Foreign influence efforts reached a fever pitch during the 2024 elections
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The final stretch of the 2024 election was marked by a series of increasingly brazen attempts to influence voters and disrupt polling places. U.S. intelligence officials and researchers believe Russia and other foreign powers were behind the efforts.
On Election Day itself, hoax bomb threats were sent to polling locations in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and the Navajo Nation in Arizona. The FBI says that many of the bomb threats "appear to originate from Russian email domains," which NPR confirmed after reviewing an email sent to Georgia locations.
No bombs were found at any of those locations and there's no indication that the delays they caused in voting swayed the election results.
But those threats were part of a broader pattern, said Graham Brookie, a senior director at the Atlantic Council's DFRLab.
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"One of the major trends that we saw is the highest volume of online foreign influence efforts directed at the U.S. elections by…three state threat actors…Russia, Iran and China," says Brookie.
Russia used intermediaries to hire American right-wing influencers to spread Kremlin talking points. It created networks of websites that resembled trusted U.S. news outlets, along with fictitious sites, to spread polarizing content. China sought to sway down-ballot races by posting negative content about congressional candidates it deemed anti-China. Hackers tied to Iran successfully got documents from the campaign of President-elect Donald Trump and tried to leak them to U.S. news outlets. The DOJ also alleged that Iran tried to assassinate Trump.
In the case of the Election Day bomb threats, neither U.S. intelligence officials nor law enforcement have yet to confirm with high confidence whether the Russian government was behind the threats. But "if it is confirmed to be Russia, then that is really, really significant and measurable foreign interference," Brookie said.
Brookie said if proven, the bomb threats would mark a break from the other kinds of influence operations the Kremlin has run against the U.S. in recent years.
In the weeks before Election Day, inflammatory videos tied to Russia surfaced on social media. One falsely depicted ballots being destroyed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania; another claimed to depict a whistleblower alleging election fraud in Arizona; a third falsely alleged noncitizens were voting in large numbers in Georgia, an idea Trump and fellow Republicans embraced in the run-up to the election.
The accounts that first posted these videos were tied to a known Russian influence operation Microsoft has dubbed Storm 1516, first identified last fall by researchers at Clemson University. The videos circulated widely on the social media site X and can still be seen there, even as many of the Russian-affiliated accounts that seeded the videos have been taken down.
In one case, CNN reported a registered agent of Russia living in Australia paid an American influencer living in New Jersey to post videos that make false allegations of election fraud.
American intelligence officials issued regular warnings about foreign interference for months in the run-up to the election. But in the final days of voting, they took the unusual step of calling out specific posts and videos they attributed to Russia
The FBI also flagged phony videos and statements that spread election false narratives using the agency's insignia. The agency did not attribute them to a nation state, but researchers said they were also likely the product of a Russian operation, while also noting that they did not attract much attention.
"High volume and low impact," Darren Linvill of Clemson University's Digital Forensic Lab said, "mostly just 'seen' by the marketing bots [Russia has]."
Russia tends to try out many tactics in an effort to "throw the kitchen sink at things and see what works," said Caroline Orr Bueno, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland.
Studies of past foreign influence campaigns have not found evidence that they sway elections. Orr Bueno said focusing on just the way foreign adversaries target U.S. elections might be too narrow a view of their objectives.
"Influence operations really aren't targeting a distinct event," Orr Bueno said. "The elections may be targeted as part of a broader influence operation but these are long-term strategic operations with a very long-term goal."
Brookie agreed, noting that Russia wants to win its war in Ukraine, China wants to improve its global image, and Iran wants to avenge the first Trump administration's assassination of one of its top generals.
The fact that foreign influence efforts go beyond a single campaign or discrete events make it difficult to measure the impact, said Orr Bueno. All three countries tend to exploit wedge issues that already divide American society and seek to amplify Americans rather than creating entirely new narratives.
The ongoing foreign influence campaigns mean that many Americans should exercise more care when interacting with political material online, said Orr Bueno.
She offered questions they might ask themselves: "Why am I following the people I'm following? Am I following them because they're telling me the truth about the world around me, or am I following them because they're telling me things that make me feel good?"
Copyright 2024, NPR
