The Second Service of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the unit tasked with protecting the constitutional order and fighting terrorism, commissioned an AI-powered system to monitor media and social media, but the project failed, according to investigative outlet Important Stories (Vazhnye Istorii), which reviewed documents from the company Mikord that were leaked online after a hack.
The system, called the "Content Analytics and Management Portal," or PAUK (the Russian acronym for "spider"), was being developed by the Kazan-based company Mikord, which was simultaneously working on a unified military registration database for the Defense Ministry. The formal customer was the FSB's Center for Information Protection and Special Communications, but journalists determined that the end user was to be the Second Service itself.
PAUK was designed as a web crawler that would automatically collect news from specified sources. FSB situation center staff were supposed to review publications, rate them, add comments, and compile summaries for management. The system was intended to include an AI assistant for searching information not only in the media but also in the intelligence agency's internal databases.
For testing, developers were given real Second Service summaries covering a year and a half — from January 2024 to June 2025 — containing nearly 5,000 news items. It emerged that one of the main sources of information for the "Dvoyka" (the Second Service's nickname) was independent media, which accounted for more than 10% of the publications. The outlets most frequently cited were Activatica, RusNews, and Govorit NeMoskva.
The largest categories in the summaries were sabotage and terrorism inside Russia, as well as terrorist attacks abroad, foreign policy, and protests — over construction, housing and utility issues, and unpaid wages. The FSB also tracked 138 publications about environmental protection and 48 about political prisoners.
The first phase of PAUK's development was supposed to be completed by fall 2025, but work was halted after a year and a half. Sources in the IT community told Important Stories that Mikord likely lacked the experience and skills to see the project through.