Russian disinformation targets U.S. presidential election, including VP candidate and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz

CATHY WURZER: Voters might have been surprised to have heard or seen reports of past nefarious behavior from Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz when he was a teacher. US intelligence officials now say the reports came from Russian disinformation operations targeting Walz. Videos and tweets on the X social media platform included claims that Walz had an inappropriate relationship with a former student.

Multiple news sources have determined the man in the video was not who he claimed to be. Intelligence officials say much of the purported evidence contained inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and some images relating to the baseless allegations were also manipulated. While these allegations are baseless, as I mentioned, the X posts about Walz were viewed millions of times, and the story has spread to other social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and TikTok.

US intelligence officials have warned that Russia would attempt to interfere in the election. For more, we're joined by Renee Buhr. She's a professor of international studies and political science at the University of St. Thomas. Professor, thank you so much for joining us.

RENEE BUHR: Hello. Thank you for having me, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Analysts identified clues that linked the content to Russian disinformation operations. What do you know about these operations? How sophisticated are they?

RENEE BUHR: Oh, they are extremely sophisticated at this point. So the real effort that the Russian government has engaged in with regards to this method of cyber warfare, they have been testing since the early 2010s, really started weaponizing it in 2015.

So we see some interference especially on social media during the Brexit debates that was pretty clearly attributable to these sorts of operations by the Russian government. Then we see obvious examples of this in 2016 in the United States, but also in 2017 in France. So this is an effort to influence West European and North American states. It has been ongoing for almost 10 years now and is very sophisticated. They get better every time they do this.

CATHY WURZER: There was a documentary filmmaker who dove into this and said, within the KGB, there's a department that specializes in planting false stories and forged documents and that kind of thing. Are they getting more traction because of social media nowadays?

RENEE BUHR: Absolutely. This would not be nearly as far reaching if it wasn't for social media. So Russia identified social media as a tool by which they could spread misinformation much more quickly than they could through more traditional means, so you start with this infiltration of social media, getting people accustomed to sharing-- sorry. Can you still hear me?

CATHY WURZER: Yes.

RENEE BUHR: People get accustomed to sharing these things, passing them on. Obviously, the sort of narrowcasting that social media allows for means that people don't see anything that is refuting the misinformation that they're sending and amplifying. The big thing now is that official more traditional media is also in place to amplify the misinformation that is on social media.

So it started as a social media phenomenon predominantly, and now has been fed into this whole media ecosphere that supports Russian misinformation, such as RT and other sorts of media sources that promote Kremlin propaganda and Kremlin reporting. So now, it's reinforcing, especially amongst Americans who are inclined to believe Russian propaganda. They're hearing it not just or seeing it not just in their social media sites, but also in the media they're consuming.

CATHY WURZER: I'm wondering to what end? What does Russia and other international actors have to gain from interfering in this election?

RENEE BUHR: The main goal, I would argue, is that Russia and China both believe that a good way to amplify the legitimacy of their own autocratic forms of government is to undermine democratic government in as many ways as possible. And so that is a pretty concerted effort, not just by the Russian government, but also by the Chinese government.

So misinformation's role in part is just to make people question democracy as a mode of government, and it is consistent with their own messaging to their own people that democracy is an inferior form of governance and that autocracy actually achieves better results. So the more chaotic and the more partisan and confused democracies appear, the more that autocratic alternative looks appealing to people not just in Russia and China, but also in the United States.

CATHY WURZER: I don't know what you thought when you heard that US intelligence officials yesterday also believe Moscow might continue to spread political disinformation in an attempt to foment violent protests following the presidential election. How conceivable is that?

RENEE BUHR: It's very conceivable. It's actually a pretty typical strategy that they have used elsewhere. So one of the testing grounds for Russian misinformation over the years has been Ukraine, and so Russian misinformation actually, prior to the invasion in 2022, would try to create these conditions for violent protest and violent counter-protests. And so they tested it out very effectively in Ukraine, and they have spread it elsewhere now.

So the potential for Americans who are consuming this sort of media and this sort of social media to believe that there is a real threat of violence and then behave in accordance with that is unfortunately entirely conceivable, because it is a tried and true strategy that Russia has used in the past.

CATHY WURZER: Even though this information has been widely debunked-- sorry, I'm losing my voice. Even though this information has been widely debunked, I'm wondering about damage already being done because of this.

RENEE BUHR: Absolutely. The people who are most likely to believe this are already consuming media, sort of broadly speaking, that is very conspiracy-ish.

They're very primed to look for something nefarious that Walz or Kamala Harris is implied to have been engaged in. They're so primed for it that they'll accept it as fact, whether there's anything to back it up, and whether it is refuted by official sources or not.

CATHY WURZER: And vice versa, in a sense. I mean, President Trump's campaign was hacked. There's also foreign operatives taking aim at his campaign as well. I'm wondering, the things that make democracy good, living in an open society, free press, political diversity, these are clearly things that might be making us vulnerable. Is this problem going to get a lot worse before it gets any better?

RENEE BUHR: That is a really hard question to answer. I tell my students that unfortunately we're all kind of along for the ride here. So the United States is a consolidated democracy, and it is pretty strong. It has a fair number of bulwarks in place to prevent a really rapid kind of democratic backsliding.

That being said, we've never tested the US or France or Britain as intensively as we are right now, so the concern is that we don't know how much of this democracies can take before it really weakens them fundamentally, and we just kind of have to watch and learn and try as best we can to defend the institutions, especially, and the norms that underpin our democracy, because we are a soft target for this sort of thing.

And we have a strong democracy, but how much of an assault a strong democracy can handle we've never tested in the real world, so it's a good question.

CATHY WURZER: That's sobering. So before you go-- and I'm sure you tell your students this, and we have a lot of people listening right now. What do you look for when you're trying to spot disinformation by foreign actors like Russia or China or Iran?

RENEE BUHR: Absolutely. So there's a few things that I would look for. Always check what the source is. That is fairly difficult on social media, especially if it looks like it's coming from a person, because there are so many fake accounts that can appear to be a person and not be.

So if something seems really fantastical or really salacious or it just seems shocking, I always recommend go to a reliable news source, one that is not known to be particularly partisan. So a good source for that is the Media Bias Chart that you can access online.

There's a handy little figure that tells you which media sources are most reliable, most fact-based versus, which are more propaganda like. So checking through one of those media sources, seeing if you're finding validation of that information, or someone refuting that information is my first default when I see something that sounds really kind of remarkable or really surprising.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Good advice. Thank you, professor. We deeply appreciate your time and your expertise.

RENEE BUHR: Great. Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Renee Buhr is a professor of International Studies and political science at the University of Saint Thomas.