Emails from the so-called “Twitter Files” — internal communications shared with Lee Fang at The Intercept as well as other journalists following Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform — reveal that the company had knowledge of a U.S. military-linked information operation and did not publicly acknowledge the operation or provide transparency to the general public after the operation was discovered.
That appears to be a clear violation of Twitter’s principles about state-backed information operations as laid out by Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth in 2019. Indeed, Twitter made a point of disclosing the details of accounts, and the content of their tweets, when they were identified as part of government linked information operations, beginning in 2018.
Roth wrote, in a statement of principles that is still published on Twitter’s website:
We believe Twitter has a responsibility to protect the integrity of the public conversation — including through the timely disclosure of information about attempts to manipulate Twitter to influence elections and other civic conversations by foreign or domestic state-backed entities. We believe the public and research community are better informed by transparency.
Fang, in his article published on Tuesday, details how Twitter “whitelisted” — a function that provided accounts with invulnerability to Twitter’s detection mechanisms that might decrease visibility for accounts engaged in spam or abuse — a list of accounts provided by U.S. Central Command in 2017. The accounts engaged in activities including: touting the accuracy of drone strikes in Yemen, promoting U.S. backed militias in Syria, and spreading anti-Iran messages in Iraq.
An official working at CENTCOM promised that the accounts would be labeled as “USG-attributed, Arabic-language accounts tweeting on relevant security issues,” but many of the accounts subsequently deleted these disclosures and concealed their affiliation with the U.S. government after Twitter granted them the special status.
Over the years, some of these accounts have been deleted while others, such as this one, according to Fang, continue to operate without any disclosure of their U.S. government affiliation.
Fang, citing internal Twitter emails, found multiple instances in which Twitter senior executives appear to have been aware that the government linked accounts were still operational and, in at least some cases, acting in violation of the company's rules on platform manipulation.
Any further uncertainty, as well as concerns about potential embarrassment from a U.S. government linked information operation on Twitter, should have come to a head last August when the Stanford Internet Observatory published a report showing strong evidence that CENTCOM was involved in the creation and operation of a series of undisclosed government-linked accounts. “…[E]mails obtained by The Intercept show that the creation of at least one of these accounts was directly affiliated with the Pentagon,” reports Fang.
But even after the SIO report made a splash in the media, Twitter never disclosed the CENTCOM-led information operation on its page dedicated to disclosing state-linked information operations on the social media platform. For that matter, while highlighting state-linked information operations from Russia, Iran, Bangladesh, Venezuela, Spain, China, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Ghana, Nigeria, Serbia, Honduras, Indonesia, Turkey, Thailand, Cuba, Armenia, and Tanzania, no U.S. government linked information operations have been publicly disclosed by Twitter.
Roth, the former head of trust and safety, did not respond to questions about why the U.S. government linked accounts were never publicly disclosed, even after researchers from Stanford appear to have outed at least one of the accounts that Twitter knew was an undisclosed CENTCOM linked account.
Ray Serrato, a former member of Twitter’s safety and integrity team, told Responsible Statecraft that “this activity was disclosed to research partners — such as SIO and Graphika, whose research was covered by the media, under the criteria set out in public blog post here,” providing a link to a blog post explaining how outside researchers were provided datasets including “platform manipulation campaigns originating from the Americas, Asia, Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (EMEA), and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).”
Serrato did not respond to questions about why Twitter, despite disclosing data about “this activity” to research partners, did not add the CENTCOM linked accounts to Twitter’s list of disclosed state-linked information operations.
Twitter, under Musk’s new ownership, doesn’t seem to have taken any more meaningful steps to address the U.S. government linked platform manipulation. No U.S. government linked operation has been added to Twitter’s list of government sponsored influence operations and, as Fang noted, at least one of the accounts linked to CENTCOM, while providing no disclosure of its U.S. government ties, is still active. Oddly, the new management appears to be following the pattern set by previous executives: sharing information about the influence operation with outside sources but not officially acknowledging the U.S. government led influence operation, taking steps to shut it down, or disclosing the extent or substance of the platform manipulation.
Musk, for his part, is under pressure to generate profits from Twitter after buying the company for $44 billion and may be increasingly dependent on his more profitable ventures, such as SpaceX, in order to service the debt on his Twitter acquisition. That could put Musk in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether to disclose U.S. government sponsored influence operations on Twitter when the U.S. government is one of the biggestclients for SpaceX. While the “Twitter Files” disclosed an uncomfortable chummy relationship between Twitter executives and CENTCOM officials, it remains unclear how Twitter’s new ownership intends to address ongoing U.S. government influence operations on the platform and how it will respond to Defense Department requests for special treatment going forward.
Twitter did not respond to questions about whether they will suspend accounts linked to the CENTCOM influence operation or publicly disclose the U.S. government’s role in platform manipulation in the same manner that foreign government-linked influence operations have been disclosed by the company.
Eli Clifton is a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and Investigative Journalist at Large at Responsible Statecraft. He reports on money in politics and U.S. foreign policy.
(Shutterstock/rvlsoft)|Editorial credit: Ink Drop / Shutterstock.com
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a veiled threat to use nuclear weapons against Western states during a commemoration of Russia’s World War II victory in Moscow Thursday.
“Russia will do everything to prevent a global clash,” Putin said. “But at the same time, we will not allow anyone to threaten us.”
“Our strategic forces are always in a state of combat readiness,” the Russian leader added, referencing his country’s most powerful nuclear weapons. The comments came just days after Russia announced it would conduct military exercises to prepare for the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons, which are designed for attacks on soldiers rather than population centers.
The announcement set off alarm bells in Washington, which has sought to carefully avoid any escalation to a direct NATO-Russia war. The State Department called the move “reckless” but soothed some nerves by saying the U.S. did not anticipate any short-term use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Putin’s latest moves are nonetheless part of a notable increase in Russian belligerence toward the West this past week, which Moscow claims is a response to Western efforts to rush weapons to Ukraine.
The situation increasingly resembles an escalation spiral, an international relations term for when two sides inch closer to direct war through gradual moves aimed at deterring the other party. As the war has dragged on, hawkish elements in the West and Russia have each succeeded in pressing their leaders to take steps that were once viewed as likely to result in further escalation.
Fearing a potential Ukrainian defeat, western Europe and the U.S. have increasingly signaled that the proverbial gloves are off. Britain recently declared that it had no issue with Ukraine using British weapons to strike Russian territory. “Just as Russia is striking inside Ukraine, you can quite understand why Ukraine feels the need to make sure it's defending itself,” British Foreign Minister David Cameron said last week.
And Cameron is right in a narrow, moral sense. But the practical wisdom of that greenlight is unclear given Russia’s predictable response, which was to threaten retaliation against U.K. military targets if any British weapons did indeed strike Russian territory.
Even if Britain had no intention of being dragged into the war, Russia’s threat took British views out of the picture entirely. It is now up to Ukraine — a country facing long odds in a desperate, defensive war — to decide whether it can stomach the risk of further escalation.
The U.S. is more attuned to the risks inherent to Britain’s approach. While Washington did quietly give Kyiv long-range missiles, the Biden administration also made clear that the weapons could only be used against targets inside of Ukrainian territory, a restriction aimed at threading the needle between Russia’s red lines and Ukraine’s needs.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been less careful. Macron responded to Ukraine’s battlefield struggles by suggesting that France could send its own troops into the fight, raising the specter of direct war between two nuclear-armed states.
In this case, Russia shot back at Macron by promising to attack any French troops that show up at the frontline. “If the French appear in the conflict zone, they will inevitably become targets for the Russian armed forces,” said a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry Wednesday.
From Russia’s perspective, all of these recent moves are likely about restoring deterrence. But that doesn’t make them any less terrifying to us in the West. And Russia feels the same when we respond to that fear with our own efforts to restore deterrence.
This should all serve as a reminder that the potential of a broader Russia-NATO war never went away. We’ve simply gotten used to living in a time of great danger. In practice, the chance of a cataclysmic mistake is growing more and more likely by the day.
In other diplomatic news:
— Following a meeting with Macron Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an international truce during the Olympic Games this summer, according to Politico. Macron thanked Xi for signing onto his idea of an Olympic truce and hinted that the pause could provide an opening to push for peace talks in Ukraine. “Maybe this could be an opportunity to work toward a sustainable resolution [of conflicts] in the full respect of international law,” the French leader said. Xi will have a chance to pitch the idea to Putin directly later this month when the Russian leader is scheduled to visit China.
— The only way to end the Ukraine war is through a temporary truce followed by peace talks, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said Monday, according to Reuters. Crosetto brushed off the idea that Putin hasn’t actually shown a desire to negotiate, saying “that is a good reason for us to try harder.” “We mustn’t give up any possible path of diplomacy, however narrow,” he argued, adding that Western sanctions and weapons had failed to deliver a decisive battlefield victory.
— Britain moved to expel Russia’s defense attache in London over allegations that the officer was using his military post for spying, according to AP News. The announcement came alongside new restrictions on diplomatic visas for future Russian envoys. Russia promised to respond “in kind.”
— Russian authorities arrested an American soldier in Vladivostok on charges of theft in early May, according to the New York Times. While U.S. officials have not formally designated the soldier as wrongfully detained, the arrest led to speculation that Russia is seeking further bargaining chips for prisoner swaps with the United States.
U.S. State Department news:
In a Wednesday press conference, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller strongly discouraged Americans from traveling to Russia given the risk of wrongful arrest. “Russia has detained Americans for not legitimate law enforcement reasons but because it wants to hold them essentially as hostage,” Miller said. “Americans should not, for any reason, travel to Russia.
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United States President Donald J. Trump makes a statement on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, DC, USA on May 8, 2018. In his remarks the President announced the US was pulling out of the deal and that sanctions would be reimposed on Iran. Photo by Martin H. Simon/CNP/ABACAPRESS.COM via REUTERS
Six years after former President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the disastrous consequences of this decision are still adding up.
In addition to Iran being closer than ever to a nuclear weapons capability, now we must consider how the declining security situation in the Middle East has raised the stakes significantly. Trump promised a “better deal” but instead we got an increasingly costly blunder that may be impossible to fix.
To fully understand the enormity of Trump’s decision to leave the Iran deal, consider this: When the U.S. and Iran were complying with the deal, it was estimated that it would take Iran about one year to produce enough fissile material (in this case, weapons grade uranium) for a nuclear bomb (known as the “breakout” time). The states negotiating with Iran (the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, and Germany) assessed that this would be enough time to respond to possible violations and prevent Iran from producing a bomb. Even if Iran were to acquire sufficient fissile material, it could still take another year for Iran to make a deliverable nuclear weapon. As of May, 2018, the deal was working and considered (by most) to be a great success.
Then President Trump unilaterally left the deal, calling it a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” And now we are in a much worse place. Iran says it has no intent to produce nuclear weapons and U.S. intelligence sees no current efforts by Tehran to weaponize, yet Tehran is believed to be not one year but just weeks from being able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb if it chooses to do so.
At the same time, the ability of international inspectors to detect violations in a timely manner has eroded. As one U.S. official said of Iran, “they are dancing right up to the edge.”
Worse still, relations between the United States and Iran have been so damaged by Trump’s withdrawal that it does not appear as though the deal can be resurrected. Any efforts to stabilize the U.S.-Iran relationship have been severely complicated by the recent exchange of direct attacks between Israel and Iran. Just as we need a non-military approach more than ever, the prospects for a diplomatic solution appear distant. What’s worse is that increasing tensions may be pushing Tehran closer to a political decision to go nuclear. The danger of an Iranian bomb and the related risk that Israel could attack Iran’s nuclear sites could lead to wider military conflict in the region. Of course, it did not have to be this way. The deal was working until Trump abandoned it and, if he had not, it could still be working today.
How did we get here?
To comply with the Iran deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, Tehran agreed to significantly limit its nuclear program. Under the deal:
Iran agreed to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98% to 300kg and limit uranium enrichment to 3.67%, suitable for civilian nuclear power but well below highly enriched (20%) or weapons grade (90%). Those limits would have lasted for 15 years.
Tehran limited the number of uranium centrifuges in operation by two-thirds and committed not to build any new enrichment facilities for 15 years. The Fordow enrichment plant (designed as a secret, underground facility) was prohibited from enriching uranium, and limited enrichment could take place only at the Natanz facility.
Iran agreed to redesign another nuclear facility to produce much less plutonium and its spent fuel would be shipped out of country.
Iran agreed to provisionally implement additional safeguards under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
A year after President Trump’s withdrawal, Iran began to retaliate by incrementally breaching the terms of the deal. Tehran lifted the cap on its uranium stockpile, increased enrichment beyond the allowed 3.67% and resumed and expanded activity at prohibited nuclear facilities.
Many of Iran’s advances were taken in response to provocative actions from the U.S. and Israel. In early 2020, the Trump administration killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and soon after Tehran announced that it would no longer abide by its enrichment commitments under the deal. But, even so, Tehran said it would return to compliance if the other parties did so and met their commitments on sanctions relief.
In late 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated near Tehran, reportedly by Israel. Soon after, Iran’s Guardian Council approved a law to speed up the nuclear program by enriching uranium to 20%, increasing the rate of production, installing new centrifuges, suspending implementation of expanded safeguards agreements, and reducing monitoring and verification cooperation with the IAEA. The Agency has been unable to adequately monitor Iran’s nuclear activities under the deal since early 2021.
Iran began enriching uranium to 20% in early 2021 at Fordow and then to 60% at Natanz a few months later after an act of sabotage damaged Natanz. Since then, Iran has been steadily increasing the rate of enriched uranium production. The latest IAEA report (February 2024) estimates Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile to stand at 5,525kg, more than 27 times the level permitted under the deal, with 833kg enriched to 20-60%.
How close to a bomb?
Iran is steadily advancing its nuclear program, getting ever closer to becoming a “threshold state” with the ability to make a weapon while making no overt move to build one.
The U.S. government estimated in March 2022 that Iran would need as little as one week to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear weapon, according to a State Department official. During a March 2023 congressional hearing, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley testified that Iran could produce this amount of enriched uranium “in approximately 10-15 days.”
In its 2024 annual threat assessment, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded that “Tehran has the infrastructure and experience to quickly produce weapons-grade uranium, if it chooses to do so.”
And in March 2024, France, Germany, and the UK estimated that Iran had acquired enough highly enriched uranium that, if enriched further to 90%, would theoretically be enough for three nuclear explosive devices.
There is greater uncertainty about how long it would take Iran to build a nuclear weapon once it has the required weapons-grade uranium. Such steps, referred to as “weaponization,” include producing uranium metal and shaping it into bomb parts, producing high explosives and electronics, and fitting it all into a device that could be used for a demonstration test. It would presumably take longer to produce a bomb that could be delivered by aircraft or a warhead small enough to fit onto a ballistic missile.
According to official U.S. assessments, Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in late 2003 and has not resumed it. Reportedly, this program’s goal, according to U.S. officials and the IAEA, was to develop an implosion-style nuclear weapon for Iran’s Shahab-3 ballistic missile. A State Department official stated in April 2022 that Iran would need approximately one year to complete the necessary weaponization steps.
We cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again
Much of Iran’s uranium activities can be reversed; centrifuges can be disassembled, facilities can be closed, and uranium stocks can be blended down or shipped out of the country, as was done under the terms of the original deal. However, after years of operating more sophisticated centrifuges, Iran has acquired technical knowledge that cannot be undone.
But more importantly, we have lost the political opportunity to reach a comprehensive deal with Iran. The Iran nuclear deal would not have been possible without the active support of Russia and China. Yet these countries are no longer aligned with the West on these issues and Iran is actively supporting Russia in its war with Ukraine and selling oil to China. Iran does not need sanctions relief from the United States as much as it once did.
It was often said that although the Iran deal did not solve all the problems in the U.S.-Iran relationship, it solved an important one by taking an Iranian nuclear bomb out of the equation. That even if the myriad problems in the Middle East continued, at least we would not be facing those challenges and Iran on the nuclear threshold. And now that is exactly where we are.
The lessons of this tragic tale are clear: a meaningful nuclear agreement is much harder to create than to destroy; if we are lucky enough to get one it should be protected; and if we lose it, we should try to replace it.
The Iran deal was a truly remarkable achievement, and we would be much better off today if the United States had rejected the fantasy of a “better deal” and remained in compliance with the one we had. Trump’s decision (aided by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-national security adviser John Bolton) to walk away was an historic and utter failure. Now, the prospects of finding a new diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear crisis are daunting. But we must try; the alternatives are worse.
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Volodymyr Zelensky speaks at the Munich Security Conference, Feb. 17, 2023. (David Hecker/MSC)
Volodymyr Zelensky speaks at the Munich Security Conference, Feb. 17, 2023. (David Hecker/MSC)
Ukraine’s security services said on Tuesday that they foiled a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine, which counts the protection of top Ukrainian officials among its duties, were identified as part of a group allegedly working with Russia’s FSB security agency to assassinate President Zelenskyy, Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) head Vasyl Malyuk, and military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov.
This marks one of the highest-profile attempts on Zelenskyy’s life since Russia commenced its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It is also the first time that high-ranking officials were part of such a plot, according to Kyiv. It is unprecedented that “such a high-ranking official of the state security department has become [the] enemy’s moles,” SBU spokesman Artem Dehtiarenko told Politico.
News of the alleged plot comes on the heels of months of internal turmoil in Kyiv, including frequentfirings and arrests of top and senior officials over corruption and espionage charges, as well as Zelenskyy’s decision to fire Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces (AFU) and the second most popular public official in the country, Valery Zaluzhny.
These developments, when viewed against the backdrop of Ukraine’s dwindling battlefield prospects, point to a degree of internal Ukrainian vulnerability that should alarm Western policymakers.
The details of this particular assassination attempt are still unclear, and the full extent of Russian involvement has yet to be established. But if — as asserted by Ukraine’s own security agency — Russian operatives were able to enlist the help of at least two high-level Ukrainian officials to organize a sweeping, multi-stage plot to kill three of Ukraine’s senior-most public servants including the President, it suggests a larger phenomenon of extensive Russian intelligence penetration in the Ukrainian bureaucracy and military that will prove difficult to fully diagnose, let alone uproot.
Indeed, this problem will likely grow even more severe as the growing threat of the AFU’s collapse along the front lines creates new incentives for Ukrainian officials at all levels to consider collaborating with Russia. The May assassination plot could thus be an early warning sign of a wider internal dysfunction that, if left unchecked, may eventually snowball into a challenge to Ukraine’s political stability.
These developments are not indicative of a Ukrainian state that is winning or confident in its impending victory, but are instead symptomatic of a harried wartime government riven by internal weaknesses that are being exploited by Russia with increasing effectiveness.