Russian disinformation vendors produced videos targeting the Harris-Walz campaign with false and disparaging statements, Microsoft said Tuesday.
At least three Russian disinformation actors worked to discredit the Harris-Walz campaign, Microsoft said. One is a “marketing” company. that the Justice Department indicted this month, while Microsoft identified the other two only by pseudonyms.
A spokesman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Some of the misinformation comes in the form of two videos that have been circulating since late August, Microsoft said. One purports to show two black men or boys crying over a woman’s shoes or a bloodied and crying white girl wearing a Trump shirt. No one’s face is shown.
NBC News has seen an upload of that video posted to X, which Microsoft has confirmed is alleged Russian disinformation. The video was live and had more than 49 million views on Tuesday.
Darren Linvill, a professor and director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson that tracks Russian disinformation, said the video and the group that made it “hit a lot of notes that are familiar to Russian disinformation operations.”
“It appeals to an extremist worldview, it’s overtly racist, it plays into stereotypes, and it serves to further reinforce some viewers in their perhaps already existing beliefs,” Linvill said.
The other video uses an actor pretending to work for a non-existent San Francisco news agency to falsely claim that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, paralyzed a girl in 2011 by hitting her with his car, Microsoft said.
Linvill said the videos fit a pattern that has been set by Russia in previous elections, referring to efforts by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) before the 2016 presidential election.
The IRA, widely known as the “troll factory”, invested substantial resources in the division of the Americans in 2016. It largely consisted of dozens of IRA employees using social media to pretend to be Americans with extreme political views, according to analysis of his tactics.
The report comes after the US accused the Kremlin of running a multi-faceted disinformation campaign to boost former President Donald Trump and disparage Harris. That alleged effort included a Russian state media outlet, RT, secretly funding right-wing populist influencers through a media network that appears to be Tenet Media and a separate operation to drive Americans to fake news sites that look like to the real ones.
On a call with reporters in July to discuss efforts by foreign governments to influence the November election, an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Russia will have to recalibrate its strategy to target to Harris now that President Joe Biden was not. longer for re-election.
Intelligence officials have always said that Russia prefers candidates who do not seek to undermine its invasion of Ukraine. Harris said he would continue to support the Biden administration’s arms support for Ukraine. Trump, who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, twice refused to say in his debate with Harris last week that he wants Ukraine to win the war.
The officials said that Iran, in contrast to Russia, aims to hurt Trump and his chances in the election. The FBI and other agencies said in August that Iran was behind an operation that hacked the Trump campaign and tried to share stolen documents with some American journalists through an online persona, though that has not been made public. until now. The Department of Justice plans to file charges over this operation. Iranian authorities have denied interference in the election.
The US intelligence community I believe that China, another country often accused of influence operations, aims to destabilize the United States’ belief in the democratic process and influence the outcome of smaller races, but did not plan to support either Trump or Harris this year.
In its report, Microsoft said it had observed a China-linked influencer posting both anti-Harris and anti-Trump content, which the company said is indicative of an effort to sow general confusion and doubt. among American voters rather than affecting a particular. candidate