Battlefield Ukraine

Fake News-ageddon

In the sub-basement of the Linguistic University, a group of fifty hackers were hard at work on their computer terminals. Each hacker was piped into one of the fastest mainframe supercomputer systems in the world, and maximizing their productivity with dual 32-inch computer screens. The supercomputer had been built in secret over the past twelve months, and only just came online two weeks ago in preparation of Operation Redworm.

Thirty of these hackers were spending close to eighteen hours a day creating and then promoting thousands upon thousands of fake news articles across Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, in what was perhaps the first 21^st century information-warfare campaign against NATO.

As Nestor Petyaev, one of the chief hacking supervisors, walked into the room, he felt a sense of pride when he saw the headlines splashed across the screens all around him. “Russia invades Norway and Poland,” sure made for good news — that one had received a lot of clicks. “Fascist German Forces Bomb Ukraine,” had not been quite as successful, but was still making headway.

There were two stories that were taking on a life of their own. Nestor walked over to one of his hackers, and saw several different versions of the headline, “Turkey Withdraws from NATO.” He patted his comrade on the back.

“Ivan, I thought you would like to know that your story is having an impact on the real world.”

“Oh?” asked Ivan with a smile.

“Yes, there are demonstrations popping up all over Turkey. Some of the citizens are marching, demanding that the government not get involved in the war, and counter-demonstrations are urging the government to honor its treaty obligation. Perhaps you can incorporate some of the coverage of the anti-war marches in with your stories?” suggested Nestor.

“Ok, I will get right on that,” answered Ivan, eagerly.

Nestor walked over to another colleague, who was working on a story about the Iranians closing the Straits of Hormuz.

“Igor, did you know that you are actually writing a true story?” Nestor asked jovially.

“What do you mean, Boss?” wondered Igor.

“Well, in response to the press that we have been pushing, the Iranians are actually moving more of their warships to the sea. Our gossip is becoming truth,” smirked Nestor.

“This is great news. I will incorporate some of the real reporting in my next set of articles,” explained Igor, proudly.

The group was also busy posting propaganda videos. They had pieced the footage together from clips given to them from helmet cameras from Spetsnaz raids, frontline soldiers, fighter combat cameras — anything that showed the Russian military winning a battle or air strike against NATO. They also began promoting any videos of the apartment building and subway stations that were accidentally destroyed by the American bunker-busting bomb the night before.

President Petrov had visited the hospitals to meet with the victims and made several appearances on TV, pleading for the Americans and NATO to keep the war conventional and not kill innocent civilians. Those videos were gaining a lot of traction around the world, so they began to run a lot of info pieces on the victims. Their entire goal with pushing this narrative was to show the Americans and NATO as the aggressors and the Russians as the victims. The images of the casualties from the now famous “Moscow Massacre” were compelling.

The video of the US Supercarrier George H.W. Bush sinking was a particularly potent video that had gone viral the second it was posted. The sight of hundreds of sailors being rescued amongst a sea of floating dead bodies was truly horrifying to the American public.

While the media arm continued to propagate their material, a separate group of hackers was breaking into the French, German, Italian, and Spanish transportation systems. They were interfering with train schedules, communications, and traffic signals — anything that would cause chaos and confusion in the Allied nations. Most of their attacks were being carried out through the use of botnets, which would capture Internet of Things (IoT) devices and then slave those devices to act as a collective botnet army in order to accomplish DDoS attacks. When combined, these attacks were causing the electronic infrastructure of the Allies to grind to a halt.

Several of the more gifted hackers in this division were given the particularly hard task of coopting the companies’ Industrial Control Systems (ICSs). In one case, they successfully took control of a train engine on an extremely vital German rail line, causing the engine to burn out while it was in transit. Then they disabled the switching station so that the engineers in the control rooms could not remotely divert trains around the affected track. This caused a series of train delays.

In the US, the hackers took control of the Astoria Gas Generating Station in New York State and forced the generator to spin out of control until it blew up and destroyed the plant. Ten workers were killed, nineteen others injured. The loss of 1,296 megawatts of power was a huge hit to the city of New York and to the state as a whole. The hackers also hit four other power generators, which caused a series of rolling blackouts across much of the East Coast and parts of the Midwest. Power companies were scrambling to get old turbines turned on to pick up the slack and restore power.

While the hackers were sowing chaos on the internet against the NATO members, the disinformation campaign was having the desired effect amongst the population. Public opinion against the war was soaring in Europe, and the US media could not help themselves in trying to pin all the failings of the allies, on President Gates.

To make matters worse, two Spetsnaz teams carried out a devastating attack against two liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals — the Dominion Cove Point LNG depot in Maryland, and the Cheniere's Sabine Pass LNG station in Louisiana. The Spetsnaz members shot their way through the perimeter security of both facilities, and then blew the terminals up using C4 explosives that they detonated remotely. Following the attack, the two attack teams blended right back into the population and disappeared, at least until the FBI could hunt them down.

The destruction of these two terminals cut the US’s ability to export liquid natural gas to Europe by 68 %. This was a huge loss, especially considering Europe had been cut off from importing additional LNG from Russia once the hostilities had officially begun. The Continent would now be thrown into a widespread gas shortage.