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A CIA Code of Ethics, Israel’s AI-targeting system, Team Biden's use of secrets and vindication for CIA formers on Russia election influence lead this week's roundup.

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Pound for Pound: Ever wonder how much the Kremlin pays for friendly commentary in major US media outlets? According to leaked documents from a European intelligence agency, it can run as much as $39,000. That works out to 26 cents per lie.

The Washington Post was shown some 100 documents to expose the scale of Kremlin propaganda targeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. These “information psychological operations,” as Moscow calls them, provide a fascinating window into the surprisingly high-tech world of Russian disinformation.

Moscow planted rumors of Zelensky’s dissatisfaction with Gen. Valery Zaluzhny long before he was fired (Ukraine presidency photo)

The documents contain price lists for planting pro-Russian commentary in prominent Western media and for paying social media “influencers” in the United States and Europe “willing to work with Russian clients.” A note attached to the price list states, “Practically everywhere this will be columnists, leaders of public opinion, former diplomats, officials, professors and so on.” The documents did not say whether or how much the effort had been successful.

The trove of leaked documents included a "disinformation dashboard" that gets reviewed in nearly weekly meetings at the Kremlin to measure the success of its “information psychological operations” targeting Ukraine.

NewsGuard, a website founded by former U.S. media executives that aims to provide tools to counter disinformation, translated the dashboard and found it measures "goals" such as discrediting the Ukraine government, dividing the elite in that country, demoralizing the Ukrainian armed forces, and creating divisions among the Ukrainian population. 

“In the West, sophisticated dashboards like these are associated with data scientists helping researchers to cure diseases or marketing professionals buying and gauging responses to advertisements,” NewsGuard wrote. “For the Kremlin, resources are instead devoted to building a world-class, interactive disinformation productivity chart.”

The leaked documents show that employees at troll farms earned 60,000 rubles a month, or $660, for writing 100 comments a day.  If you assume 25 workdays per month, NewsGuard says, that works out to 26 cents per lie.