Russia-linked disinformation campaigns have falsely claimed officials in US swing states are planning to rig the results of the presidential election, US security agencies say in a new joint statement.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said they have been observing additional influence operations “intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of US elections and stoke divisions among Americans.”
“Russia is the most active threat. Influence actors linked to Russia in particular are manufacturing videos and creating fake articles to undermine the legitimacy of the election, instill fear in voters regarding the election process, and suggest Americans are using violence against each other due to political preferences,” reads the joint statement.
Amplifying claims of election rigging
According to the security agencies, Russian influence actors claimed in a fake article that election officials across swing states plan to “orchestrate election fraud” such as ballot stuffing and cyberattacks. In fact, the voting machines aren’t even connected to the internet.
Russian influence actors also manufactured and amplified a recent video that falsely depicted an interview with an individual claiming election fraud in Arizona, which involved creating fake overseas ballots and changing voter rolls to favor Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has already refuted the video’s claim as “completely false, fake, and fraudulent.”
The video was posted on X by a group called the Foundation to Battle Injustice which was, according to US and European intelligence sources, actually founded by the late Russian oligarch and Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Finally, the Russian woman in the video who claims to be a journalist has in fact served more than two years in an American prison on money laundering charges. At least there’s a bottle of Taco Bell sauce on the table.
Just two days before Election Day, the Russia-based Foundation to Battle Injustice published undefinedevidenceundefined of alleged plans to conduct voter fraud in Arizona. The video is absolutely inauthentic, particularly the AI-generated voiceover to the undefinedanonymousundefined witness.
undefined Brian Liston (@brianjliston) November 3, 2024
I'll give one… pic.twitter.com/8Qnoa5eZ2c
US intelligence officials said it was highly likely that these disinformation operations would continue in the coming weeks after election day to stoke political discord until the election is certified in late January.
This week, Antibot4Navalny, a disinformation research group, also told Politico they have studied two major disinformation campaigns backed by Russia and targeting the US presidential election.
One campaign, Matryoshka, spread fake news about the FBI arresting groups of people committing ballot fraud. Another one, called Doppelganger, has been operating for years and is now trying to undermine Vice President Harris.
Fears overblown?
However, some experts have for quite some time been asking whether the fears about election disinformation aren’t overblown – mostly because research shows that these campaigns are largely ineffective.
For instance, mainstream media outlets devoted a lot of their resources to reporting on the Doppelganger campaign that had created a network of fake websites posing as real ones to push information favorable to the Kremlin.
US intelligence officials said it was highly likely that these disinformation operations would continue in the coming weeks after election day to stoke political discord until the election is certified in late January.
But Thomas Rid, an expert in information warfare who saw leaked campaign documents, wrote: “The biggest boost the campaigners got was from the West’s own anxious coverage of the project. <...> Far more people likely read the secondary coverage of the exposed forgery campaigns than ever viewed the primary disinformation.”
Besides, despite the flood of menacing warnings that foreign adversaries are meddling in American democracy in allegedly devastating ways, Jen Easterly, the director of CISA, seems unwilling to overplay the threat.
“Malicious actors, even if they tried, could not have an impact at scale such that there would be a material effect on the outcome of the election,” Easterly told AP in early October.
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