Russia is stepping up its disinformation campaign amid the US elections.
The Kremlin is using ordinary Americans and commercial PR firms in Russia to spread disinformation about the presidential race among US residents.
Yahoo reports this, citing anonymous US intelligence officials.
The warning comes after a turbulent few weeks in American politics that have forced Russia, Iran and China to rethink some of their propaganda play. What hasn't changed, intelligence officials say, is the determination of these countries to seed the Internet with false and inflammatory claims about American democracy in order to undermine faith in the election.
“The American public needs to be aware that the content they read online — particularly on social media — could be foreign propaganda, even if it purports to come from America's own people or from within the United States,” an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.
Russia continues to pose the biggest threat when it comes to election disinformation, though there are signs that Iran is expanding its efforts and China is treading carefully when it comes to 2024.
Kremlin-linked groups are increasingly hiring marketing and communications companies based in Russia to outsource some of the work of creating digital propaganda, as well as to replace their tracks.
Two such firms were hit by new U.S. sanctions announced in March. Authorities say the two Russian companies created fake websites and social media profiles to spread Kremlin disinformation. It could focus on candidates or voting, or on issues that are already the subject of debate in the U.S., such as immigration, crime, or the war in Gaza.
But the end goal is to get Americans to share Russian disinformation without questioning its origin. People are far more likely to trust and share information they believe is coming from a domestic source, officials say. Fake websites designed to mimic U.S. news outlets and social media profiles generated by artificial intelligence are just two methods.
In some cases, Americans and U.S. tech companies and media outlets are eager to amplify and repeat the Kremlin’s messaging.
Senator Mark Warner, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last month that he was concerned the U.S. could be more vulnerable to foreign disinformation this year than it was before the 2020 election. On Monday, he said the intelligence officials’ warning showed that the U.S. election was “being targeted by bad actors around the world.”
“It also troublingly underscores the extent to which foreign actors — and especially Russia — rely on Americans, both conscious and unconscious, to advance pro-Russian narratives in the United States,” Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said in a statement.
One indicator of the threat is that officials who track foreign disinformation say they have issued twice as many warnings to political candidates, government leaders, election officials and others targeted by foreign groups during the 2024 election cycle as they did in the 2022 election cycle.
To recap, Russian propagandists write that the West, with the aim of killing Ukrainian President Zelensky, twice transmitted his location coordinates to Russia, since he no longer satisfies Western governments.
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