Virtual Manipulation Brief 2025: From War and Fear to Confusion and Uncertainty
Virtual Manipulation Brief 2025: From War and Fear to Confusion and Uncertainty

Author(s): Gundars Bergmanis-Korats, Raitis Ralfs Vecmanis, Marija Isupova, Kensho Sakurai
Subject(s): Media studies, Communication studies, Politics and communication, Theory of Communication, ICT Information and Communications Technologies
Published by: NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence
Keywords: Virtual Manipulation Brief; NATO; Ukraine; European Union; United States; social media platforms;
Summary/Abstract: The “Virtual Manipulation Brief 2025” analyses the shifting landscape of digital influence operations targeting NATO, Ukraine, the European Union, and the United States. The current issue marks a complete redesign of our data collection and processing pipeline, expanding from only two social media platforms to ten. This significant change necessitated a fundamental restructuring of the baseline (our reference data and metrics for measuring manipulation), which will guide our future research in this area. An estimated ~7.9 % of all the interactions we tracked show statistics-based signs of coordination. Kremlin aligned messaging bursts were roughly twice as frequent as their pro Western counterparts, and about three times as frequent for the posts that appeared on more than one platform. This implies the broader reach and tighter synchronisation of Kremlin-orchestrated operations. Moreover, platform importance depends on the monitored topic and language. One should not rely on the post and comment volume alone. While X had the highest number of posts, YouTube and Telegram showed greater engagement and reach in our case. This demonstrates that the platform with the most posts isn’t necessarily the leader in terms of engagement or reach. A key observation is the opportunistic nature of Russian actors, who are actively exploiting the policies of the new US administration as means to intensify their targeting of Ukraine, the EU, and NATO. In addition to Russian activities, we identified and analysed strategic narratives originating from China that are specifically aimed at NATO, broadening the scope of concern beyond a single primary actor. China’s messaging focuses on showcasing its strength and portraying the US as weak, corrupt and aggressive. At the same time Russian messaging was more emotional and defamatory. Artificial intelligence is increasingly prominent in the digital space. Do you remember the time when early deepfakes were a primary concern? Today, AI can generate diverse content across multiple languages, create influencers from static images, etc. This capability enables the exploitation of political events and crises through the rapid creation of misleading videos, audio, images, and text. Additionally, initial practical issues of applied AI are being gradually mitigated, making the technology more usable. We estimate that approximately 15% of our current computer code for data collection and analysis was generated by AI. This percentage is expected to rise significantly in the coming years due to AI’s capacity to accelerate capability building: the increased speed in developing tools and services marks the beginning of a new era where not only information dissemination accelerates, but also software development and service delivery. Moreover, the advanced reasoning abilities of new large language models, coupled with emerging AI agent frameworks, are enhancing the autonomous operation of AI systems. We expect it to be a primary focus of the next iterations of Virtual Manipulation Brief.

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