{"id":63423,"date":"2024-05-31T23:37:20","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T23:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/31\/deepfake-of-u-s-official-appears-after-shift-on-ukraine-attacks-in-russia\/"},"modified":"2024-05-31T23:37:20","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T23:37:20","slug":"deepfake-of-u-s-official-appears-after-shift-on-ukraine-attacks-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/31\/deepfake-of-u-s-official-appears-after-shift-on-ukraine-attacks-in-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Deepfake of U.S. Official Appears After Shift on Ukraine Attacks in Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"549\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/31\/multimedia\/31dc-deepfake-tmgc\/31dc-deepfake-tmgc-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,549&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Deepfake of U.S. Official Appears After Shift on Ukraine Attacks in Russia\" title=\"Deepfake of U.S. Official Appears After Shift on Ukraine Attacks in Russia\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A day after U.S. officials said <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/30\/us\/politics\/biden-ukraine-russia-weapons.html\" title=\"\">Ukraine could use American weapons<\/a> in limited strikes inside Russia, a deepfake video of a U.S. spokesman discussing the policy appeared online.<\/p>\n<p>The fabricated video, which is drawn from actual footage, shows the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, seeming to suggest that the Russian city of Belgorod, just 25 miles north of Ukraine\u2019s border with Russia, was a legitimate target for such strikes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The 49-second video clip, which has an authentic feel despite telltale clues of manipulation, illustrates the growing threat of disinformation and especially so-called deepfake videos powered by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">U.S. officials said they had no information about the origins of the video. But they are particularly concerned about how Russia might employ such techniques to manipulate opinion around the war in Ukraine or even American political discourse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Belgorod \u201chas essentially no civilians remaining,\u201d the video purports to show Mr. Miller saying at the State Department in response to a reporter\u2019s question, which was also manufactured. \u201cIt\u2019s practically full of military targets at this point, and we are seeing the same thing starting in the regions around there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cRussia needs to get the message that this is unacceptable,\u201d Mr. Miller adds in the video, which has been circulating on Telegram channels followed by residents of Belgorod widely enough to draw responses from Russian government officials.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The claim in the video about Belgorod is completely false. While it has been the target of some Ukrainian attacks, and its schools operate online, its 340,000 residents have not been evacuated.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The false assertions that civilians have fled and that the city is mainly a military zone might imply a Western willingness to support indiscriminate strikes there, which is not the case.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">President Biden has given Ukraine what officials call limited permission to use American weapons for self-defensive strikes inside Russia. The shift in policy came in response to Russia\u2019s positioning just inside its border of missiles, glide bombs and artillery shells that it is using to attack the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and its surrounding areas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The video also shows Mr. Miller seeming to respond to a reporter\u2019s contention \u2014 also manipulated \u2014 that other countries are \u201callowing their weapons to strike deep within Russian territory,\u201d which is not accurate, although some Western leaders have said their weapons can be used to hit border targets in Russia that are threatening Ukraine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cSo we\u2019re going to back our allies in whatever they decide to do, and maybe help some of the folks who are on the fence about this make the right choice,\u201d Mr. Miller is made to say.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Miller, who was traveling with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken this week in Moldova and the Czech Republic, denounced the video in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe Kremlin has made spreading disinformation a core strategy for misleading people both inside Russia and beyond its borders,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to think of a more convincing sign your decisions aren\u2019t working out than having to resort to outright fakes to defend them to your own people, not to mention the rest of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Several Russian media outlets and websites referred to or disseminated the video, with no mention that the lip sync was off \u2014 or that Mr. Miller\u2019s shirt and tie changed color midway.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As it happens, combating Russian disinformation was a central theme of Mr. Blinken\u2019s latest trip. In both Moldova and the Czech Republic, he spoke publicly of such assaults in European nations engineered by pro-Russia propagandists. In many cases, the actors spread lies using networks on social media platforms, including through fake accounts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At a meeting on Friday in Prague, Mr. Blinken and his counterparts from other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization discussed how to blunt Russian disinformation and other types of \u201chybrid attacks\u201d aimed at eroding governance and democratic systems in the United States and European allied nations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI can tell you that in the meeting today, virtually every ally was seized with this intensification of Russia\u2019s hybrid attacks,\u201d Mr. Blinken said at a news conference on Friday afternoon. \u201cWe know what they\u2019re up to, and we\u2019ll respond both individually and collectively as necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/29\/world\/europe\/blinken-ukraine-weapons-russia.html\" title=\"\">first stop on the trip<\/a>, in Chisinau, Moldova, U.S. officials and their counterparts discussed the online propaganda aimed at undermining the president, Maia Sandu, who has been pushing for Moldova to enter the European Union and is up for re-election in October.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Thursday, Mr. Blinken and Jan Lipavsky, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic, signed a memorandum of understanding in Prague to counter \u201cforeign state information manipulation,\u201d the State Department said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Joining the trip was <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.state.gov\/biographies\/james-p-rubin\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">James P. Rubin<\/a>, who had Mr. Miller\u2019s job in the Clinton administration and is now a special envoy dealing with disinformation and coordinator for the State Department\u2019s Global Engagement Center.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Miller\u2019s phony remarks were repeated verbatim on the Telegram channel of Russia\u2019s Human Rights Council, a state body that nominally advises President Vladimir V. Putin. The council\u2019s account then shared the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/president_sovet\/3812\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">angry response<\/a> of its chairman, Valery Fadeyev.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWashington deliberately does not want to notice Kyiv\u2019s obvious crimes against humanity,\u201d Mr. Fadeyev wrote. \u201cI don\u2019t particularly expect that this information will be conveyed to the cynic from the State Department, but the truth is ours in any case.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Fadeyev, in his post condemning Mr. Miller\u2019s \u201clies,\u201d suggested that the United States did not understand that civilians were at risk in Belgorod. He said that at least 175 civilians had been killed in the Belgorod region and another 800 injured since February 2022. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Russia\u2019s state news agency TASS <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/tass.ru\/proisshestviya\/20952315\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">ran an article<\/a> on Thursday based on Mr. Fadeyev\u2019s comments. As of Friday night, the Human Rights Council had not issued a statement on its Telegram channel acknowledging that the video was fake.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Insider, an independent Russian outlet with a section dedicated to rooting out fake news, noted that the video was also available on the Russian social network VK, which is now controlled by businessmen close to Mr. Putin, and other websites run by pro-war propagandist Aleksandr Kots.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Life in Belgorod is far from normal: Schools operate online only, and air raid sirens wail regularly. Explosions are regularly heard, with buildings damaged and civilians killed. A spate of explosions on Dec. 30, 2023, that Moscow blamed on Ukraine killed 25 people and injured at least 100. The explosions came one day after Russian airstrikes in cities across Ukraine killed 57 and wounded 160.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Some regions near the border have been evacuated, and many smaller towns and villages within range of the border are <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/29\/world\/europe\/russia-ukraine-border.html\" title=\"\">regularly subject<\/a> to drone and artillery attacks from Ukraine. In late April, Belgorod\u2019s regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said that at least 120 civilians, including 11 children, had died as a result of Ukrainian strikes. He said that another 651 people had been injured since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Julian E. Barnes<!-- --> contributed reporting from Washington.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/31\/us\/politics\/deepfake-us-official-russia.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A day after U.S. officials said Ukraine could use American weapons in limited strikes inside Russia, a deepfake video of a U.S. spokesman discussing the policy appeared online. The fabricated video, which is drawn from actual footage, shows the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, seeming to suggest that the Russian city of Belgorod, just 25 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/31\/multimedia\/31dc-deepfake-tmgc\/31dc-deepfake-tmgc-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13382,1179,13126,2008,202,5516,221,1130],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63423"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63425,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63423\/revisions\/63425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}