In late August 2023, Ilya Gambashidze was in a conference room at the office of Social Design Agency, a Russian IT company he founded that is based in Moscow, close to the world-renowned Moscow Conservatory. Gambashidze was relatively unknown in Russian politics at the time, but just a month earlier his name had appeared on a Council of the European Union's list of Russian nationals subjected to sanctions for playing a central role in a sprawling disinformation campaign against Ukraine. In the conference room, Gambashidze was laying out his plans for a new target: along with his colleagues, he began drafting what would become known as the "Good Old USA Project." The project was supposed to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in favor of former president Donald Trump, specifically targeting certain minorities, swing state residents, and online gamers, among others, in a scheme that included a full time team dedicated to the cause. On Wednesday, Gambashidze and his company were named by the Department of Justice among the architects of a disinformation campaign known as Doppelganger that has for the last two years been targeting Ukraine, and more recently, the US elections.