When Meta disclosed in a recent threat report that covert networks from Russia and Iran were leveraging generative artificial intelligence models to flood online platforms with synthetic political commentary — a pattern consistent with OpenAI’s own findings on foreign influence operations — the reaction in Western capitals was alarm. To those of us who spent years inside Soviet-legacy national security structures analyzing aktivnye meropriyatiya — active measures — the reaction was recognition.

The Kremlin is not inventing a new strategy. It is simply automating an old one.