# Operation Undercut Operation Undercut is a Russian influence operation that [[Recorded Future]]'s Insikt Group exposed on November 26, 2024 and attributed to the [[Social Design Agency]] (SDA), the Moscow contractor behind [[Doppelganger]]. It had been active since at least late 2023. It makes short videos dressed up as reporting from Western media brands, many with AI-generated voiceovers, to discredit Ukraine's leadership and cast doubt on Western aid. ## What it did - **Targets.** Audiences in Ukraine, Europe and the United States. Topics included Western aid to Ukraine, the 2024 U.S. election, the Israel–Gaza war and EU politics. - **Media impersonation.** Videos and graphics carried the look of real outlets. Dark Reading's account names The Times (UK) and Die Welt among the brands imitated. - **AI voices.** Recorded Future found the voiceovers in English, German, French, Polish and Turkish were "very likely" produced with ElevenLabs' tools. ElevenLabs' own classifier matched them, as TechCrunch reported. - **Amplification.** The Hacker News's write-up counts at least 500 accounts and notes infrastructure shared with [[Operation Overload]]. Undercut also amplified a [[Storm-1516]] deepfake of a supposed Hamas member threatening the 2024 Paris Olympics. ## Impact Recorded Future, Dark Reading and TechCrunch all describe the engagement as limited and the effect as minimal. As with its sibling operations, the volume of activity tells you about the operator's budget, not about its effect on audiences. ## Why it matters for the KB Undercut is one of the clearest documented examples of a commercial Western AI product built into a Russian state operation. It also shows how SDA works: separate brands — Doppelganger, Undercut and, reportedly, Overload — sharing the same infrastructure and the same message about Ukraine, so that the takedown of one does not end the campaign. ## See Also - [[Social Design Agency]] - [[Doppelganger]] - [[Operation Overload]] - [[Storm-1516]] - [[Voice Cloning]] - [[Kremlin Disinformation]]