🧵 For Trump's admin, influencing its citizens with a bot network seems becoming an ordinary routine. Today's US is one of the first G7 powers that uses bots domestically outside of an election cycle—what for a long time used to be exclusive to authoritarian states. 1/
2/ A bot network benefiting Trump; ex-DOGE Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy is running on X/Twitter in a likely collusion with an entity affiliated to Musk and/or Trump admin. It attacks their critics, praises Trump's policies and appointees, targets swing states, affects Ukraine interests.
3/ Trump's personal "enemies" attacked by the bots: ⚔️ Judge Merchan (hush money conviction) ⚔️ @LizCheney.bsky.social (J6 Committee) ⚔️ ABC and George Stephanopoulos ("Trump 'raped' a woman" claim) ⚔️ Rachel @Maddow.msnbc.com (coverage of 100 days) ⚔️ Chris Wray (raid on Trump's home)
4/ Similarly, bots attacked: ⚔️ Ilhan Omar @IlhanMn.bsky.social, @AOC.bsky.social (both criticized Elon MUSK and his DOGE for dismantling USAID, unlawful disruption of other national agencies) ⚔️ Leo Terrell (who was consistently calling RAMASWAMY an opportunist and a threat to the MAGA movement)
5/ Bots were blaming CA governor @Governor.CA.gov Gavin Newsom and LA mayor @Mayor.LAcity.gov Karen Bass for poor response to the Los Angeles wildfire crisis in January 2025.
6/ Bots targeted ~20 Dem representatives who loudly criticized banning transgender athletes from women sports. Many of those Dems belong to the Congressional Equality Caucus @equality.house.gov that denounced the ban, saying it is trying to distract the public to hide Trump govt’s corruption.
7/ Bots fiercely supported defunding Planned Parenthood—a populistic promise of the One Big Beautiful Bill (which most benefited to the rich, while generously increasing funding of ICE). Inclusion of Defunding @PPFA.org could be a way for the narrow passage of OBBB through Congress
8/ Most of the Trump's appointees that bots praised are widely criticized for loyalty over qualification, unfit for their roles: 💼 Pete Hegset, Defense 💼 Kash Patel, FBI 👜 Karoline Leavitt, Press Secretary 👜 Kristi Noem, Homeland Security 💼 RFK Jr., Public Health
9/ Swing states: 🌰 OHIO Bots advocated against iGaming bill (possibly as a favor for DeWine🟩); praised Frank LaRose🟪. Both DeWine and LaRose are members of the state's Redistricting Commission, a key to gerrymandering in favor of GOP. Vivek Ramaswamy is running for Ohio governor.
10/ Swing states: 🦡 WISCONSIN Bots interfered into elections of state's supreme court judge, largely in sync with a campaign generously funded by Elon Musk. 🌵 ARIZONA Bots aimed at increasing the GOP turnout during presidential elections; later thanked for electing Trump.
11/ Trump's policies praised by the bots closely echo the 2024 GOP Platform: 📜 release Epstein files 📜 lower drug prices 📜 stronger borders / deport criminal immigrants 📜 defund sanctuary cities 📜 economic policy / inflation / tariffs
12/ Needless to say that bots were astroturfing around the key milestones of Trump's 2nd term: 👑 just before the presidential election (incl smearing Kamala Harris) and on its outcome 👑 inauguration 👑 upcoming 100 days
13/ Likewise, the network praised developments that could benefit to Elon Musk much more than to Trump: 🫅🏻 adoption of Community Notes from X by Facebook, Instagram (following the dismantling of their fact-checking programs) 🫅🏻 DOGE cutting govt waste spending
14/ The network impacted Ukraine: 🇺🇦 portrayed Trump as anti-war🕊️ and Harris as pro-war🪖 candidates; encouraging swing voters to stay home 🇺🇦 in response to mentions of Ukraine, was downplaying Ukraine's critical support, diverting focus to domestic issues, eg LA wildfires
15/ We reconstructed the above list of opponents, appointees and policies based on nearly 85% of bot replies, categorized unambiguously into 28+ distinct, clearly defined narratives. Most likely there were no other narratives from the network within the scope that we analyzed.
16/ Totaling at least 1360 fake accounts, the network is powered by LLM and runs under a day-to-day human oversight for over 10 months now. Its 123K replies gained 4.7M views overall; on the average one in two replies was liked or replied to.
17/ What makes them an inauthentic network? 🧩 ~80% accounts created on Sep..Oct 2024 🧩 25% replies posted at rate >200 wpm, impossible for a human typist 🧩 each bot waits ≥10s, typically 12s between its tweets 🧩 if 2 bots replied to the same tweet, a typical interval is 10s
18/ We started studying these bots in late Apr-2025, thanks to their anti-Ukraine narratives. Our contribution to exposing this network includes: 🤲 attribution 🤲 full set of narratives, most w/background and a trigger event 🤲 archiving every piece of evidence 🤲 and more 19/ We will be likely covering more aspects of this network in separate thread(s), followed by a detailed tech report and a tool helping ordinary users to limit its impact. What would you most like to hear about? 🔎 structure / modus operandi 🔎 inauthenticity 🔎 LLM and human glitches 🔎 attribution 20/ MEDIA COVERAGE We are most grateful to Mohar Chatterjee, @MaggieMiller.bsky.social and their editors for covering our research for @politico.com's Digital Future Daily newsletter, and to @ETBrooking.bsky.social for an independent assessment of our findings: politico.com
www.politico.com
21/ CREDITS: We partnered for this research with SourcesOuvertes, an OSINT researcher. The network was first reported by Clemson Media Hub and Alethea (alethea.com), as covered by @KevinCollier.bsky.social for @NBCnews.com
alethea.com
22/22 This is the biggest and most important investigation we've made so far. If you believe research like this is important, please consider supporting it: BTC: 12MoEGwmEaQUWPK1GHJvrypYGKwxiPREKP ETH: 0x96e25dc68a0379300e1142a7351e546d170671f6