How foreign actors exploited social unrest in France

Official reports from the EU and France detail foreign information manipulation campaigns leveraging AI for voice cloning and synthetic news generation.

The analysis highlights how automated networks attempt to discredit Western institutions while noting the measured scale of their reach compared to domestic and other international movements.

At the heart of the EU findings is a Russian network called “Operation Overload”, which has been active since September 2023. This network used videos falsely branded as Western media outlets, spreading unfounded allegations of criminal acts by migrants. According to the report, these actions were aimed at portraying the French leadership as incompetent and authoritarian, while also aiming to undermine European support for Ukraine, arguing that European governments were neglecting their domestic problems to bolster Kiev.

At the same time, the French Foreign Ministry found that the presence of “hostile narratives” was not limited to Russian circles. Analyzing activity on the X platform between October 16 and 18, French authorities noticed that posts associated with the American MAGA movement and with Israeli officials and influencers garnered an overwhelmingly greater response. In particular, the ten most popular posts from MAGA supporters reached 49 million views, while those from Israeli sources exceeded 35 million, compared to 2,8 million views for pro-Russian accounts.

Disinformation experts, such as Elina Traeger of the RAND Corporation, emphasize that these campaigns are part of a broader “narrative competition” that is gradually attempting to undermine trust in Western democracies. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue has pointed out that “Operation Overload” uses sophisticated methods, such as using artificial intelligence to clone expert voices, forging journalistic content and creating misleading images, adapting its action according to the crises arising in each country.

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Commenting on these findings, French President Emmanuel Macron said that, although there is no evidence of direct foreign intervention behind the protests themselves, the country is facing systematic "foreign manipulation of information."

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