YouTube’s Russia-Funded Political Video Crisis Will Only Spiral From Here

Late last year, a popular conservative YouTuber was about to earn a windfall, but something felt a bit off. A Brussels-born businessman named Eduard Grigoriann was offering him $100,000 per week to join a new network of ideologically aligned commentators, one meant to counterbalance Grigoriann’s frustrations with mainstream media bias. The deal was exceptional, paying more than any other network would consider offering, but Grigoriann was suspiciously impossible to find online.??

Before moving forward, the YouTuber asked for press releases, interviews, a LinkedIn profile, or anything mentioning Grigoriann to review. He was persistent. Ultimately, Grigoriann’s team sent a one-pager, with a prominent photo a man sitting in private plane, along with some details about Grigoriann’s career and interests. Outside of that document, Grigoriann was a ghost, leaving no trace online. The YouTuber was apparently satisfied. He moved forward, joining a channel called Tenet Media, and netted a $100,000 signing bonus.

We now know that Eduard Grigoriann was a fabrication, a fiction created by Russian state media, according to a new DOJ indictment. The YouTuber’s windfall was in fact distributed by the Russia-sponsored RT network, the DOJ said, spent in an effort to advance Russia’s interests abroad. The YouTuber was right to be skeptical. But ultimately, the money was too sweet to turn down. The venture eventually attracted a slew of conservative talent, allegedly including Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin.?

The DOJ’s revelation was stunning, but a line buried within the indictment was even more noteworthy. The Tenet Media channel was just one of many such networks operating in the U.S.. The RT employee running it, the indictment said, “manages multiple RT covert distribution channels in the United States.” RT’s editor-in-chief has boasted that the company has "an enormous network, an entire empire of covert projects that is working with the public opinion.” Tenet is just the first we’re hearing about. The story is only beginning.?

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RT built these ‘covert’ networks after Western countries banned and deplatformed its main channel following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As it sought to continue influencing public opinion, its money found willing recipients. Popular commentators looked the other way and took the cash despite obvious warning signs. Even though basic due diligence would show Grigoriann was almost certainly a sock puppet, they went ahead.?

The DOJ’s allegations are still unproven, and the commentators in this case may technically be victims of a crime perpetrated by the Russian defendants. But Russia seems to have gotten its money’s worth. In one clip from the channel now circulating online, Pool called Ukraine the “greatest threat” to the United States and the world and demanded an apology for Russia. In another case, the Russians pushed the channel to tie a terror attack in Moscow to Ukraine, even though ISIS claimed responsibility, according to the indictment. The Russians also asked the channel to cover Tucker Carlson fawning visit to a Russian grocery store. And eventually, RT employees allegedly secured access to post videos directly to the Tenet channel.?

Covert operations like this are difficult, if not impossible, for tech platforms to detect since nearly everything — the recruiting, payments, and editorial direction — happens behind the scenes. These channels can run until governments figure them out. And indeed, it took the DOJ publishing an indictment for YouTube to learn about it. From the sound of it, the DOJ is not done.

YouTube on Thursday told me it was removing Tenet Media from the service. “Following an indictment from the US Department of Justice and after careful review,” a spokesperson said, “we are terminating the Tenet Media channel and four channels operated by its owner Lauren Chen as part of our ongoing efforts to combat coordinated influence operations.”

In context, the Tenet Media episode shouldn’t be blown out of proportion. It was one channel with a bit more than 300,000 subscribers that got a lot of money from Russia for a questionable ROI. It didn’t swing an election or meaningfully change public opinion on the Ukraine war. But it wasn’t alone. And in time, we’ll likely find out where else Russia was distributing its money.?