The Russian government has been targeting Americans with covert online disinformation operations seeking to undermine public confidence in November’s midterm elections, using a familiar playbook in an attempt to inject chaos into the voting season, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
Classified U.S. intelligence assessments from recent months have determined that the Kremlin has again authorized a digital influence campaign to peddle content across social media in hopes of seeding or amplifying domestic divisions around the election season, the officials said.
The assessments did not find evidence of attempts to take aim at voting machinery in a way that could compromise the actual voting process, the officials added. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss classified information, did not specify the efforts to influence attitudes online. But experts in Russian disinformation have spotted some social media campaigns in recent weeks that use artificial intelligence to create fake videos of Hollywood celebrities talking about key battleground Senate races.
The disinformation campaign appeared to be less extensive or coordinated than at least some of Russia’s prior efforts in American elections, some of the officials said. Since 2016, the Kremlin has initiated online influence operations in every American federal election cycle, according to previously declassified assessments. The officials added that U.S. spy agencies see Moscow as less interested in midterm races than in presidential contests and as distracted by its grinding war with Ukraine.
Still, the push to inflame the electorate comes as President Trump has repeatedly sought to challenge the integrity of American democracy. In July, Mr. Trump gave a televised prime-time address on election security in which he claimed there were severe vulnerabilities in U.S. voting systems and accused American officials of a yearslong “cover-up” to conceal efforts by China and others to influence elections.
He has instructed a task force to declassify documents purporting to support his narratives of rampant voter fraud and foreign tampering, but those files, which were heavily redacted, did not reveal major new weaknesses in the country’s election systems or show that foreign governments had manipulated any votes.
Some of the officials said the main goal of the Russian influence operations appeared to be to sow chaos rather than aid one particular party, though the examples that independent disinformation researchers in recent weeks have attributed to Russia have exclusively attacked Democratic candidates in swing states.
The White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment. Russia has historically denied U.S. allegations of election meddling.
Some intelligence assessments have also found that Iran, too, may engage in influence operations around the November election as well, the officials said, though little activity had been documented in classified channels that traced to Tehran. The country, which has been locked in a war with the United States since February, sought to spread propaganda undermining Mr. Trump in the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, and officials said it was reasonable to expect the regime to do so again.
Last month, Meta released a report highlighting a small network of accounts on Facebook and Instagram originating in Iran that focused on U.S. politics. The network’s content, some of which was generated with artificial intelligence, included “anti-Republican views,” Meta said.
The U.S. intelligence findings also said China could be willing to engage in influence operations by targeting individual congressional races or members of Congress whom Beijing sees as adversarial to its interests, officials said.
That approach, too, would echo its activity in past election seasons, but the U.S. intelligence assessments found that Beijing may ultimately steer clear for fear of blowback, the officials said. In general, China is more careful in order to avoid being caught, while Russia and Iran are seen as less bothered about being discovered, current and former U.S. officials said.
In 2016, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered a multipronged interference effort that sought to denigrate Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, and bolster the electoral prospects of her Republican rival, Mr. Trump, U.S. spy agencies concluded. Multiple audits of those intelligence findings, including a multiyear investigation by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, corroborated those conclusions.
Researchers in Europe and the United States who track Russian disinformation campaigns have seen recent signs of Russian activity. In two separate waves over the past week, a network previously linked to Kremlin trolls posted a series of videos on X and BlueSky that appeared to rely on A.I. to churn out baseless claims against Democrats running for Senate in closely contested races. Elements of the campaign were reported earlier by MS NOW.
The posts attacked the candidates using themes that Mr. Trump and the Republican Party have relied on to disparage Democrats, including accusations of corruption, antisemitism and support for gay and transgender rights.
The posts included false or unsubstantiated claims in videos devised to seem as if they came from prominent news organizations, including CNN, the BBC and The New York Times.
Among those targeted were Senator Jon Ossoff, who faces re-election in Georgia, and other challengers who have a chance of giving Democrats a majority in the Senate: Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Troy Jackson in Maine, Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, Mary Peltola in Alaska, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, James Talarico in Texas, and Joshua Turek in Iowa.
Graphika, a threat analysis company, attributed the blitz to a Kremlin-linked operation that experts have called Operation Overload or Matryoshka, which often impersonates real news organizations to spread fabricated content.
A post that appeared on Thursday mimicked a Times video featuring an image of the actress Jamie Lee Curtis with subtitles criticizing the Democrats for their policies on transgender issues. “There’s not even a scintilla of truth in that,” the actress’ publicist, Heidi Schaeffer, said in an interview.
By the end of the day, the post had been viewed nearly 200,000 times, according to X’s count. X, which did not respond to a request for comment, removed some of the posts that appeared earlier in the week, but many remain online.
The posts employed Russian tactics familiar from previous elections in the United States and Europe.
Jean Le Roux, a senior researcher at Graphika, noted that the American content appeared shortly after elections in Germany and Sweden concluded.
“We’re definitely expecting it to ramp up,” he said of the Russian effort. “I don’t think they’re going to stop. I think that we’re seeing the initial kickoff of the U.S. election focused campaigning.”
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