Digital Coups: Inside the Global Disinformation Industry

In the final stretch of a high-stakes election, a viral video emerges depicting a candidate involved in a devastating scandal. Outrage spreads within minutes, shifting public opinion. But the footage is fake—AI-generated, bot-amplified, and deliberately timed for maximum political damage. This is the new face of regime change: coups executed through disinformation rather than physical force. 

While the internet has long influenced campaigns, today’s manipulation is industrialised. Private firms funded by governments and political parties now offer hacking and propaganda-for-hire services, making regime change a business model. As digital deception becomes normalised, democratic processes lose their integrity — and ultimately, their legitimacy. The result is a political playing field where truth is optional and perception is everything. This isn’t just election interference—it’s a dismantling of democracy itself.

Industrialised Deception

Digital disinformation has become a powerful political weapon, with manipulation efforts now operating on an industrial scale. According to the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), over 80 countries have employed organised disinformation tactics—often using bots, fake accounts, and coordinated campaigns—to shape political outcomes. But as Professor Philip Howard notes, misinformation is increasingly “professionalised”—it’s a business model for private firms who shirk moral considerations, enticed by the growing profitability of digital sabotage. 

The OII team says that governments and political parties are spending millions on private sector “cyber troops” who drown out other voices on social media. Dr. Samantha Bradshaw, the report’s lead author, says that these bad actors are “polluting the digital information ecosystem and suppressing freedom of speech and freedom of the press”. 

One of the most effective—and sinister—groups to make a business of digital disinformation is the shadowy Israeli-based group known as “Team Jorge.” According to a Haaretz investigation, the group’s leader boasts of interfering in 33 presidential-level elections, mostly in Africa, claiming success in 27 of them. The group also claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on the 2014 Catalan independence referendum and a widescale hack of Nigerian opposition leaders’ phones, working in conjunction with the notorious British firm Cambridge Analytica.

Team Jorge offers a suite of services including hacking, social media manipulation, and disinformation-for-hire operations tailored to political clients. In 2022 Jorge gave potential clients a live demonstration of hacked Gmail and Telegram conversations of cabinet ministers in Kenya and Mozambique. Their toolkit includes sophisticated software like Advanced Impact Media Solutions (AIMS), capable of controlling over 30,000 fake social media profiles. These profiles, complete with fabricated digital footprints such as Amazon and Airbnb accounts, are indistinguishable from real users’ accounts. 

Team Jorge is far from alone in their business model. The infamous Internet Research Agency was exposed for employing fake accounts registered on major social media sites and discussion boards to promote the Kremlin’s interest. Likewise, The Archimedes Group, another Israeli-based outfit was banned from Facebook in 2019 for a cohort of fake accounts aimed at influencing political discourse in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. They proudly boasted to their clients that they could “change reality.”And attempted digital coups aren’t just limited to the developing world. According to a Canadian Centre for Cyber Security report, the share of global elections targeted by cyberattacks rose from 10% in 2015 to 26% in 2022, with 25% to 35% of the affected countries being NATO members. The U.S. in particular has been a frequent target. In 2024, Russia-linked group Storm-1516 spread fake videos, including clips falsely depicting Ukrainian soldiers burning a Trump effigy and Kamala Harris supporters attacking opponents. These staged videos garnered millions of views, highlighting the destabilising potential of large-scale disinformation in democratic elections.

Geopolitical Consequences at the Click of a Button

When manufactured consensus via disinformation campaigns becomes indistinguishable from authentic public will, democratic processes are compromised. As disinformation operations shape voter perception and behaviour, citizens are making choices not informed by reality but manipulated illusions—undermining the very idea of informed consent. In such an environment, elections may still occur, but they become little more than performative rituals stripped of genuine choice. Democracies are no longer the “will of the people” but the whims of the highest bidder.

The consequences of online saboteurs and the political actors who fund them are profound and limitless — the only restraints are the imaginations of their Machiavellian clients. As private firms and foreign actors manipulate narratives with industrial precision, democracies are vulnerable to coups without the need of bullets at all. And anyone with an internet connection is a potential Manchurian candidate — an unwitting cyber soldier in the war of information. With a single click, you too can become a foreign insurgent and rattle the pillars of democracy.

Statement

Democracy is under attack—not by armies, but by algorithms. Shadowy firms are turning election interference into a global business, selling AI-generated fakes, hacked data, and bot-driven propaganda to the highest bidder. Using tools like AIMS to control tens of thousands of fake social media accounts, groups like “Team Jorge” are manipulating elections from the shadows. From hacked communications in Kenya to deepfake videos targeting U.S. candidates, disinformation is now a weapon of choice in global power struggles.In this is the era of industrialised disinformation, democracy is fragile and power is just a click away.