is to assess vulnerabilities to disinformation, cyberattacks, economic pressure and other forms of hybrid interference, and to identify measures that could strengthen Bosnia’s institutional resilience.
According to the European Parliament’s announcement, the delegation will meet government officials, parliamentary representatives, civil society organisations, journalists and researchers. Joining Loiseau are Finnish MEP Mika Aaltola, Portugal’s Ana Catarina Mendes and Romania’s Cristian Terheş.
The investigation comes at a politically sensitive moment. Bosnia’s general election on 4th October confirmed the persistence of competing political priorities between the country’s constituent entities, with pro-Russian politician Milorad Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats retaining considerable support in Republika Srpska.
As EU Today reported following the election, parties favouring closer European integration also performed strongly, particularly in the Bosniak-Croat Federation. The resulting political balance will influence the formation of new administrations and their ability to implement reforms demanded by Brussels.
The European Parliament’s investigation extends beyond conventional disinformation campaigns.
MEPs intend to examine how foreign actors may exploit weaknesses in electoral administration, cybersecurity, political financing and the country’s wider economic relationships. They will also consider the role of digital platforms in distributing manipulated information and the legislative gaps that could make interference difficult to identify or prosecute.
The distinction matters in Bosnia, where political influence cannot be separated from the country’s complicated constitutional arrangements.
Under the Dayton peace settlement, the state operates through institutions that distribute authority between the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska and the central government. Political disagreements can therefore obstruct decisions requiring cooperation between different levels of administration.
External actors seeking influence may exploit those divisions, although identifying a political relationship with a foreign government is not, by itself, evidence of unlawful interference.
The European Union has repeatedly expressed concern about Russia’s activities in the Western Balkans, particularly its relationships with political forces opposing closer integration with European institutions. Chinese investment and economic relationships also raise questions about strategic dependence, although legitimate commercial activity must be distinguished from coercion or covert political operations.
The delegation’s task is to establish which vulnerabilities can be substantiated and whether existing safeguards are adequate.
Bosnia received EU candidate status in December 2022. In March 2024, European leaders agreed in principle to open accession negotiations, but progress has remained conditional on institutional and legal reforms.
Following the October election, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos issued a joint statement calling for the prompt formation of new administrations and progress on judicial reform.
The Commission also highlighted shortcomings identified by international election observers, including technical difficulties, complicated voting procedures and concerns about ballot secrecy.
Those findings do not automatically establish foreign interference. They do, however, demonstrate why the integrity of electoral institutions remains central to Bosnia’s relationship with Brussels.
The Sarajevo mission follows the EU’s decision on 13th October to include enlargement partners in the European Centre for Democratic Resilience.
The initiative is intended to improve cooperation on election security, information manipulation, crisis management and institutional protection before candidate countries enter the Union.
EU Today has previously examined the European Democracy Shield’s proposed mechanisms, including closer coordination with technology companies and improved systems for identifying foreign information operations.
Bosnia now offers a practical opportunity to examine whether those instruments can operate effectively in a country where political authority is fragmented and accession remains incomplete.
The delegation’s findings could inform recommendations on institutional cooperation, election safeguards and support for independent media. Any substantial improvement, however, will depend on the willingness of Bosnia’s authorities to implement reforms and enforce existing legislation.
For Brussels, the immediate issue is whether its emerging framework for democratic resilience can provide practical protection to candidate countries while respecting their political sovereignty and the freedoms it is intended to defend.
France’s violent protests have exposed a vulnerability in European security that conventional policing cannot easily address: the ability of foreign information networks to exploit domestic political crises, amplify social divisions and transform legitimate grievances into instruments of geopolitical pressure.
President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged foreign manipulation of information surrounding the disturbances of 17–18 October but insists there is no evidence that foreign actors organised the violence itself. His assessment reflects the evidence currently available, although new investigations indicate that Russian-linked networks were actively exploiting the protest movement weeks before the worst disorder began.
On 24 October, France deployed approximately 70,000 police officers and gendarmes to prevent further violence. Yet the security operation addresses only the physical consequences of a crisis whose online dimension extends across national borders.
An investigation published on 22 October by Alliance4Europe provides evidence that Russian-linked information networks were exploiting French discontent well before the disturbances.
Researchers examined 547,471 posts and articles across nine languages. They identified 639 coordinated messages attributed with high confidence to Russia’s Doppelgänger operation, generating approximately 7.4 million views in the six weeks preceding 17 October.
The campaign used genuine concerns about living costs and public expenditure to promote a particular political argument: money allocated to Ukraine was being taken from European citizens.
This was not a random selection of grievances. France’s budget difficulties, public-service pressures and disagreements over defence expenditure provided material through which Moscow could seek to weaken support for Kyiv.
The researchers found that the operation targeted pro-European and pro-Ukraine politicians across the political spectrum. It praised selected proposals associated with Jean-Luc Mélenchon while also promoting nationalist narratives, illustrating a strategy driven less by ideological consistency than by opposition to existing European policies.
An earlier investigation by EK Strategies, published on 8 October, identified an additional development.
Russian-linked channels were not merely commenting on existing demonstrations. They were circulating protest dates, identifying organisers and encouraging French audiences to follow the example of demonstrators in Germany.
On 28 September, the International Reporters network published an appeal urging French audiences to take to the streets. Other channels subsequently reproduced information about planned school blockades and demonstrations.
In one instance, a channel identified as Gavroche published rhetoric encouraging an attack on France’s Education Ministry.
Such activity goes beyond retrospective propaganda. It attempts to influence participation and behaviour while events are developing. Nevertheless, evidence that a network encouraged protests does not establish that it controlled the organisers or directed subsequent violence.
The original demonstrations arose from domestic grievances over schools, prices and government policy. The significance of the foreign activity lies in attempts to redirect and intensify an existing movement.
Once violence erupted, the information campaign acquired an international audience.
Alliance4Europe found that claims blaming migrants or Islam for the disturbances appeared in approximately one in 33 French-language posts, compared with nearly one in five English-language posts.
False allegations that immigrants had burned Limoges town hall circulated substantially more frequently in English than in French.
The same report identified 1,018 articles distributed through 28 websites associated with the Russian Pravda network. Their rapid republication across languages enabled a common narrative to reach audiences far beyond France.
The operation also presents a longer-term technological problem. Repeated publication of manipulated accounts can contaminate material subsequently retrieved or reproduced by artificial-intelligence systems, allowing false narratives to persist beyond the original campaign.
The political effects were visible when President Donald Trump and other foreign leaders portrayed France’s unrest principally through immigration and cultural conflict.
Speaking in Qatar on 21 October, Macron rejected these portrayals and criticised the circulation of fabricated AI-generated images. His remarks identified foreign manipulation after the riots but stopped short of alleging foreign responsibility for their organisation.
The transcript raises a more substantial allegation: that the American Heritage Foundation and Russia’s FSB have participated in a coordinated effort to destabilise France.
There are documented connections between the Heritage Foundation and political institutions associated with Hungary’s former prime minister Viktor Orbán.
A 2026 investigation into Hungarian-funded international influence networks established that the Danube Institute had channelled substantial public funding towards foreign researchers and commentators. The institute also maintained a formal relationship with Heritage.
Heritage has acknowledged its cooperation with Hungarian conservative institutions but denied receiving funding or direction from foreign governments.
These relationships demonstrate the development of transatlantic political networks capable of circulating common ideas about sovereignty, migration and European integration.
They do not establish operational cooperation with Russian intelligence. Nor has credible evidence emerged connecting Heritage to the organisation or financing of France’s October riots. Ideological convergence, institutional cooperation and participation in a clandestine operation require separate evidential assessments.
The European Union’s response has exposed a regulatory problem.
Under the EU’s Digital Services Act, major online platforms must address systemic risks arising from their services, including the amplification of illegal content and threats to public security.
On 23 October, the French government announced enhanced cooperation with digital platforms. More than 100 priority reports had been submitted ahead of the weekend demonstrations, approximately half resulting in account suspensions.
These measures targeted unlawful online activity, particularly incitement to violence and looting. They did not constitute findings that the suspended accounts belonged to foreign intelligence networks.
The European Commission has likewise refrained from activating emergency measures under the Digital Services Act without sufficient evidence connecting foreign manipulation to the violence.
The broader security concern is that foreign operations can exploit the interval between the emergence of social unrest and the establishment of reliable information about its causes.
Russia need not organise an entire protest movement to advance its strategic interests. By amplifying domestic grievances, promoting hostility towards support for Ukraine and circulating distorted accounts internationally, it can attempt to convert France’s internal political difficulties into pressure on European policy.
With France approaching its 2027 presidential election, these operations warrant continuing scrutiny. The central investigative question is no longer simply whether foreign networks spread false information after violence occurred, but whether their activities before and during demonstrations materially influenced mobilisation, radicalisation or political responses.
The evidence currently demonstrates organised manipulation and attempts at amplification. Establishing direct responsibility for violence would require a further evidential step, involving financial records, communications, operational instructions or connections with identifiable perpetrators.
France’s experience illustrates how contemporary information warfare can operate within a democratic society without necessarily directing events on the ground. Its immediate objective may be to alter the political interpretation of a crisis; its longer-term consequence may be to influence the policies adopted in response.
Italy is investigating the possibility that foreign actors, including Russian operatives, helped amplify the violent unrest that swept Milan and other Italian cities on 17–18 October. The inquiry introduces a national security dimension to demonstrations initially driven by rising living costs, dissatisfaction with public services and broader economic grievances.
According to information disclosed about the government’s intelligence inquiries, officials working under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have requested assessments of whether foreign provocateurs contributed to the disorder. No public evidence has established that Moscow organised the violence, and Meloni’s office has declined to comment on the reported intelligence discussions.
The developments follow EU Today’s earlier coverage of the Milan disturbances, which documented extensive looting, attacks on police and the detention of hundreds of young people, many of them minors. Since then, Rome has moved beyond emergency consultations, approving legislation that expands police powers and introduces tougher criminal penalties for violent demonstrations.
On Saturday, 24 October, Italian security forces are preparing for another wave of protests, with additional military personnel, drones and specialist police units deployed in several major cities. The immediate question is whether the government can prevent further disorder while establishing how much of the unrest was locally organised and whether foreign information operations influenced its development.
Defence Minister Guido Crosetto introduced the hybrid warfare argument during a Defence Procurement Forum in Rome on Tuesday, 20 October. In remarks recorded by Italian public broadcaster Rai, he described the disturbances as the culmination of a form of conflict being conducted through TikTok, YouTube and other social media platforms.
Crosetto argued that young Italians were undergoing what he called a form of counter-education outside their families and schools, absorbing political attitudes and values increasingly hostile to democratic institutions. He criticised Western governments for failing to recognise the consequences of this process, although he did not publicly present intelligence establishing Russian responsibility for the riots.
His comments also exposed differences within the governing coalition. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini questioned suggestions of Russian involvement, arguing that the immediate priority was identifying violent groups and preventing their movement into Milan.
European investigators have identified activity by established Russia-linked disinformation networks, including Operation Overload and Doppelgänger, which have circulated and amplified material concerning the unrest.
These operations have previously used manipulated content, misleading narratives and coordinated online distribution to influence European audiences. In the present case, investigations into the online amplification of the violence have identified foreign exploitation of the disturbances, rather than proof that foreign governments organised them.
The European Commission has consequently declined to initiate emergency intervention against social media platforms, citing insufficient evidence linking foreign manipulation directly to the organisation of the protests.
France has taken a similarly cautious position. President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that foreign actors had manipulated information after the violence but said there was no established evidence that they caused the disturbances. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot has separately identified hostile narratives originating from Russia, China and Iran.
For European security authorities, the principal investigative question concerns the relationship between genuine domestic grievances and externally coordinated information campaigns. Foreign networks can exploit political divisions without necessarily directing the organisations or individuals involved in street violence.
Meanwhile, Meloni’s government has proceeded with a substantial legislative response. Following cabinet approval on 20 October, Decree-Law No. 190 of 22 October 2026 entered into force on 23 October.
The legislation introduces penalties of two to five years’ imprisonment and fines of €10,000 to €20,000 for specified forms of organised violence during public demonstrations. Those organising or encouraging qualifying violent groups, including through digital communications, face potential prison terms of four to twelve years. It also expands provisions concerning juvenile offenders and preventive policing. The decree must undergo parliamentary consideration within 60 days.
Separately, the Italian Defence Ministry confirmed the deployment of 500 additional soldiers to Milan under Operation Strade Sicure until 31 December. The soldiers will reinforce security around sensitive locations and support existing police operations without acquiring additional judicial policing powers.
Security arrangements have been intensified ahead of demonstrations scheduled for Saturday, 24 October, in Milan, Rome, Turin, Bologna, Florence and other cities.
According to the latest security preparations, Rome is deploying approximately 1,500 officers, while Milan is preparing a combined police and military presence supported by aerial surveillance.
On Friday, Italian investigators conducted searches targeting approximately 100 people suspected of involvement in the previous weekend’s disturbances, including 51 minors. Authorities are also monitoring online calls for renewed protests, some organised by groups whose leadership and membership remain unclear.
The unrest presents Meloni with two parallel challenges: containing violence and determining whether hostile foreign networks have played a significant role in its escalation. Italy’s investigations may help establish whether the events represent primarily a domestic public-order crisis, the exploitation of existing tensions by foreign actors, or a combination of both.
For Brussels, the outcome could influence future enforcement of the EU’s Digital Services Act and its wider response to foreign information manipulation. For now, the evidence supports concern about Russian amplification of European unrest, but not a definitive conclusion that Moscow orchestrated the riots.
© Doug Mills/The New York Times
Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy chief of staff of the Russian Presidential Administration, set the goals for the Ukraine strand of the operation, launched in early 2023 under the codename "Uganda." Alexander Kharichev, now head of the Kremlin's Directorate for Monitoring and Analysis of Social Processes, oversaw it, according to hacked correspondence published by The Insider on 21 October.
Doppelgänger disguises Russian narratives as local news through cloned media sites, fake accounts, paid ads, and fabricated videos. The FBI named Kiriyenko among its orchestrators in 2024, and its contractor, the Social Design Agency (SDA), run by Ilya Gambashidze, is still expanding, now targeting AI chatbots. The new files go inside the Ukraine campaign and show the operation reporting even exposed fakes to the Kremlin as achievements.
An internal briefing on narratives says the project ran its Telegram channels on the principles of agent work and psychological operations, the Russian version of the investigation shows. Early on, the team decided to disguise all its outlets as Ukrainian and to run its campaigns without direct Russian propaganda. Every channel carried Ukrainian news to look unconnected to Russia. Dropping pro-Ukrainian themes, the briefing warned, would eventually expose the client and wreck the whole plan.
Kiriyenko set four goals: discredit Ukraine's military and political leadership, split its elites, demoralize its army, and disorganize its population. The SDA prepared the project's pitch and carried out the work.
Political strategist Alexander Asafov proposed fakes of his own: in May 2023, that soldiers were bribing commanders to avoid the front, and in January 2024, that Ukraine was pulling air defenses back to Kyiv to protect the authorities.
After an Il-76 military transport crashed in Belgorod Oblast on 24 January 2024, Moscow claimed it had been carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war. Kharichev's subordinate Yevgeny Kazakov, chairing a meeting in his place, proposed sending a fake to the widows of Ukrainian soldiers: "They died for an expensive Il-76—the Russians have few of those." The idea was dropped.
The same meeting produced another fake, and three days later the team launched it: that recruitment centers had sent widows a can of stewed meat with a little flag as compensation. The same producers also oversaw letters falsely attributed to Deputy Defense Minister Nataliia Kalmykova, the Russian version says.
The SDA collected coverage of its work in a folder for the Kremlin. It filed the "Zelensky's yacht" story, which JD Vance, then a US senator and now US Vice President, echoed, together with its debunk. The report also included a TikTok campaign about former Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov's family that the BBC had already exposed.
The Insider concludes that the team has had more failures than successes. The US sanctioned Gambashidze and the SDA in March 2024, and the UK followed in October.
© Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
In 2016, the HBO comedian and political commentator John Oliver produced a terrific segment on how TV pundits routinely cite garbage science. After showing clips of newscasters and commentators making absurd claims such as, "A new study showing that drinking a glass of red wine is just as good as spending an hour at the gym," and The Today Show's Al Roker commenting, "You find the study that sounds best to you, and you go with it," Oliver commented, "No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no! You don't just get to cherry-pick the parts that justify what you were going to do anyway."
Then Oliver added a useful rule: "If they are going to keep saying 'a study says,' they should have to provide sourcing and context or not mention it at all." (Though the segment specifically targeted the misuse of "scientific" studies, all the same principles apply to the social sciences.)
What's so noteworthy about that 2016 segment is that in his other monologues, on issues ranging from SWAT teams to homelessness, Oliver has routinely ignored the principles he laid out. In his overly simplistic takes on complex policy issues (often designed to dunk on his ideological opponents for comedic effect), he often fails to provide appropriate context and appears to be guilty of choosing research "that sounds best," as Roker put it, or at least that supports whatever point he's determined to make.
Oliver is one of America's most influential pundits, so he should be held to the highest of journalistic standards. And Last Week Tonight is indeed more diligent than many TV news programs. The show employs researchers who interview the authors of the studies it cites. Oliver is a comic, not an academic, so we can excuse him for not posting footnotes, and he routinely cites his sources on screen. When we emailed the show's producers to point out problems with their research, to their credit, they sent back a detailed response that we'll quote from in this article. (In a few cases, they pointed to Reason articles using some of the same studies, albeit with full citations and more context. In cases in which their criticisms were correct, we've annotated the original articles.)
Many of the show's researchers are former reporters and editors who abide by journalistic standards. Nevertheless, the show has a long track record of citing social science findings without the appropriate context, massaging them to support whatever point Oliver is trying to make.
In his excellent 2016 segment on scientific studies, Oliver noted: "There is a lot of bullshit currently masquerading as science. Not all scientific studies are equal. Some may appear in less-than-legitimate scientific journals, and others may be subtly biased because of scientists feeling pressured to come up with eye-catching positive results."
Cut to a 2022 segment titled "Rent," and we find Oliver citing a study that his wiser self would have characterized as "bullshit."
"Right now, there is not a single county in the U.S. where a worker earning minimum wage can afford a modest two-bedroom rental home," he said. He was citing a study designed to produce an "eye-catching" result. It was published not by a reputable journal, but by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group that lobbies for government spending on housing and rent subsidies, including expanding the National Housing Trust Fund and increasing federal appropriations to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The biases are not particularly subtle. Why would a minimum-wage worker need a two-bedroom home? In the study, "can afford" doesn't mean "have enough money to buy the cheapest available," as most English speakers would interpret it. The authors use it to mean renting a two-bedroom home at the 40th percentile price point of the local market (that is, a little cheaper than the median unit), using no more than 30 percent of their income, excluding government benefits, pensions, or other nonearned support.
Oliver also didn't mention who these minimum-wage workers are. In 2025, according to the Current Population Survey, a third of hourly workers paid the federal minimum or less lived in a parent's or grandparent's home, a fifth were married and living with a spouse, and only one in eight lived alone.
When we asked the show's producers why they failed to disclose that their source was an advocacy group seeking government funds, they pointed to the onscreen credit and responded: "We trust our viewers' intelligence enough to think they might be able to read it and conclude that the National Low Income Housing Coalition is interested in building low-income housing, nationwide, possibly even as part of a coalition."
I don't share their confidence that most viewers can read the onscreen source line and tell from the organization's name whether it's an advocacy group. There's a double standard here: When Oliver doesn't like what a study says, he's not content to just trust his viewers; he makes it explicit, as he did with the "ethanol lobbying groups" mentioned above.
Oliver's producers wrote us: "When we rely on studies from advocacy groups, we look at the underlying data and speak to researchers to better understand it; we discard many studies as a result."
This one belonged in the trash.
In a 2025 segment, Oliver cited an eye-catching statistic about how sports betting was driving a spike in bankruptcies. "Unsurprisingly, the rise of online sports betting has been found to correlate with a rise in gambling harms, with one study showing that in states that allowed it, there was a 28 percent increase in bankruptcies, translating to about 100,000 extra bankruptcies a year."
I'll give Oliver credit for saying "correlate with" rather than "cause," but the rest of that sentence ("in states that allowed it, there was a 28 percent increase") implies direct causality.
The bigger problem is that the "100,000" figure is clearly wrong. When I contacted the study's authors, they told me they don't know where that figure came from, and it doesn't appear anywhere in the study. Last Week Tonight's producers told us they pulled it from a Business Insider article, but in the video, Oliver said it came from the study.
If Oliver's researchers had done the same calculation as the authors, multiplying the per-person effect by the at-risk population, they'd have found about 30,000 extra bankruptcies a year, not 100,000, and a 6 percent to 7.5 percent increase, not 28 percent.
Oliver also left out important context: He was citing an unpublished working paper. The peer-reviewed version appeared after the Last Week Tonight segment aired, and it included substantive changes. Working papers from credible researchers, like this one, are valuable, but Oliver should have made it clear he was citing a preliminary draft circulated to other researchers for comment, not a published study.
In 2021, Oliver did a segment making a case for a policy called "Housing First," which includes placing more homeless people in permanent supportive housing. The problem is that building and maintaining these units is expensive, so permanent supportive housing doesn't scale easily. Oliver set out to dismiss that objection by citing research showing the alternative is even more costly.
"One study in Florida," Oliver said, "found that, just between money spent on incarceration and emergency medical treatment, their communities and local governments had spent an average of just over $31,000 per person per year, when the estimated cost of providing them with permanent supportive housing would have only been around $10,000 per year."
The Florida study's finding was an outlier. The Central Florida Commission on Homelessness commissioned it, and Housing First advocates promoted it because it produced the headline they wanted. I give Oliver credit for noting that the study "tracked a decade's worth of spending on just 107 chronically homeless people," but he left out additional context.
In 2018, a committee convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine evaluated permanent supportive housing. It concluded that there is "no substantial evidence that [it] contributes to improved health outcomes" and "insufficient evidence" that it's cost-effective.
Studies exist on both sides of this issue, and we can debate whether permanent supportive housing is more cost-effective than the alternative, but Oliver cited one study and implied it was conclusive.
Oliver also neglected to mention that the paper was written by a consulting firm led by a supportive-housing advocate, though if you looked closely, you could see the organization's name on the screen as he delivered his monologue.
Oliver and I agree that the federal government shouldn't be subsidizing ethanol. But in a 2024 segment titled "Corn," Oliver pointed to a study claiming that ethanol is more harmful to the environment than gasoline and implied that only self-interested lobbyists say otherwise.
"While ethanol lobbying groups have long argued that it slashes greenhouse emissions," he said, "one recent study found that corn ethanol produced under the renewable fuel standard has a carbon footprint at least 24 percent higher than regular gasoline."
What Oliver doesn't mention is that the 2022 study he cited was highly contested. It was challenged not only by "ethanol lobbying groups" but also by the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Biden administration. The study's claim that ethanol has a higher carbon footprint than gasoline also contradicts a 2010 Environmental Protection Agency projection that ethanol would be about 20 percent cleaner than gasoline. Argonne National Laboratory, running the government's standard model, credits ethanol with cutting greenhouse emissions by more than 500 million tons in 15 years.
The problem isn't that Oliver is wrong; it's how he presented this study. Whether ethanol mandates are good or bad for the environment is a complicated, contested issue, with strong studies on both sides (and plenty of weak ones). Plucking one from the pile and reporting its findings is misleading.
Ethanol subsidies are bad because they involve politicians using mandates to buy farmers' votes, and top-down mandates generally lead to less optimal decision-making. But it's not clear that ethanol increases carbon emissions.
In a 2014 segment on police militarization after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Oliver said, "There has been a massive rise in both the number and the use of police department SWAT teams," and showed a news clip that stated: "The number of SWAT raids has gone up by 1,400 percent since the 1980s. An estimated 50,000 now take place every year." Instead of mocking the clip, as he often does, Oliver cited it approvingly.
So where did the claim of a 1,400 percent increase come from? It's based on a voluntary mail-in survey, which isn't a reliable way to gather data. No official count of SWAT raids exists, and almost nobody tracks them, then or now, so the figure rests on departments' self-reporting of how often they "deployed," with no shared definition of what that means.
The 1980s figures that form the baseline for the 1,400 percent increase in SWAT raids come from a mid-1990s survey, making them especially unreliable. No one was counting SWAT raids at the time, and there's no way to verify them.
Oliver followed that clip by citing another study: "Just keep that clip in mind," he said, "when I tell you that 79 percent of SWAT deployments are now for executing search warrants, and most of those were for drug investigations."
Again, there's missing context. That 79 percent figure comes from a small, nonrandom sample generated by an American Civil Liberties Union records request; the organization could get data from just 20 of America's roughly 18,000 police agencies.
When we pointed out to Oliver's producers that the data on SWAT teams were stripped of their context, they replied that since this segment aired, "We've become more diligent about critically interrogating the sourcing on studies in our shows." They also argued that more "recent studies," if anything, suggest that the studies they cited "understated the true scope of things." And they pointed to instances of Reason citing the same data.
I agree with Oliver's position on SWAT raids, but he really should be agitating for better data. We're permitting state violence without anyone keeping the detailed records that could help us understand the costs and benefits. But that doesn't excuse citing two studies based on weak data and presenting them as fact.
In a 2025 segment on tipping, Oliver said, "Recent analyses have found that poverty rates for tipped workers are over twice as high as for nontipped workers."
Twice as high as for which nontipped workers? The analysis he's citing included all nontipped workers in the U.S., including CEOs and neurosurgeons. Oliver, who reportedly makes $30 million a year, also pulled up the nontipped average. The right way to evaluate tipping is to match tipped and untipped workers by job: Waiters have about the same poverty rate as fast-food workers, and hotel maids about the same as other cleaners. If you control for job, age, and hours, the gap closes.
It's another study designed to generate a talking point, which isn't surprising since it was published by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive, left-of-center think tank. The organization's name appeared onscreen as Oliver delivered his monologue, but, once again, viewers would need to hit pause to look it up and figure out what the Economic Policy Institute stands for.
Oliver's 2016 segment on "scientific studies" shows that he should know better. It's possible to construct arguments by citing good research responsibly, while providing the proper context and sourcing. It's possible to follow research where it leads, instead of retrofitting it to preconceived ideas. You just have to be willing to present data that capture reality in all its messiness, even if that means it won't generate an easy laugh line.
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The post John Oliver Warned Against Cherry-Picked Studies. Then He Cherry-Picked His Own. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
© Nicole Craine for The New York Times
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