In his account, the absurdity is not incidental but functional: content that unsettles rather than persuades is used to erode a stable sense of the world.
A senior official of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service has warned that international terrorist organisations are targeting young people through the vocabulary, memes, video content and computer games familiar to Generation Z, and that the spread of AI-generated tools has produced a multifold increase in detected cases of adolescent radicalisation. The remarks were made by Mikhail Maksimovich, deputy director of the SVR, at the first Shanghai Cooperation Organization Plus Expert Dialogue on Security in Samarkand, according to TASS.
Maksimovich described the deliberate production of chaotic or even absurd online content as the principal method for shaping a nihilistic outlook among young people and teenagers. In his account, the absurdity is not incidental but functional: content that unsettles rather than persuades is used to erode a stable sense of the world, leaving younger audiences more receptive to later influence. Officials quoted by TASS did not elaborate on the mechanics of that process.
The venue matters as much as the message. The SCO Plus format brings together member states and outside partners in a security dialogue that Moscow has increasingly used to frame shared threats, and the choice of a Central Asian city for the first such expert meeting signals an effort to anchor the conversation in the wider region rather than in Europe. Casting radicalisation as a cross-border digital problem gives participating states a common agenda that does not depend on the disputes that divide them elsewhere.
The claim also fits a broader pattern in Russian official commentary, in which AI-generated content is presented as a destabilising force requiring collective regulation. That framing carries an implicit argument for coordination among SCO states on content governance and platform oversight, areas where national approaches diverge sharply. Whether the Samarkand discussion produces any concrete mechanism is not indicated in the report.
Several things are not yet known. The SVR has not published the data behind the stated multifold increase, so the scale, geography and time frame of the phenomenon cannot be independently assessed. Nor is it clear which organisations are said to be responsible, what content has been identified, or how detection was carried out. The link between absurd or nihilistic material and subsequent radicalisation is asserted rather than demonstrated. Without that detail, the remarks are best read as an official assessment of a perceived threat and as a signal of Moscow's preferred framing, rather than as a verified account of a measurable trend.
The underlying concern is not confined to Russia. Governments in many capitals are grappling with how generative tools lower the cost of producing persuasive material at scale, and with the difficulty of distinguishing harmful content from the merely strange. What the Samarkand statement adds is a claim about intent and coordination behind that content, and a push to treat it as a security matter for a bloc that extends well beyond Moscow's immediate neighbourhood. The evidence for that claim has yet to be shown.
