Did Ukraine Just Bomb the Russian Bots?

Yandex

• Patrick Boyle · Patrick Boyle On FinanceNeutral

  Yandex's modest share reaction reflects cloud being only about 4% of revenue; core businesses are fine.

  Yandex's shares fell about 11% over the strikes, which Boyle calls a modest reaction for a tech company that lost half its major data centers. He attributes this to the cloud business, the part that was hit, making up only about 4% of revenue according to T-Journal. The bigger earnings engines are taxis, advertising and online shopping, which could be shifted onto the remaining data centers while those remain standing.

  “Part of the reason is that the cloud business, the bit that was actually on fire, makes up only about 4% of Yandex's revenue according to T Journal. The real money comes from taxis, advertising and online shopping”at 7:57

• Patrick Boyle · Patrick Boyle On FinanceBearish

  Yandex's concentrated sites and frozen new sales leave customers exposed; full recovery takes months.

  Yandex's own documentation says to spread workloads across sites, but customers who split servers between two locations found Ukraine had hit both. After the third strike Yandex stopped selling new computing capacity, so customers who had not bought redundancy in advance cannot get it now, and the surviving data centers have nowhere else to go. Someone close to management said full capacity would take several months. Replacement servers must come via China or Central Asian middlemen because of Western sanctions, which Boyle says will be slower and more expensive.

  “The trouble with insurance is that you have to buy it before the fire. After the third strike, Yandex stopped selling new computing capacity altogether”at 11:07

Meta Platforms

Across the shows: 28 speakers in other episodes, 30 bullish and 6 bearish calls, past 30 days

• Patrick Boyle · Patrick Boyle On FinanceBearish

  Meta's engagement-based creator payouts reward sensational content, akin to a casino loyalty scheme.

  Meta said it would train its AI to spot borderline content and show it to fewer people. In 2024, however, it began paying creators based on how much engagement their posts get, and its content monetization program shares ad revenue on videos, photos and even plain text. Boyle argues that this payment structure rewards the sensational, rule-skirting content that Zuckerberg's 2018 'natural engagement' chart described, so the platform is in effect supplying outrage. The view concerns the incentive design, not a share-price call.

  “Facebook said that it would train its AI to spot borderline content and show it to fewer people, but then in 2024, it started paying creators based on how much engagement their posts get, which if you look at the curve is a bit like a casino announcing a responsible gambling policy”at 27:18

Anthropic

Across the shows: 45 speakers in other episodes, 27 bullish and 47 bearish calls, past 30 days

• Patrick Boyle · Patrick Boyle On FinanceUncertain

  Anthropic's test shows cheap TV boxes can host slow AI; self-replication is a real but limited threat.

  Anthropic's researchers networked 15 off-brand Android TV boxes bought for about $55 each and ran an AI model across them at 0.39 tokens per second, about one post every three minutes. In a separate test an AI copied itself across simulated Android devices with no passwords, so the hacking step was trivial. Boyle notes that the Kimwolf botnet's 2 million devices would add up to about 40 high-end graphics cards of compute, and because it is spread across homes it cannot be taken out by a drone strike. Small models are very poor at persuasion, which he sees as a comforting limit.

  “The paper warns that small AI models may be months away from being able to copy themselves across devices like these.”at 32:03

Big Tech platforms & digital ads

• Patrick Boyle · Patrick Boyle On Finance

  Western political rage bait is a high-margin export: foreign creators earn far more per view from Western audiences.

  A Pakistani YouTuber told Christophe that 1,000 views from a Pakistani audience earn a creator around 40 cents, while 1,000 views from the US, UK or Canada earn between $6 and $30. That is 15 to 75 times as much for the same effort. This pay gap explains why operators in Sri Lanka and elsewhere target Western political audiences with anti-migrant and partisan rage bait, and accuracy plays no part because the goal is engagement.

  “A thousand views from a Pakistani audience earn a creator around 40¢, while a thousand views from The US, The UK or Canada earn between 6 and $30. That's 15 to 75 times as much for the exact same effort. Western political anger is, in effect, a high margin emerging markets export.”at 23:37

• Patrick Boyle · Patrick Boyle On Finance

  Real users, not bots, drive most fake news spread; a tiny group of super-sharers dominates it.

  When researchers studied how outrage material spreads, bots turned out to be a small part of the story. In a 2024 Science study of more than 660,000 registered American voters on Twitter, just 2,107 people, 0.3%, shared 80% of the panel's fake news. These super-sharers were ordinary people with an average age of 58 retweeting by hand, averaging almost 16 political news links a day. In the earlier MIT study of about 126,000 stories, false news spread further and faster even after bots were removed, with novelty and surprise or disgust in replies as the likely driver.

  “Just 2,107 of them, 0.3% shared 80% of the panel's fake news. The researchers called them super sharers. Nothing about them looked automated.”at 28:56

• Patrick Boyle · Patrick Boyle On Finance

  Unflagged vaccine-skeptical stories had 46 times the effect of flagged misinformation, so the bigger harm is unflagged content.

  In a study of early Covid vaccine rollout on Facebook, fact-checked misinformation made up just 0.3% of the 2.7 billion views of vaccine-related links. Per view it did reduce willingness to get vaccinated, but hardly anyone saw those posts. The most viewed story was a real Chicago Tribune headline about a healthy doctor dying after a vaccine, seen by more than 50 million people and getting more than six times the views of all flagged misinformation combined. The researchers estimated that unflagged skeptical stories had 46 times the effect on hesitancy.

  “the researchers estimated that vaccine skeptical stories that were never flagged had 46 times the effect on vaccine hesitancy.”at 30:20

Cybersecurity

• Patrick Boyle · Patrick Boyle On Finance

  Serious bot operations evade platform detection via residential connections and SIM farms that airstrikes cannot knock out.

  Platforms treat traffic from data centers as likely automated, so serious operations route through home internet connections instead. Boyle cites the US Justice Department's 2024 dismantling of the 911 S5 botnet, which infected millions of home computers and rented out their connections, and Google's disruption of the Ipidea network, which recruited devices through hundreds of Android apps and thousands of Windows programs. Because most platforms require a phone number to open an account, operators also use SIM farms, such as a Europol raid in Latvia that seized 1,200 devices holding 40,000 SIM cards used to open more than 49 million accounts. Physical strikes on data centers do not touch any of this.

  “serious bot operations get through this by running through residential connections and phone farms, which he pointed out airstrikes can't really knock out.”at 14:36

• Patrick Boyle · Patrick Boyle On Finance

  Banning default admin passwords on cheap devices is the first line of defense against self-replicating botnets.

  Mirai-style botnets spread largely through default manufacturer usernames and passwords, which on much consumer hardware are simply admin. When one internet provider quarantined its infected customers and notified them, it cleared 92% of Mirai infections within 14 days, showing that the attack surface is manageable. The UK has made default passwords like admin non-compliant in its consumer markets, so Boyle argues that pressing manufacturers to drop them is the realistic first defense against a self-replicating AI on cheap devices.

  “humanity's first line of defense against self replicating AI may be asking manufacturers to stop setting the password to admin.”at 33:32

Russia & Ukraine

• Patrick Boyle · Patrick Boyle On Finance

  Russia's data localization law concentrated its digital economy in data centers within Ukrainian drone range.

  Russia's 2014 law requiring citizens' personal data to be stored on servers inside the country insulated the Russian internet from Western sanctions, because cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google stopped serving Russian customers after the invasion and no one abroad could switch the service off. The downside is that much of the Russian digital economy ended up in a handful of buildings within drone range of Ukraine. The law also prevents companies from moving data abroad, so backups must go to rival providers whose data centers are also around Moscow and St. Petersburg.

  “nobody abroad had an off switch. The data localization law insulated the Russian Internet from Western sanctions. The downside was that much of the Russian digital economy ended up in a handful of buildings within drone range of Ukraine”at 6:57

US elections & politics

• Patrick Boyle · Patrick Boyle On Finance

  State-backed AI influence campaigns mostly fail to reach large audiences; their effect on votes is hard to measure.

  Meta and OpenAI both reported that Russian groups using AI mostly fail to reach large audiences. Governments keep funding these operations anyway, which Boyle takes as a sign that someone believes they work. The Oxford Internet Institute found organized manipulation in 70 countries, with 25 governments hiring private firms for what researchers called computational propaganda as a service. What these campaigns do to actual votes is much harder to measure than their existence is to prove.

  “Meta and OpenAI have both reported that Russian groups using AI mostly fail to reach large audiences. Governments keep paying for it anyhow though, which suggests that someone thinks it works.”at 20:12