Opening Statement of Sen.

Mark Warner
Vice Chairman, Senate Intelligence Committee
Open Hearing on Social Media Influence in the 2016 U.S. Elections
November 1, 2017
**EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY**

Below are Vice Chairman Warners opening remarks as prepared for delivery:

In this age of social media, you cant afford to waste too much time or too many characters in getting
the point across, so Ill get straight to the bottom line.

Russian operatives are attempting to infiltrate and manipulate American social media to hijack the
national conversation and to make Americans angry, to set us against ourselves and to undermine our
democracy. They did it during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. They are still doing it now. And not
one of us is doing enough to stop it.

That is why we are here today.

In many ways, this threat is not new. Russians have been conducting information warfare for decades.

But what is new is the advent of social media tools with the power to magnify propaganda and fake news
on a scale that was unimaginable back in the days of the Berlin Wall. Todays tools seem almost
purpose-built for Russian disinformation techniques.

Russias playbook is simple, but formidable. It works like this:

1. Disinformation agents set up thousands of fake accounts, groups and pages across a wide array
of platforms.
2. These fake accounts populate content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit,
LinkedIn, and others.
3. Each of these fake accounts spend months developing networks of real people to follow and like
their content, boosted by tools like paid ads and automated bots. Most of their real-life followers
have no idea they are caught up in this web.
4. These networks are later utilized to push an array of disinformation, including stolen emails,
state-led propaganda (like RT and Sputnik), fake news, and divisive content.

The goal here is to get this content into the news feeds of as many potentially receptive Americans as
possible and to covertly and subtly push them in the direction the Kremlin wants them to go.

As one who deeply respects the tech industry and was involved in the tech business for twenty years, it
has taken me some time to really understand this threat. Even I struggle to keep up with the language
and mechanics. The difference between bots, trolls, and fake accounts. How they generate Likes, Tweets,
and Shares. And how all of these players and actions are combined into an online ecosystem.

What is clear, however, is that this playbook offers a tremendous bang for the disinformation buck. With
just a small amount of money, adversaries use hackers to steal and weaponize data, trolls to craft
disinformation, fake accounts to build networks, bots to drive traffic, and ads to target new audiences.
They can force propaganda into the mainstream and wreak havoc on our online discourse. Thats a big
return on investment.

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So where do we go from here?

It will take all of us the platform companies, the United States government, and the American people
to deal with this new and evolving threat.

Social media and the innovative tools each of you have developed have changed our world for the better.
You have transformed the way we do everything from shopping for groceries to growing our small
businesses. But Russias actions are further exposing the dark underbelly of the ecosystem you have
created. And there is no doubt that their successful campaign will be replicated by other adversaries
both nation states and terrorists that wish to do harm to democracies around the globe.

As such, each of you here today needs to commit more resources to identifying bad actors and, when
possible, preventing them from abusing our social media ecosystem.

Thanks in part to pressure from this Committee, each company has uncovered some evidence of the ways
Russians exploited their platforms during the 2016 election.

For Facebook, much of the attention has been focused on the paid ads Russian trolls targeted to
Americans. However, these ads are just the tip of a very large iceberg. The real story is the amount of
misinformation and divisive content that was pushed for free on Russian-backed
Pages, which then spread widely on the News Feeds of tens of millions of Americans.

According to data Facebook has provided, 120 Russian-backed Pages built a network of over [3.3]
million real people. From these now-suspended Pages, 80,000 organic unpaid posts reached an
estimated 126 million real people. That is an astonishing reach from just one group in St. Petersburg.
And I doubt that the so-called Internet Research Agency represents the only Russian trolls out there.
Facebook has more work to do to see how deep this goes, including looking into the reach of the IRA-
backed Instagram posts, which represent another 120,000 pieces of content.

The anonymity provided by Twitter and the speed by which it shares news makes it an ideal tool to spread
disinformation. According to one study, during the 2016 campaign, junk news actually outperformed real
news in some battleground states in the lead-up to Election Day.1 Another study found that bots
generated one out of every five political messages posted on Twitter over the entire presidential
campaign.2

Im concerned that Twitter seems to be vastly under-estimating the number of fake accounts and bots
pushing disinformation. Independent researchers have estimated that up to 15% of Twitter accounts or
potentially 48 million accounts are fake or automated.3 Despite evidence of significant incursion and
outreach from researchers, Twitter has, to date, only uncovered a small percentage of that activity.
Though, I am pleased to see that number has been rising in recent weeks.

Googles search algorithms continue to have problems in surfacing fake news or propaganda. Though
we cant necessarily attribute to the Russian effort, false stories and unsubstantiated rumors were
elevated on Google Search during the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, YouTube has

1
Oxford Internet Institute (Phil Howard): Social Media, News and Political Information During the U.S. Election:
Was Polarizing Content Concentrated in Swing States? (September 28, 2017);
2
USC: Social Bots Distort the 2016 U.S. Presidential election Online Discussion, (November 2016)
3
University of Southern California and Indiana University: Online Human-bot Interactions: Detection, Estimation,
and Characterization (March 2017).

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become RTs go-to platform. You have also now uncovered 1100 videos associated with this campaign.
Much more of your content was likely spread through other platforms.

It is not just the platforms that need to do more. The U.S. government has thus far proven incapable of
adapting to meet this 21st century challenge. Unfortunately, I believe this effort is suffering, in part,
because of a lack of leadership at the top. We have a President who remains unwilling to acknowledge
the threat that Russia poses to our democracy. President Trump should stop actively delegitimizing
American journalism and acknowledge and address this real threat posed by Russian propaganda.

Congress, too, must do more. We need to recognize that current law was not built to address these
threats. I have partnered with Senators Klobuchar and McCain on a light-touch legislative approach,
which I hope my colleagues with review. The Honest Ads Act is a national security bill intended to
protect our elections from foreign influence.

Finally but perhaps most importantly the American people also need to be aware of what is
happening on our news feeds. We all need to take a more discerning approach to what we are reading
and sharing, and who we are connecting with online. We need to recognize that the person at the other
end of that Facebook or Twitter argument may not be a real person at all.

The fact is that this Russian weapon has already proven its success and cost effectiveness. We can all be
assured that other adversaries, including foreign intelligence operatives and potentially terrorist
organizations, are reading their playbook and already taking action. We dont have the luxury of waiting
for this Committees final report before taking action to respond to this threat to our democracy.

To our witnesses today, I hope you will detail what you saw in this last election and tell us what steps you
will undertake to get ready for the next one. We welcome your participation and encourage your
continued commitment to addressing this shared responsibility.

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Minority Press Contact:

Rachel_Cohen@warner.senate.gov
Press Office (202) 228-6884