Russian groups and other foreign adversaries have unleashed an extensive disinformation campaign to undermine confidence in the election, and senior U.S. officials are worried that Moscow’s efforts could continue to stoke political discord until the election is certified in January.
On Monday night, just hours before an election that polls show is the most closely fought in decades, intelligence, law enforcement and election defense agencies released a statement stressing once more — and in strong terms — their concern.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the F.B.I. said in a joint statement that foreign adversaries led by Russia were “conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans.”
In recent weeks, the intelligence agencies have dramatically stepped up their alerts. Two weeks ago, they warned of post-election violence. Over the last 10 days, they have now issued three warnings about Russian attempts to undermine faith in the election. And Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said her organization would give regular updates Tuesday to inform the public of threats to the election.
American intelligence agencies have warned about foreign influence operations before, timidly in 2016 and more forcefully in 2020, but never with the speed or frequency of the warnings delivered this fall.
The statement on Monday said Iran remained a “significant foreign influence threat” and noted Tehran’s efforts to compromise former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign, stealing and leaking information from staff members.
But the intelligence agencies have reserved their starkest language for Russia, which spy agencies have said is the “most active threat.”
On Monday, intelligence agencies reiterated their suggestion that Russia could spread violence. And both intelligence officials and election threat officials have said Russia’s goal is to undermine Americans’ faith in the election.
Russia, the statement from the agencies said, intended to “instill fear in voters regarding the election process and suggest Americans are using violence against each other due to political preferences.”
The warning came only hours after the top officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said foreign efforts to influence the American political process would continue in the days and weeks after the election until the results were certified by Congress on Jan. 6.
“We are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation being aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries at a greater scale than ever before,” Ms. Easterly said.
The agency has activated its election operations center to monitor potential threats to the voting infrastructure, Ms. Easterly said.
In recent weeks, officials from the agency have monitored attacks on ballot boxes and election-related websites as well as disinformation campaigns by Russia.
But so far, Ms. Easterly said, “we see no evidence of activity that has the potential to materially impact the outcome of the presidential election.”
At the start of the election cycle, intelligence agencies concluded that the hyperlocal nature of the American voting system had dissuaded foreign adversaries from trying to tamper with election infrastructure to change results. But various adversaries, including Russia and Iran, had concluded that they could potentially influence the vote by spreading falsehoods about candidates and undercutting faith in the election.
On Monday, videos falsely claiming to be from CBS News and CNN circulated with the aim of stoking fears that election results were being manipulated. Both networks quickly called out those efforts as fake.
Officials from the cybersecurity agency said that they were only broadly aware of the fabricated videos but that they had been warning about those kinds of fake videos for weeks.
“We know we can expect more of it going into tomorrow, throughout tomorrow and in the days after the election,” Ms. Easterly said.
Another Russian fabrication cited in the joint statement released Monday night involved a man purported to be a former aide to Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, claiming he had resigned because of evidence of voter fraud in the state. He appeared in an interview with Mira Terada, the director of a Russian organization, the Foundation to Battle Injustice, that has been linked to the Kremlin and that country’s intelligence agencies.
In the interview, the man’s face was obscured and the voice was “an A.I.-generated audio,” according to NewsGuard, a company that has been tracking election disinformation.
A post by Ms. Terada on X on Sunday night received more than 240,000 views — and also a note from the platform that the post’s visibility had been limited because it “might violate X’s rules against Civic Integrity.”
Cait Conley, a top adviser to Ms. Easterly, said no matter who won on Tuesday, or how quickly election results were clear, foreign powers would most likely try to sow doubts after the vote.
“These efforts to discredit the process and undermine confidence and to stoke partisan discord are likely to continue not just on Election Day and in the immediate days after as the certification process continues, but really up until Jan. 6,” she said.
Intelligence officials have said that Russia favors former President Donald J. Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump’s skepticism about offering military support to Ukraine, which Russia invaded nearly three years ago, and his vow to force peace talks have raised the stakes in the vote for Russia, officials say.
Mr. Trump’s supporters have discussed challenging the certification process in various states, and election and intelligence officials say that Russia and other adversaries could work to amplify those efforts.
Ms. Conley said adversaries saw the certification process as an opportunity to undermine confidence and stoke discord in America.
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