Russia intervenes in US election campaign with fake videos about Harris

Russian government channels are, according to Blinken, “an arm of the Russian intelligence apparatus”

Two weeks ago, the Justice Department indicted two RT employees, accusing them of using shell companies to secretly run a Tennessee-based media outlet that published videos by prominent conservative influencers designed to undermine support for Ukraine. Last week, State Department officials said the campaign was only a small part of RT’s covert information operations.

RT and other Russian government channels, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “are no longer just the fire hoses of Russian propaganda and disinformation. They are engaged in covert influence activities aimed at undermining American elections and democracies and function as a de facto arm of the Russian intelligence apparatus.”

Kremlin rejects accusations of election manipulation

On Tuesday, Microsoft described the activities of six Russian hacktivist groups that claimed to be independent but appeared to be working with the FSB security service, the GRU military intelligence agency or other Russian government agencies.

The Kremlin has denied any involvement in trying to influence the American elections.

Media and officials should “remain vigilant,” says Microsoft

Like the private companies Moscow allegedly serves to spread disinformation without accountability, the hacking groups provide “a method to launder potentially compromising information collected in a hack-and-leak operation while maintaining the veil of “plausible deniability,” Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center wrote. It said officials and media should “be cautious about overstating the threat posed by these groups to the public, but remain vigilant nonetheless.”

Similarly, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI said last week that foreign actors were likely to make false or exaggerated claims of hacks of voter rolls or other election materials to create distrust in the process and results.

Another player in the game: Chinese influence group poses as Trump supporter

Microsoft also said that a Chinese influence group, more interested in dividing and confusing Americans than pushing for a candidate, was much more quick to use social media to share current events and interact with other users, primarily as if the account holders were Trump supporters from the United States.

“Immediately following the attempted assassination of former President Trump.” [in Butler, Pennsylvania] “The accounts began live reposting content from influencers and commentators claiming Democratic involvement, and four to five hours later, published original short-form videos edited from news footage,” Microsoft said.

We are currently testing machine translations. This article has been automatically translated from English into German.

This article first appeared in English on September 17, 2024 on the “Washingtonpost.com” – as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portal.