By Dan De Luce and Kevin Collier —
NBC News
Russia is already spreading disinformation about the 2024 US presidential election, using fake online accounts and
bots
to harm President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats, according to former US officials and cyber experts.
The spread of attacks against Biden is part of an ongoing effort by the Kremlin to undermine US military aid to Ukraine and US support and solidarity for NATO, experts said.
A similar effort is underway in Europe.
France, Germany and Poland indicated this month that Russia has launched a barrage of propaganda to try to influence European parliamentary elections in June.
With Donald Trump opposing US aid to Ukraine and claiming he would “encourage” Russia to attack NATO allies that do not pay their share of defense spending, the potential rewards for Russian President Vladimir Putin are high. according to Bret Schafer, senior fellow at the Alliance to Secure Democracy at the German Marshall Fund.
Donald Trump kisses the US flag during the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2024, on February 24. Alex Brandon / AP
“It's not that they didn't have an incentive to interfere in the last two presidential elections,” said Schafer, who follows the disinformation efforts of Russia and other regimes.
“But I would say the incentive is greater now.”
Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Sunday on NBC News'
Meet the Press
that
there are "many reasons to be concerned"
about Russia's attempt to interfere in the 2024 election, but that he could not speak. of evidence related to it.
And he added: “We are going to be vigilant about this.”
U.S. officials and experts are more concerned that Russia could try to interfere in the election through
deepfake audio or video,
using artificial intelligence tools, or through “hacks and leaks,” such as the 2016 theft of internal Party emails. Democratic by Russian military intelligence operatives.
The pro-Russian online propaganda campaigns that swept Twitter and Facebook ahead of the 2016 US presidential election are now common on major social media platforms, although it is rare for individual accounts to go as viral now as they once did.
A “perfect storm”
Russia and its allies have long sought to exploit divisions in American society.
But experts and former U.S. officials said Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, the country's growing political polarization and deep cuts to disinformation and election integrity teams at X and other platforms provide fertile ground for spread confusion, division and chaos.
“In many ways, it's a perfect storm of opportunity for them,” added Paul Kolbe, who worked for 25 years in the CIA's Directorate of Operations and is now a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
from Harvard.
“I think, for many reasons, we will see the same approach, but amplified.”
In the 2022 midterm elections, Russia primarily targeted the Democratic Party to weaken U.S. support for Ukraine, most likely blaming Biden for forging a unified Western alliance backing that country, according to an assessment by intelligence services. recently released US intelligence.
[Nikki Haley is still in the race despite the results and that can work against her]
In what appears to be an effort to deepen divisions, Russia has amplified the political dispute between the Biden Administration and Texas Governor Greg Abbott over state border security over the past month.
Russian politicians, bloggers, state media, and
bots
have promoted the idea that the United States is headed for a
new “civil war
. ”
According to experts, this is the quintessential move of a Russian regime with a long tradition of trying to manipulate existing political fissures, such as immigration, to its advantage.
But so far there is no indication that the Russian disinformation operation in Texas has had a significant impact, added Emerson Brooking, a senior researcher at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Laboratory.
“So far, Russian operations against the United States have been opportunistic.
“They see whatever narrative is rising to the top, and they try to push it,” Brooking noted.
“Disinformation is not generated just like that.
The more polarized a country is, the easier it is for foreign actors to infiltrate and hijack its political processes.”
The danger of artificial intelligence
The biggest Russian threat to the 2024 election, according to Brooking and other experts, could be fake audio created by artificial intelligence.
Their goal could be to discourage voters from going to the polls or sow distrust about the accuracy of the vote count.
The most likely scenario for disinformation will be “hyperpersonalized and localized attacks,” added Miles Taylor, a senior Homeland Security official in the Trump Administration who has warned of the risks of another term of his.
[Trump beats Haley in South Carolina Republican primary]
Easy to create and difficult to detect, deepfake
audio
has been used in recent elections in multiple countries.
In the United States last month, a fake call from Joe Biden told New Hampshire Democrats not to vote in the state's primary.
In the United Kingdom in November, a fake audio of London Mayor Sadiq Khan calling for marches in favor of the Palestinians.
And two days before the Slovak parliamentary elections in September, another purported to show the leader of a pro-Western political party discussing how to rig the election.
The audio was eventually denied, and it is unclear what effect it had on the elections.
But the pro-Russian party that opposes aid to Ukraine received the most votes.
Russian interference in other elections
Alleged Russian information operations against Ukraine over the past two years provide a window into some of Russia's tactics.
A study published Wednesday by Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET found that a pro-Russian campaign has been spamming
Ukrainians
with fake, discouraging emails about the war with claims of heat and food shortages.
In a coordinated effort near the start of the Russian invasion in 2022, cyberattacks temporarily knocked out key Ukrainian websites, while residents received fake messages telling them that the country's ATMs were down.
Other apparent Russian efforts to sow division are much simpler.
Last year, celebrities who sell personalized videos on the website Cameo, including Priscilla Presley, Mike Tyson and Elijah Wood, were tricked into recording messages denigrating Russia's two greatest enemies, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Moldovan president, Maia Sandu.
[Republican congressman blames Biden for a migrant caravan that arrived at the border when Trump was president]
The messages were accompanied by a text in which it was falsely stated that the celebrities were asking for the resignation of these leaders.
Representatives for Wood and Presley claimed that the celebrities recorded the videos thinking they were helping a fan with addiction problems.
A Tyson representative said they were fake.
The division within the US
In the United States, however, themes of Russian propaganda frequently resonate in the comments of some Republican lawmakers and pro-Trump commentators, including the description of the Ukrainian government as deeply corrupt.
The adoption of Russian state rhetoric in the American political debate is a victory for Russia, experts say.
Putin's goal is to sow doubt and division among Americans.
“An equally satisfactory result for them is just what we had last time, in which a third of the country does not believe what they voted for,” Schafer added.
“Democracy is questioned;
the system is questioned.
So they don't need to see their man win for it to be a good result for them.”
It remains extraordinarily difficult for a remote cyberattack to take over voting systems in the United States and change the vote count.
U.S. intelligence's assessment of the 2022 midterm elections found no indication that Russia had attempted to hack election systems or vote counting that year.
But Kolbe, a former CIA operations directorate official, explained that Russia most likely views trying to penetrate U.S. voting systems as a low-risk endeavor.
“I don't see any reason why they wouldn't,” he insisted.
However, U.S. officials and disinformation analysts said Russia's ability to manipulate voters should not be overstated.
When it comes to spreading disinformation and fueling distrust in electoral authorities and election results, the greatest threat comes from within the fractured and polarized American society, not from outside.
[Trump's words about NATO put US credibility at stake]
“I'm very skeptical, either in terms of 2016 or 2024, that American political and media culture needs any boost from Russia,” said Gavin Wilde, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who specializes in Russia. and the information war.
“Russia has every interest in seeing the people and leaders of the United States less inclined to support Ukraine, less inclined to punish Russia.
Those incentives are there,” she added.
“But we are already doing a good job at home.
"I don't know how much push Russia thinks needs to be given."