# Doppelganger Doppelganger is one of the most heavily documented Russian state disinformation operations, active since at least 2022. Its signature tactic is cloning — building fake "doppelgänger" copies of legitimate news websites (The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, [[Fox News]], Le Monde and others) and government pages, populating them with fabricated articles that push Kremlin narratives, then amplifying the links through networks of bot and troll accounts on X, Facebook, and [[Telegram]]. The operation matters for the KB because it is the clearest contemporary example of state-run [[Disinformation]] aimed directly at Western, and specifically U.S., domestic politics. ## Who runs it Doppelganger was built primarily by two Moscow firms working for the Russian Presidential Administration: the [[Social Design Agency]] (SDA), founded by Ilya Gambashidze, and Structura National Technologies. In March 2024 the U.S. Treasury sanctioned SDA, Structura, and Gambashidze for the campaign; the European Union imposed parallel sanctions. The work sits within the same ecosystem as older Russian influence machinery — the [[Internet Research Agency]] troll farm once run by [[Yevgeny Prigozhin]], the [[GRU]]'s military-intelligence operations, and the state broadcaster [[RT]] — and relies on the [[Firehose of Falsehood]] model of high-volume, multichannel propaganda. ## The "Good Old USA Project" In September 2024 the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an affidavit exposing three SDA campaigns aimed at American audiences: the "Good Old USA Project," the "Guerrilla Media Campaign in the United States," and the "U.S. Social Media Influencer Network." The documents described an explicit goal of swaying the November 2024 election toward [[Donald Trump]] by targeting swing-state residents, online gamers, American Jews, and Hispanic Americans. The same week, Treasury sanctioned ten Russians and two entities — including senior [[RT]] staff and the organization ANO Dialogue — and the government seized dozens of Doppelganger domains. (The parallel, separately charged [[Tenet Media Russian Influence Indictment]] exposed Russian funding of U.S. right-wing influencers in the same period.) ## Storm-1516 Doppelganger overlaps with [[Storm-1516]], a related operation that Western officials attribute to the GRU's [[Unit 29155]]. Storm-1516 manufactures fabricated "eyewitness" videos and fake whistleblower stories — increasingly using AI tools — and seeds them through fake local-news sites for laundering into mainstream discourse. The two operations share narratives and infrastructure even as analysts treat them as distinct programs. ## Sibling operation: Operation Overload Where Doppelganger clones whole websites, [[Operation Overload]] (also tracked as Matryoshka and Storm-1679) borrows outlets' logos for short fake videos and posts, and then emails journalists and fact-checkers asking them to verify the fakes. The [[Clemson Media Forensics Hub]] (March 2026) describes Matryoshka as reportedly one of the Social Design Agency's wings, which would put both operations under the same contractor. ## Connection to the KB Ecosystem - **[[Disinformation]]** / **[[Active Measures]]** / **[[Firehose of Falsehood]]**: the techniques and tradition Doppelganger operationalizes. - **[[Internet Research Agency]]** / **[[GRU]]** / **[[RT]]**: the broader Russian influence apparatus it sits within. - **[[Tenet Media Russian Influence Indictment]]**: the parallel September 2024 U.S. action targeting Russian funding of domestic right-wing media. - **[[Storm-1516]]** / **[[Operation Overload]]**: sibling Russian fabrication operations — staged scandal videos, and fact-checker flooding. ## See Also - [[Disinformation]] - [[Active Measures]] - [[Firehose of Falsehood]] - [[Internet Research Agency]] - [[GRU]] - [[RT]] - [[Tenet Media Russian Influence Indictment]] - [[Storm-1516]] - [[Operation Overload]] - [[Social Design Agency]] - [[Operation Undercut]] - [[Unit 29155]]