https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/technology/election-interference-russia-china-iran.htmlWhen Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, spreading divisive and inflammatory posts online to stoke outrage, its posts were brash and riddled with spelling errors and strange syntax. They were designed to get attention by any means necessary.“Hillary is a Satan,” one Russian-made Facebook post read.Now, eight years later, foreign interference in American elections has become far more sophisticated, and far more difficult to track.Disinformation from abroad — particularly from Russia, China and Iran — has matured into a consistent and pernicious threat, as the countries test, iterate and deploy increasingly nuanced tactics, according to U.S. intelligence and defense officials, tech companies and academic researchers. The ability to sway even a small pocket of Americans could have outsize consequences for the presidential election, which polls generally consider a neck-and-neck race.Russia, according to American intelligence assessments, aims to bolster the candidacy of former President Donald J. Trump, while Iran favors his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. China appears to have no preferred outcome.
But the broad goal of these efforts has not changed: to sow discord and chaos in hopes of discrediting American democracy in the eyes of the world. The campaigns, though, have evolved, adapting to a changing media landscape and the proliferation of new tools that make it easy to fool credulous audiences.Here are the ways that foreign disinformation has evolved:Now, disinformation is basically everywhere.Russia was the primary architect of American election-related disinformation in 2016, and its posts ran largely on Facebook.Now, Iran and China are engaging in similar efforts to influence American politics, and all three are scattering their efforts across dozens of platforms, from small forums where Americans chat about local weather to messaging groups united by shared interests. The countries are taking cues from one another, although there is debate over whether they have directly cooperated on strategies.There are hordes of Russian accounts on Telegram seeding divisive, sometimes vitriolic videos, memes and articles about the presidential election. There are at least hundreds more from China that mimicked students to inflame the tensions on American campuses this summer over the war in Gaza. Both countries also have accounts on Gab, a less prominent social media platform favored by the far right, where they have worked to promote conspiracy theories.Russian operatives have also tried to support Mr. Trump on Reddit and forum boards favored by the far right, targeting voters in six swing states along with Hispanic Americans, video gamers and others identified by Russia as potential Trump sympathizers, according to internal documents disclosed in September by the Department of Justice.One campaign linked to China’s state influence operation, known as Spamouflage, operated accounts using a name, Harlan, to create the impression that the source of the conservative-leaning content was an American, on four platforms: YouTube, X, Instagram and TikTok.
The content is far more targeted.The new disinformation being peddled by foreign nations aims not just at swing states, but also at specific districts within them, and at particular ethnic and religious groups within those districts. The more targeted the disinformation is, the more likely it is to take hold, according to researchers and academics who have studied the new influence campaigns.“When disinformation is custom-built for a specific audience by preying on their interests or opinions, it becomes more effective,” said Melanie Smith, the research director for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research organization based in London. “In previous elections, we were trying to determine what the big false narrative was going to be. This time, it is subtle polarized messaging that strokes the tension.”Iran in particular has spent its resources setting up covert disinformation efforts to draw in niche groups. A website titled “Not Our War,” which aimed to draw in American military veterans, interspersed articles about the lack of support for active-duty soldiers with virulently anti-American views and conspiracy theories.Other sites included “Afro Majority,” which created content aimed at Black Americans, and “Savannah Time,” which sought to sway conservative voters in the swing state of Georgia. In Michigan, another swing state, Iran created an online outlet called “Westland Sun” to cater to Arab Americans in suburban Detroit.“That Iran would target Arab and Muslim populations in Michigan shows that Iran has a nuanced understanding of the political situation in America and is deftly maneuvering to appeal to a key demographic to influence the election in a targeted fashion,” said Max Lesser, a senior analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
China and Russia have followed a similar pattern. On X this year, Chinese state media spread false narratives in Spanish about the Supreme Court, which Spanish-speaking users on Facebook and YouTube then circulated further, according to Logically, an organization that monitors disinformation online.Experts on Chinese disinformation said that inauthentic social media accounts linked to Beijing had become more convincing and engaging and that they now included first-person references to being an American or a military veteran. In recent weeks, according to a report from Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, inauthentic accounts linked to China’s Spamouflage targeted House and Senate Republicans seeking re-election in Alabama, Tennessee and Texas.Artificial intelligence is propelling this evolution.Recent advances in artificial intelligence have boosted disinformation capabilities beyond what was possible in previous elections, allowing state agents to create and distribute their campaigns with more finesse and efficiency.OpenAI, whose ChatGPT tool popularized the technology, reported this month that it had disrupted more than 20 foreign operations that had used the company’s products between June and September. They included efforts by Russia, China, Iran and other countries to create and fill websites and to spread propaganda or disinformation on social media — and even to analyze and reply to specific posts. (The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft last year for copyright infringement of news content; both companies have denied the claims.)“A.I. capabilities are being used to exacerbate the threats that we expected and the threats that we’re seeing,” Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said in an interview. “They’re essentially lowering the bar for a foreign actor to conduct more sophisticated influence campaigns.”
The utility of commercially available A.I. tools can be seen in the efforts of John Mark Dougan, a former deputy sheriff in Florida who now lives in Russia after fleeing criminal charges in the United States.Working from an apartment in Moscow, he has created scores of websites posing as American news outlets and used them to publish disinformation, effectively doing by himself the work that, eight years ago, would have involved an army of bots. Mr. Dougan’s sites have circulated several disparaging claims about Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, according to NewsGuard, a company that has tracked them in detail.China, too, has deployed an increasingly advanced tool kit that includes A.I.-manipulated audio files, damaging memes and fabricated voter polls in campaigns around the world. This year, a deepfake video of a Republican congressman from Virginia circulated on TikTok, accompanied by a Chinese caption falsely claiming that the politician was soliciting votes for a critic of Beijing who sought (and later won) the Taiwanese presidency.It’s becoming much harder to identify disinformation.All three countries are also becoming better at covering their tracks.Last month, Russia was caught obscuring its attempts to influence Americans by secretly backing a group of conservative American commentators employed through Tenet Media, a digital platform created in Tennessee in 2023.The company served as a seemingly legitimate facade for publishing scores of videos with pointed political commentary as well as conspiracy theories about election fraud, Covid-19, immigrants and Russia’s war with Ukraine. Even the influencers who were covertly paid for their appearances on Tenet said they did not know the money came from Russia.
In an echo of Russia’s scheme, Chinese operatives have been cultivating a network of foreign influencers to help spread its narratives, creating a group described as “foreign mouths,” “foreign pens” and “foreign brains,” according to a report last fall by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.The new tactics have made it harder for government agencies and tech companies to find and remove the influence campaigns — all while emboldening other hostile states, said Graham Brookie, the senior director at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.“Where there is more malign foreign influence activity, it creates more surface area, more permission for other bad actors to jump into that space,” he said. “If all of them are doing it, then the cost for exposure is not as high.”Technology companies aren’t doing as much to stop disinformation.The foreign disinformation has exploded as tech giants have all but given up their efforts to combat disinformation. The largest companies, including Meta, Google, OpenAI and Microsoft, have scaled back their attempts to label and remove disinformation since the last presidential elections. Others have no teams in place at all.The lack of cohesive policy among the tech companies has made it impossible to form a united front against foreign disinformation, security officials and executives at tech companies said.“These alternative platforms don’t have the same degree of content moderation and robust trust and safety practices that would potentially mitigate these campaigns,” said Mr. Lesser of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
He added that even larger platforms such as X, Facebook and Instagram were trapped in an eternal game of Whac-a-Mole as foreign state operatives quickly rebuilt influence campaigns that had been removed. Alethea, a company that tracks online threats, recently discovered that an Iranian disinformation campaign that used accounts named after hoopoes, the colorful bird, recently resurfaced on X despite having been banned twice before.___
HOW DARE THEY!!1. THEY OTTA APOLOGIZE.
>>1357176Wow it sure is weird how all of our geopolitical enemies keep interfering in our elections
>>1357201>geopolitical enemiesWhat are you talking about? American stores are overflowing with products from China.
>>1357207>What are you talking about? American stores are overflowing with products from China.So China can't be our geopolitical adversary if they also sell cheap goods here? How do these two goals contradict each other? I don't understand how that logically follows, anon.
>>1357226>So China can't be our geopolitical adversary if they also sell cheap goods here?Correct.> How do these two goals contradict each other? Enemies generally don't bolster one another's economies. Enemies usually try to blockade trade networks and don't give most favored nation trading status to one another.
>>1357207Stupid post, chang
>>1357207Google "mercantilism" and then get a job and stop smoking fentanyl, loser
>>1357286No not anybody, most favored nation trading partners.>>1357291Fuck off Ivan>>1357294Go back to the 1700s.
>>1357248https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_economic_relations_(1934%E2%80%931941)Nazi Germany was economically dependent on russia despite constant rhetoric about the evils of bolshevism. China is no different
>>1357176there is nothing inflammatory that "muh russians" can say about either side that the other side doesn't already believe and isn't already saying. only one side seems to be using this russian excuse as a cope against the organic popularity of their opposition, though. I wonder why that is?
>>1357324>Nazi Germany was economically dependent on russiaGee it's almost like they were allies before they were enemies.
>>1357329If someone says your government is the root of all evil and must be eradicated, they're not your ally
>>1357326Is that what Ribbentrop said as he signed the non-agression pact with Russia?
>>1357335>>1357330
>>1357294Where does the chud fentanyl meme come from?
>>1357349Living on the west coast. And it's no laughing matter. Shits fent zombie town over here.
>>1357357As opposed to the hillbilly heroin epidemic in the heartland, amiright?
>>1357370you would know I guess
>>1357374I gotta agree with this: >>1357364First of all, pretty sure the meme is "hillbillys do meth", so make sure to update your handbook, Chang.Second of all, yeah. The west coast has a *massive* population of homeless drug addicts, at least these "hillbillys" manage their addictions such that they can keep a roof over their heads, it's so out of control on the west coast they can't even manage that
>>1357378>weird chud headcanonYou should write headlines for the NYPost.
>>1357387Lmao. You are obviously not american if you don't realize there is an epidemic of homeless drug addicts living on the west coast
>>1357397Source?>inb4 dailymail
>>1357397It sounds like something someone who doesn't live there would say.
>>1357467The worst part is I do live there and it's horrible every time I want to go grab a beer for happy hour needing to walk by the sea of homeless drug addicts smoking crack and fentanyl on 3rd >>1357413How about you just try a Google search you retard
>>1357413The homelessness issue in the west coast is common knowledge for any American, foreign shillposter.California alone has 1/3 of our countries homelessness. Just be glad you don't have Democrats in your country, they have the uncanny ability to raise taxes for services that end up making worse the problems they are supposed to address. Probably because of all the democrat fraud.
>>1357535it's a common talking point for shills such as yourself
>>1357537Yes, reality is it talking point amongst people who disagree with Democrats
>>1357539you sure don't have any original sentiments
>>1357540I seriously wonder if it's a bot
>>1357568Samefag? Samefag.
>>1357584>chronic samefag accuses others of being a samefagHow many layers of irony?
>>1357176>China appears to have no preferred outcomeTrump it is for China, he will make the US weak, cut down Nato and helps buddy Russia.
>>1357535Quite normal for a thriving economy that housing prices go up very much, unable failed dwellers missed to move to cheap failed red states in time where they belong.
>>1357673It doesn't benefit the CHUD narrative to acknowledge that California generates more economic output than almost all the red states combined. They don't seem to have a problem cashing their unemployment checks that California pays for.
>>1357673Esl
>>1357674>More population is more gdp>Line go up means good Lmao. Also the second and fourth biggest economies in the Union are Texas and Florida. Next cope?
>>1357674>taking pride in pedowoodchild rape is the pride of the left
>Gang Of Pedoschild rape is the pride of the right
>>1357176>one Russian-made Facebook post read.one!what about the other countries? are they influencing too? Are they influencing more or less?
>>1357701read the story, genius
