Politico Pro: A post-mortem on the World Cup

The information space: Blackbird.AI, which analyzes online conversations to track disinformation, saw a spike in malicious messaging online as compared to past World Cup tournaments.

Roberta Duffield, vice president of intelligence at Blackbird.AI, said that they tracked narratives spread by Russian operations on issues including amplifying criticism of the U.S. for having Egypt and Iran play in Seattle during the city’s Pride Week festival in June.

The company also tracked efforts by other foreign-backed groups to spread narratives about President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn a red card against American player Folarin Balogun, along with amplifying claims that the game was rigged in favor of Argentina.

“The 2026 World Cup is a big sea change in what we’ve witnessed,” Duffield said. “Really professionalized networks have now got to the point that they’ve fine-tuned their playbooks to how they pushed out that messaging. I was genuinely shocked at what I was seeing.”

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