Russian propagandists are peppering the internet with videos purporting fictitious and outlandish stories that nevertheless rack up millions of views, including one featuring an actor falsely accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of a nonexistent hit-and-run that paralyzed a girl, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) said this week in a report on foreign efforts to influence American elections.
The hit-and-run video first appeared on a supposed San Francisco-based "news outlet," which quickly disappeared after passing the baton to an army of social media accounts that circulated the fabricated claim on X, where it drew 7 million views, as well as Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.
Another video made up a story about an assault on a Donald Trump rally attendee, while a third depicted a fake billboard with vulgar language claiming that Harris wanted to change children's gender en masse. Microsoft said that two Russian groups called Storm-1516 and Storm-1679, believed to be linked to the Kremlin, were behind the production and circulation of these videos, and their efforts represented a renewed push to "discredit Harris and stoke controversy around her campaign."
The report comes on the heels of a Justice Department indictment of two employees at RT, a Russian state-run propaganda network, for allegedly laundering $9.7 million through shell companies to run a media firm that gushed out nearly 2,000 videos with the aim of "illegally [manipulating] American public opinion by sowing discord and division." Last week, the State Department confirmed that this was only one part of a broader RT-led covert information operation, with the U.S. government also seizing and shutting down a network of fake news sites intended to appear as legitimate outlets.
RT and other Kremlin proxies, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement, “are no longer merely fire hoses of Russian propaganda and disinformation. They are engaged in covert influence activities aimed at undermining American elections and democracies, functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus.”
The Kremlin, for its part, denied any role in trying to influence American elections.
U.S. entities are scrambling to coordinate a response. On the same day as the indictment, the Treasury Department sanctioned 10 Russians and two Russian groups over "malign efforts" to influence the 2024 election. Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta announced Monday that it would ban RT pages from its websites.
But far from being daunted by the exposure and potential retaliation, the Microsoft report said, Russian-backed groups are adapting by "attempting to create new infrastructure, with one threat actor already having moved media outlets from seized websites to new ones."
As the 2024 election nears its end, the report warned, those groups will "continue to use cyber proxies and hacktivist groups to amplify their messages through media websites and social channels geared to spread divisive political content, staged videos, and AI-enhanced propaganda."
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