Hours before the consequential election in Buenos Aires City earlier this month, a vote in which libertarian candidate Manuel Adorni came out on top, a controversial video circulated on social media. The clip is now at the centre of a debate regarding freedom of speech under President Javier Milei’s administration.
The video was a classic piece of disinformation aimed at influencing the election, this time in favour of Adorni, the presidential spokesman who was engaged in a bitter campaign battle with Mauricio Macri’s PRO party. Yet it was turbocharged by the capacities of generative artificial intelligence. Such videos are now part of the current political toolkit, thanks to the digital ecosystem that allows the perpetrators to generally remain anonymous as they weaponise information, at least during the immediate aftermath of the publication of the post, increasing its potential harm.
In the aforementioned video, a fake Macri is seen announcing the withdrawal of the candidacy of Silvia Lospennato, the national deputy who was leading PRO’s ticket, and calling for voters to back Adorni in order to defeat Kirchnerism. While a keen observer could have picked up on certain cues and doubted its veracity, social media’s ephemeral nature helped the video circulate and go viral, particularly after Javier Milei reposted and shared it, together with the digital “troll army” run by controversial political strategist Santiago Caputo and his deputy, Daniel Parisini, aka “Gordo Dan” or “Fat Dan.” Macri quickly came out to denounce the video, while many of Milei’s detractors accused it of heresy and predicted a generalised rejection of the libertarians.
That didn’t happen, of course, as Adorni handily overtook Lospennato and even edged out Leandro Santoro, who led the Peronist ticket, to win. Milei later shrugged off the AI video issue, appealing to freedom of expression while adding that “it was clear it was a joke.” He even accused Macri of being too old to understand some of the current cultural forms that proliferate online. The President also highlighted the role of anonymity, noting that it has allowed important authors to publish influential works under pseudonyms.
The Macri deepfake is probably one of the highest-profile cases of digital disinformation during an electoral process in Argentina. The video was originally published by Franco Buoniconto (aka. @therealbuni), an influencer with close ties to Caputo. He also has a personal relationship with Caputo’s brother, Francisco, both of whom Buoniconto has met in the Casa Rosada. It is well known that “Caputito” is the government’s political commissar, in charge of defining and projecting Milei’s ideology and strategy – particularly in the digital realm.
It’s clear that Milei’s team is good at digital communications, which has an outsized impact on public opinion in this day and age. Starting with well-identified opponents, “Caputito’s” digital troll army is highly effective at creating and viralising content that “tames” lefties, members of “the caste,” or anyone who generally isn’t fully aligned with Milei’s ideology. It’s also clear that they’ve taken (at least) a page from the strategy playbook that has been deployed by the “new right” throughout the globe that has proven to be highly effective. While constant antagonism with a series of dislikeable enemies is one of the oldest tricks in the books, it takes on a whole different level when harnessing the power of the digital ecosystem, particularly social media and its attention-sucking algorithms. It’s part of what builds up their synthetic power, as described in previous columns. It’s also interesting to see Milei and his digital pit-bull, “Gordo Dan,” appealing to freedom of expression while relying on manipulative and even false information to get La Libertad Avanza’s message across, while fostering censorship and hate of the traditional media. Freedom of speech for those who express the same kind of things as me, censorship for the rest.
Indeed, part of that can be read in the recently leaked National Intelligence Plan, where the table is laid for internal intelligence gathering – which is illegal – against anyone who doesn’t fall in line with the government’s official editorial line. The head of SIDE spy agency, also known as “Mister 5,” is Sergio Neiffert. He responds politically to “Caputito.”
A recent article, published by investigative journalist Hugo Alconada Mon, on the secret plan states it gives the SIDE spy intelligence services the mandate to put its resources into monitoring potential political dissidents, both foreign and domestic. While the government later tried to deny that journalists, academics, or economists could be the targets of intelligence operations, the report gives SIDE the mandate to investigate “actors” who “distort” the “perception” and “cognitive” processes of public opinion, as Alconada Mon reported. It focuses on the “manipulation” of public opinion through “disinformation” and also points at “actors” that generate “loss of confidence [in the direction of] economic policy.” It also gives the spy agency the mission to investigate “cyber attacks, disinformation operations and financing of political actors.” Alconada Mon was digitally attacked in the immediate aftermath of the publication of the secret report’s contents, with malicious actors attempting to take control of his WhatsApp messaging application account, and his profile on social media application X (formerly Twitter). His name was registered on pornography websites PornHub and XVideos and he later received insults and threats from multiple phone numbers.
Read outside the prism of Argentina’s socio-political ecosystem, dominated by Milei’s libertarians, the general considerations of the report appear reasonable. Maybe even obvious. Yet, when those in charge of executing the mandate of the SIDE intelligence agency are the same ones who are engaging in cyberattacks and disinformation operations, it takes on an ominous tone. The same thing could be said of Milei’s defence of freedom of expression online, something that becomes trivial when the President himself is on a personal crusade against journalism.
His comments cannot be seen as genuine. The exponential nature of digital technology is showing us how quickly AI models can create content that looks absolutely real, meaning that the potential threats of deepfakes will grow to the same degree. And while Milei and his digital troll army haven’t invented anything new, they are the best of their kind in Argentina in this day and age at it and have proven that they have no qualms about utilising disinformation operations and fake news to further their political objectives. Not that those in power in Argentina, and those looking to dispute it, in the past, haven’t done the same things with the tools at their disposal. But it’s a whole different ball game today, with outsiders being able to leverage the digital ecosystem and gain notoriety at very little cost, just like Milei did.
There’s also something to be said about Milei’s relationship with the press, and veracity in general. It is clear that the libertarians have picked out many antagonists to play out their political and communications strategies, among them the press. It’s similar to what Donald Trump is doing in the United States and what Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner did here not too long ago. In all of these cases respect for some of the basic rules of public debate has been completely lost, with the President attacking journalists directly, trying to undermine their credibility. There are a lot of bad journalists out there, but Milei’s mission is to destroy the profession as it is while fostering a sort of disintermediated social media stream as the official and only source of information. It makes sense for him: Milei hates anyone who is critical of him, his sister, his dogs, his government and his ideology. At the same time, he can outmanoeuvre all of his opponents in the digital realm.
While the current state of affairs appears to be permanent, the rate of change has accelerated aggressively in recent years. It is very probable that a new group of political actors will harness the power of the digital toolkit even more effectively than Milei in the near future. Not too long ago, Macri managed to execute a modern political strategy relying on social media to become the electoral option that best matched a part of the electorate’s need for an anti-Kirchnerite front. He was then beaten by none other than Cristina, who accompanied Alberto Fernández on the presidential ticket. Today, Milei has already defeated Mauricio and is going after Cristina. He seems unstoppable but he may be brewing the conditions for an anti-Milei front to grow, much like Jair Bolsonaro did in Brazil.
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