Much is unknown about the spread of monkeypox, which was widespread in parts of Africa but only began infecting people in the United States and Europe this spring. Nevertheless, Russia’s Defense Ministry and Kremlin-controlled media suggested to audiences around the world that the outbreak was caused by US military biological laboratories. Russian Duma Deputy Speaker Irina Yarovaya echoed the Kremlin’s latest conspiracy theory earlier this month when she called on the World Health Organization (WHO) to conduct an investigation into the “secrets of US military biolabs”.
The Russian scapegoating narrative is a textbook Kremlin information operation, a rerun of the Russian campaign to link COVID-19 to the activities of US biolabs. It is long past time for the US to respond to the Kremlin’s information warfare and refute these theories. Washington should apply the lessons learned before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when the Biden administration successfully used its intelligence advantage to neutralize Russian disinformation and expose the Kremlin’s war plans to the world.
The Kremlin’s seasoned information warriors run a sophisticated operation, weaving together unrelated events to create misleading narratives. Take monkeypox: At last year’s Munich Security Conference, a panel of experts—including government officials from the United States and China—discussed a hypothetical outbreak of monkeypox to understand how to reduce high-impact biological threats. The panel’s hypothetical outbreak, projecting 271 million deaths, was set for May 2022. It turns out that the actual outbreak also began in May.
Much is unknown about the spread of monkeypox, which was widespread in parts of Africa but only began infecting people in the United States and Europe this spring. Nevertheless, Russia’s Defense Ministry and Kremlin-controlled media suggested to audiences around the world that the outbreak was caused by US military biological laboratories. Russian Duma Deputy Speaker Irina Yarovaya echoed the Kremlin’s latest conspiracy theory earlier this month when she called on the World Health Organization (WHO) to conduct an investigation into the “secrets of US military biolabs”.
The Russian scapegoating narrative is a textbook Kremlin information operation, a rerun of the Russian campaign to link COVID-19 to the activities of US biolabs. It is long past time for the US to respond to the Kremlin’s information warfare and refute these theories. Washington should apply the lessons learned before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when the Biden administration successfully used its intelligence advantage to neutralize Russian disinformation and expose the Kremlin’s war plans to the world.
The Kremlin’s seasoned information warriors run a sophisticated operation, weaving together unrelated events to create misleading narratives. Take monkeypox: At last year’s Munich Security Conference, a panel of experts—including government officials from the United States and China—discussed a hypothetical outbreak of monkeypox to understand how to reduce high-impact biological threats. The panel’s hypothetical outbreak, projecting 271 million deaths, was set for May 2022. It turns out that the actual outbreak also began in May.
The Kremlin spun this coincidence to build an elaborate monkey-goat disinformation campaign. The head of the Russian Defense Ministry’s radiation, chemical and biological defense forces, Igor Kirillov, suggested that the monkey goats may have originated in a US-funded Nigerian biolab. Russian media also reported that, according to Kirilov, “Ukrainian biological laboratories were connected to the Pentagon’s infection system” – whatever that means. Russian media have claimed that the “hasty withdrawal” of US personnel from Ukrainian laboratories could have caused the workers to contract the disease. There is no causal evidence for any of this, but the combination of these bits and pieces in a timeline, then widely disseminated by various media, causes the truth to be buried under a pile of misinformation.
Russia’s monkey-goat narrative, like its COVID-19 conspiracy theory, is based on a long history of Russian disinformation about US biological weapons. During the Cold War, the KGB launched Operation Denver, a global disinformation campaign that blamed the US government for synthesizing the HIV virus that causes AIDS. In particular, the KGB successfully propagated the narrative that the CIA was using AIDS to target and kill black Americans and Africans. This campaign has been successfully spread throughout the world media, especially in places like Pakistan, India, Africa and even in some leftist Western publications. While efforts to spread disinformation about AIDS were initially led by the KGB and the Soviet media, pro-Soviet foreign journalists helped spread the disinformation to wider circles. Another KGB disinformation campaign successfully propagated the narrative that the United States, in concert with South Africa and Israel, had developed “ethnic weapons” designed to kill only Arabs and Africans.
Today, Russian monkey-goat information operations are part of a larger biological weapons communication campaign. Before the monkeypox outbreak, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vasiliy Nebenzja, accused Ukraine and the United States of conspiring to use migratory birds and bats to spread pathogens. Nebenzia also recycled the KGB’s “ethnic weapons” and accused the US Department of Defense of collecting Russian genetic information to develop “bioagents capable of selectively targeting different ethnic populations.”
The reason the Russians do this is obvious. Moscow wants to portray Washington as a dirty actor who would do almost anything to subjugate and exterminate it. As an added bonus, the Kremlin also hopes to undermine Americans’ confidence in their government’s efforts to combat monkeypox – and use such disinformation to fuel tensions in the run-up to the US midterm elections in November.
Another move by Russian information warriors will most likely be to use monkey-goat messages to incite anti-LGBT discrimination. The WHO reports that 98 percent of all cases of monkeypox were men who had sex with men. Russia will likely use this information to promote its own homophobic agenda. Since Russia has already passed legislation criminalizing “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” and added a section on “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values” to its national security strategy, disinformation about LGBT monkey-goats could further strengthen the case for persecuting LGBT people and their supporters.
What should Washington do to counter Russia’s onslaught of disinformation? The Biden administration should repeat the tactics it used during the run-up to war in Ukraine. The Biden administration successfully stood up to the Kremlin’s information war by releasing US intelligence on Russian war preparations and attempts to subjugate Ukraine through false flag attacks. This was a big change from the first Russian invasion in 2014, when Russian information operations caught the Obama administration off guard and, crucially, helped delay an effective Western response.
Washington’s offensive posture against Russia in the run-up to the war also worked because it revived effective American information tactics honed during the Cold War. During this period, Washington integrated information operations into its national security strategy, strengthening its ability to expose Soviet disinformation and pass on its own information. US President Joe Biden’s information response has used many Cold War-era tactics to build a US-controlled information sphere. For example, the US State Department published a well-sourced fact sheet on Russian disinformation about Ukraine in January.
The US government should build on its recent success by being more proactive and less reactive in the information space. As for the monkey goats, the United States should declassify intelligence on the Russian disinformation campaign and share it with the media. Using precise language is key: Instead of trying to counter Russian disinformation with tepid condemnations of “harmful rhetoric,” Washington needs to call a spade a spade and label Russian disinformation as a targeted weapon. A clever social media campaign that pits myth against fact could also help expose how the Kremlin manipulates a global audience for its own purposes.
And Washington can do more. Last month, the World Health Organization invited social media and technology companies to work with the organization to fight disinformation. The United States could support these efforts by providing key data to help expose Russian (and Chinese) lies about COVID-19 and monkeypox. Overall, the US government can use its own social media presence to expose certain lies and show how Moscow is using these discussions as a weapon to its advantage. And why stop there? A U.S. information campaign could reveal the Kremlin’s real—not imagined—use of biological and chemical agents to kill its enemies.
Since the end of the Cold War, the US government has been averse to information warfare with the country’s main adversaries. This has allowed Moscow and Beijing, for example, to expand their outrageous claims about the origin of deadly diseases. It’s time to fight back, take off the mask from Russia’s information war and treat the information space as a key battleground.
