Vietnam Veterans of America’s (VVA) two- year investigation, beginning in August 2017, has documented persistent, pervasive, and coordinated online targeting of American servicemembers, veterans, and their families by foreign entities who seek to disrupt American democracy. American veterans and the social-media followers of several congressionally chartered veterans service organizations were specifically targeted by the Russian Internet Research Agency with at least 113 ads during and after the 2016 election. However, this represents but a tiny fraction of the Russian activity that targeted this community with divisive propaganda: The organic politically divisive content (organic meaning not having to do with ads, rather unpaid posts and comments) created by Russians have a far greater reach than the known paid ads; for even though many of the original sources have been removed from social-media platforms, their posts and comments continue to be propagated and disseminated by foreign administrators (aka admins, who maintain and manage online sites) to spread hateful and politically divisive messages.
In 2018, Facebook released a tool to reveal the countries of origin of Facebook-page admins for pages that have more than 110,000 followers or have purchased ads of a political nature. This tool has not inhibited the creation, rapid growth, and influence of foreign-born Facebook pages. This measure has, however, revealed that known Russian propaganda and similar politically divisive content that targets servicemembers and veterans is being spread by admins from at least 30 foreign countries, with concentrations in Eastern Europe and Vietnam. The tool has also revealed that these pages often have admins in multiple countries, including suspicious combinations of countries with native language barriers and no geographic commonalities: For example, the American-focused Facebook page “Veterans Nation” has spread Russian-generated content and had admins only in Vietnam, Brazil, and Ukraine. A second example is the “Honoring our American Heroes” Facebook page, which has four admins in the US, one in Indonesia, one in Iran, one in Malaysia, one in the Philippines, and one in Vietnam. This cooperation suggests an international conspiracy possibly related to and larger than the previously reported Russian disinformation campaign.