Russia has mounted huge social media operation to manipulate the public and influence the outcome of the US presidential election in favor of Trump, say spies
- US officials say the Russian operation is not as big as that seen in 2016
- Operatives are sowing seeds of discontent online and influencing politicians
- READ MORE: Joe Biden's brutal four-month campaign schedule revealed
Russian intelligence services have once again set their eyes on the US election in an attempt to install ex President Donald Trump in the White House, a new report alleges.
Several US officials with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in Washington confirmed the existence of the Russian plan when speaking to The Wall Street Journal.
'We haven't observed a shift in Russia's preferences for the presidential race from past elections,' a senior official is quoted as saying. Various security agencies have previously confirmed that similar Kremlin attacks on US democracy favored Trump.
The report also mentions a smaller Iranian influence intended to drive discontent, encouraging people in the US to protest Israel's war in Gaza, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence said this week.
By contract, the WSJ report says that China will not be involved in any sabotage as Beijing views both US President Joe Biden and Trump as being hostile. That decree goes as far as preventing government officials from even mentioning a preference in the election.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has confirmed that her office is also tracking an Iranian election sabotage operation
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long claimed that his security services do not interfere in foreign elections
Once again, Russian operatives are attempting to install Donald Trump in the White House
In addition to its online operations, the report alleges that agents are attempting to influence members of Congress but the scale of the operation is smaller than the one seen in 2016, which aided Trump's ascendancy.
Iran's operation meanwhile is more that of a 'chaos agent,' Haines said.
'Americans who participate in protests are, in good faith, expressing their views on the conflict in Gaza—this intelligence doesn’t indicate otherwise.'
Haines added that many protesters may not know that they are conversing with agents from a foreign government.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department claimed a win after agents successfully broke up a Russian-run bot farm.
Officials described the internet operation as part of an ongoing effort to sow discord in the U.S. through the creation of fictitious social media profiles that purport to belong to authentic Americans
The profiles are actually designed to advance the aims of the Russian government, including by spreading disinformation about its war with Ukraine.
The scheme was organized in 2022 after a senior editor at RT, a Russian-state-funded media organization that has registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent, helped develop technology for a so-called social media bot farm, security officials say.
It received the support and financial approval of the Kremlin, with an officer of Russia's Federal Security Service - or FSB - leading a private intelligence organization that promoted disinformation on social media through a network of fake accounts.
President Joe Biden continues to struggle in the polls against Trump as he also faces allegations about a cognitive decline
The RT press office did not respond directly to a question about the allegations.
The disruption of the bot farm comes as U.S. officials have raised alarms about the potential for AI technology to impact this year's elections and amid ongoing concerns that foreign influence campaigns by adversaries could sway the opinions of unsuspecting voters.
This happened during the 2016 presidential campaign when Russians launched a huge but hidden social media trolling campaign aimed in part at helping Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
'Today's actions represent a first in disrupting a Russian-sponsored Generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm,' FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.
'Russia intended to use this bot farm to disseminate AI-generated foreign disinformation, scaling their work with the assistance of AI to undermine our partners in Ukraine and influence geopolitical narratives favorable to the Russian government.'
Among the fake posts, according to the Justice Department, was a video that was posted by a purported Minneapolis, Minnesota resident that showed Russian President Vladimir Putin saying that areas of Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania were 'gifts' to those countries from liberating Russian forces during World War II.
In another instance, the Justice Department said, someone posing as a U.S. constituent responded to a federal candidate's social media posts about the war in Ukraine with a video of Putin justifying Russia's actions.
As part of the disruption, the Justice Department seized two domain names and searched 968 accounts on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
According to a joint cybersecurity advisory released Tuesday by U.S., Dutch and Canadian authorities, the software was used to spread disinformation to countries including Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Ukraine and Israel.
The advisory said that as of last June, the software - known as Meliorator - only worked on X but that its functionality probably could be expanded to other social media networks.
