Russia has mounted an online campaign to discredit candidates for the U.S. Congress ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, Senator Mark Warner and Representative Jim Himes told Politico. Both are Democrats who sit on their chambers’ intelligence committees.
The lawmakers said their conclusions about Russian interference come from a classified U.S. intelligence report they received earlier in the week. The report says Moscow is using AI tools to spread disinformation and undermine trust in individual candidates and in the elections as a whole.
The lawmakers believe Russia could target both Democrats and Republicans who support Ukraine. The intelligence agencies have found no proven attempts by Russia to hack the election system or campaign networks.
Reports of attempts to interfere in the congressional elections first surfaced in early September. The Bot Blocker project, which tracks pro-Russian bot activity on social media, warned about AI-generated videos featuring deepfakes of celebrities such as Robert De Niro, Julia Roberts, and Cher urging viewers not to vote for Democrats.
According to the project, a Russian bot network called “Matryoshka” is spreading the videos. The clips were posted on X under the logos of real news outlets and contained false accusations against American politicians.
Posts from Russian bots on X rack up tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of views, but those figures are artificially inflated through fake engagement, Bloomberg reported. The clips can reach up to 200,000 views in the first hour, after which the view counts stop moving entirely. Moreover, the posts draw almost no likes or reposts.
Researchers from Graphika, Alethea, and Clemson University identified another Russian bot network spreading deepfake videos that targeted American politicians, NBC News reported. On October 20, videos appeared on X baselessly accusing Texas Democrat James Talarico of sexual assault, and one post garnered more than 1.3 million views.
The researchers said the network behind it is a Russian disinformation operation called “Storm-1516” that has been linked to Russian military intelligence. “Storm-1516” has previously been accused of interfering in elections in the United States, Germany, Hungary, and France.
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