In the run-up to Election Day, Ethnic Media Services organized a special briefing with the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, and ethnic media outlets on October 22. Senator Warner spoke at length about the threat of interference and disinformation from the United States’ foreign adversaries like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
Who are the major foreign players?
According to Warner, the main threat of foreign-sponsored disinformation this election season comes from Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea. Propagated online through social media platforms, the intention is to influence voters towards one candidate or another, and to undermine people’s trust in the American election process, and hence, democracy.
“Russia probably wants to undermine Harris, Iran probably wants to undermine Trump,” said Warner. “China is more focused on some of the down-ballot (non-Presidential) races.” He added that there is also some disinformation coming from North Korea, but that it is not as sophisticated.
Despite India’s diplomatic fallout with Canada, and the United States’ indictment of a former Indian intelligence agent for his role in a foiled plot to assassinate an American citizen, Senator Warner said that he does not have any evidence of the Indian government perpetrating acts of disinformation about the upcoming elections.
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Vulnerability will persist after the election too
Senator Warner explained that while there has been a steady flow of online disinformation and misinformation leading up to the elections, the threat looms larger in the final hours before November 5, and after. If the election goes down to the wire, as many predict it will, he worries that disinformation might sabotage the fairness of the election and counting process.
“The thing that I’m probably most afraid of is deep fake technology being used, maybe not to manipulate an actual candidate, but to have an appearance of an election official on election day or the day after the election, appearing to destroy ballots,” he said, by way of an example.
While he is confident that the U.S. election officials and election machinery is securely in place, Warner believes that disinformation is still a particularly potent threat because of its reach.
An important factor is that social media platforms – often the most popular means of spreading disinformation – are not investing as many resources into monitoring disinformation as they did in 2020. Warner said the decision to cut down resources on YouTube and Facebook might be financial. He expressed concerned about Tiktok, which is owned by a Chinese company ByteDance, and pointed out that Elon Musk who owns X “perpetrates misinformation and disinformation” himself.
Lax content moderation on these platforms, combined with the proliferation of deepfakes and other AI tools, means that countries like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea can easily flood the internet with disinformation.
“Oftentimes, our adversaries will simply amplify conspiracy theories that may appear on the internet,” said Senator Warner. “More and more Americans, exacerbated by certain political candidates, are willing to believe just crazy stuff off the internet with no basis.”
Russia emerges as a primary threat
Of all the countries that are potential threats, Russia seems the most urgent said Warner, and a look at the last two elections says why.
After the 2016 elections, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III investigated reports of Russian involvement. His report found that a Russian ‘troll farm’ – Internet Research Agency – was at the heart of a campaign that leveraged social media propaganda to push the elections in Trump’s favor. The investigation revealed the shortcomings of social media platforms like Facebook to prevent such interference.
Warner said that in 2016, social media companies were caught off-guard and left embarrassed, but stepped up their content moderation efforts in 2020. But now as these platforms pull back on their efforts to crack down on disinformation, he worries that the Russian state could be a more potent threat in 2024.
“Russia is very good at this. Look at what’s happened in Moldova over the last few weeks,” he said pointing to reports of Russian interference in the Moldovan elections last week. He also mentioned that Sweden has a history of suspected Russian interference in their elections. “I mean… they have a number of nation states that they’ve practiced on.”
Speaking about 2024, Senator Warner referred to an incident where a Russian group spread false information on X about Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Walz, alleging that he had sexually assaulted his students when he was a schoolteacher.
In another incident, Senator Ben Cardin, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee engaged in a video call with an individual impersonating former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, but who was in fact, an actor. Reports suggest that “Russian pranksters” could have orchestrated the deepfake.
“Take A Deep Breath”
Warner cautioned that voters should be wary of online disinformation, and try to verify every piece of election-related news they encounter.
He warned that some communities may be more vulnerable to disinformation coming through their online networks. “If we look historically, particularly Russia, back in 2016 they disproportionately emphasized misinformation to African-American communities in America,” he said. “And this election cycle, there has been a disproportionate focus of disinformation, and misinformation to Latino communities in America and Jewish communities in America.”
“We just need everybody, hopefully, to communicate that if you see something on the internet and if it doesn’t seem right, take a deep breath and please don’t amplify something that may be misinformation generated by a Foreign Service.”
