Inside Cyber Warfare - Jeffrey Carr [124]
“There will be no uprisings here,” said Surkov, who oversees the Kremlin’s relations with political parties, parliament, and youth organizations. “We realize, of course, that these events have made an impression on many local politicians in Russia—and on various foreign nongovernmental organizations that would like to see the scenario repeated in Russia.”
It was also in 2005 that Yuri Milner left Neftyanoi Concern and founded Digital Sky Technologies (DST) with cofounder Gregory Fingar of New Century Investments. From 2005 forward, the Russian Internet was not only just a place to do business, it had also become a new war-fighting platform from which attacks could be launched against both external and internal opponents with complete anonymity. In addition, it provided a self-funding open source intelligence operation for the Russian Security Services, thanks to the enormous popularity of social networks worldwide—the very networks that Milner and DST were busy investing in. As investments ramped up, so did the Kremlin’s use of cyberspace as an attack platform. Kyrgyzstan (2005), Estonia (2007), Georgia (2008), and possibly Kyrgyzstan again (2009) represent four well-known examples of Internet-based attacks against external opponents.
However, the Russian Internet was also being used to control internal dissent. In March 2009 Vladislav Surkov organized a conference of Russia’s top bloggers to announce a new Internet strategy for influence operations:[60]
“The aim of the conference is to work out a strategy for information campaigns on the Internet. It is formulated like this: To every challenge there should be a response, or better still, two responses simultaneously,” a source who is familiar with the process of preparations for the meeting explained. “If the opposition launches an Internet publication, the Kremlin should respond by launching two projects. If a user turns up on LiveJournal talking about protests in Vladivostok, 10 Kremlin spin doctors should access his blog and try to persuade the audience that everything that was written is lies.”
DST and the Kremlin
In May 2009, Yuri Milner was simultaneously promoted to a presidential commission (May 15) and closed his first $200 million investment in Facebook (May 26).[61] Six months later, as he continued to make investments in US social media companies, he was appointed to an almost year-long project by the Ministry of Communication and Information to analyze the scale and distribution of illegal content on RuNET.[62] Oddly, when this information was made public in a blog posting at Forbes.com, Milner’s attorney sent a letter to Forbes’ Managing Editor, which flatly denied that his client had ever served in such a capacity: “Mr. Milner has never led or been involved in a Ministry of Communications effort to crack down on illegal content on RUNET.”[63]
Milner’s reaction to the post, which Forbes removed immediately upon receiving the complaint (Forbes also had not conducted any fact-checking first), demonstrates how carefully he manages publicity around his background—particularly anything that would reveal his close relationship with the Kremlin. Even DST’s website has changed from a multipage site that listed all of its Internet properties to a single page (www.dst-global.com) with nothing but the name DST and an email address.
In 2010 DST made a series of investments in US social networking companies including Zynga, Groupon, and ICQ; however, Facebook remained its primary interest. After DST’s initial $200M investment, it launched a tender offer of $100M for Facebook employees’ stock. Then, in January 2011, it co-led a $500M round with Goldman Sachs to become one of Facebook’s largest institutional investors, owning