US intelligence officials claim Russia has launched a plan to interfere in the 2024 presidential election to bolster former President Donald Trump's chances of winning in November.
On Tuesday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) briefed reporters on the alleged matter and asserted that Russia is a "preeminent threat." According to an ODNI official, Russia plans to utilize social media to influence swing state voters.
"It's all the tactics we've seen before, primarily through social media, efforts using influential US voices to amplify their narratives and other tactics," an official said, per Fox News. "And as far as who they're targeting, what we can say today is, Russia is sophisticated enough to know that, targeting swing state voters, is particularly valuable to them."
Intelligence experts said that Russia will move to manipulate public perception as election day gets closer, adding that Russia's manipulation tactics are similar to what the intelligence community has seen in previous election cycles. However, officials did not outwardly name Donald Trump in the briefing, who was the victim of the infamous RussiaGate hoax during his 2016 presidential campaign that lasted throughout his presidency.
According to officials, the Kremlin will attempt to influence specific voters in swing states by promoting divisive and false narratives, although no specifics were given. Artificial intelligence (AI) has reportedly made it easier to achieve this, officials also claimed.
"Foreign adversaries continue to experiment with and have adopted at least some generative AI tools to more quickly and cheaply generate authentic looking content tailored primarily for social media platforms that can target specific audiences including in the US," said an ODNI official during the brief.
In addition to Russia, China is also an apparent threat through its ownership of TikTok, claiming that the CCP can pull data from cell phone users that could help them devise narratives they want to push on the social media app.
"China would be interested in down-ballot races down to the state and potentially local level. But to be clear, this is something we're watching at this time, rather than actively seeing it as we did in the 2022 cycle. Right now, our assessment is focused that China doesn't perceive a benefit in supporting either candidate, or either party," they said.
The Justice Department apprehended an alleged social media "bot farm" operated by the Russian government on Tuesday, which was allegedly being used to disseminate disinformation in the US and other countries. According to the DOJ, officials confiscated two domain names and identified 968 social media profiles that were utilized by Russian actors in the Netherlands to establish AI-enhanced social media profiles intended to promote messages in support of Russian government objectives.
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