Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow report on a plot to influence American elections that started with one small-town race. :
Psy-Group offered its avatars for influence campaigns, boasting that they could plant the seeds of thought in people. One evening in 2016, a twenty-five-year-old community-college student named Alex Gutiérrez was waiting tables at La Piazza Ristorante Italiano, an upscale restaurant in Tulare, in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Gutiérrez spotted Yorai Benzeevi, a physician who ran the local hospital, sitting at a table with Parmod Kumar, a member of the hospital board.