This New York Times Opinion documentary, Operation InfeKtion, traces how Russia perfected the art of disinformation, starting with a Soviet campaign in the 1980s that falsely claimed AIDS had been created by the United States as a biological weapon. The film follows the story of that lie, from its origins in KGB disinformation operations, through its spread in newspapers and sympathetic outlets around the world, to the real harm it caused by undermining trust in science and public health.
The programme explains the methods behind the campaign: the planting of forged documents, the use of front organisations and friendly journalists, and the exploitation of genuine fears and uncertainties about a new and frightening disease. It shows how the Soviet operation, known as Operation Infektion, became a template for later Russian influence campaigns, including the online disinformation that targeted elections and public debate in the United States and Europe in the 2010s.
For readers interested in socialism’s history and present, the film is a vital study of propaganda as a tool of state power. It connects the Soviet Union’s Cold War information warfare with the disinformation of Putin’s Russia, and asks how democracies can defend truth in an age of social media. The video below presents the full documentary.