Microsoft said Tuesday that Russian operatives have in recent weeks intensified their online attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign by producing and disseminating videos promoting “outlandish conspiracy theories” aimed at stoking US racial and political divisions.
One of the inauthentic videos, which Microsoft said had been viewed millions of times, claimed to show Harris supporters attacking an attendee of a Donald Trump rally. Another video falsely claimed that Harris paralyzed a young girl in a 2011 hit-and-run accident. Russian operatives promoted the latter story through a website pretending to be a local San Francisco media outlet, Microsoft researchers said.
Both videos were still accessible on X as of Tuesday afternoon, with one post of the video garnering 1.5 million views on its own. CNN has requested comment from the social media platform.
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The OP article is a synopsis of a synopsis, now so shallow and devoid of nuance to be meaningless.
Russia and Iran have both undertaken cyber influence operations headed into the 2024 presidential election. In our last report, published on August 8, we detailed how Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations sought to undermine the Republican campaign through targeted hack-and-leak operations, covert social media personas, and imposter US news sites. In the past two months, Microsoft has observed a notable shift in Russian influence operations tactics reflecting the changing U.S. political environment. Specifically, we have observed Russia pivot towards targeting the Harris-Walz campaign, with actors disseminating fabricated videos designed to sow discord and spread disinformation about the new Democratic nominee Vice President Harris.
Source and an abbreviated summary from MS.
The lengthy report for those with the interest and technical competance.
Understanding propaganda, both external and internal, has become critically important to our collective future. Please, read more books: 1984; The Engineering of Consent; The Manufacturing of Consent. Then, do more than vote and engage others locally when doing it.
