Less than three weeks from elections that could shift the balance of power in Congress, more signs are emerging that Russia and other foreign governments are once again seeking to influence American voters.
An online influence operation backed by the Russian government has been stepping up its attempts to sow division in the United States and inflame tensions around Israel as a political wedge issue, according to a new study by an independent company that tracks digital threats and foreign propaganda campaigns.
The influence operation known as Doppelgänger has created a flood of social media posts pushing themes of how bipartisan support for Israel is collapsing, according to Alethea, the threat intelligence company.
Doppelgänger is run by Russia’s Social Design Agency, a public relations firm. Both the U.S. government and the European Union have imposed punitive sanctions upon it.
On Wednesday, X, the social media platform, announced it had banned 13,000 accounts linked to three separate influence operations connected to Iran, Russia and China. The platform said the fake accounts amplified “content about U.S. politics, targeting candidates and public figures across the political spectrum.”
U.S. intelligence officials tried to provide a classified briefing to some state officials on midterm election threats on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.
That overture hit a snag, however, when the intelligence officials were unable to establish a secure virtual connection to the election personnel, the people said. While such briefings were routine in previous election cycles, Thursday’s would have been the first of its kind in more than two years.
A U.S. official confirmed that a technical issue had postponed the call but said the briefing would hopefully be rescheduled for next week. Election briefings typically include background material and information, rather than intelligence that state and local officials should immediately act on, according to current and former officials.
CNN earlier reported the technical problems with the briefing.
Covert foreign influence campaigns targeting American voters are not new, and their impact on political discourse and voting is unclear. American officials said that they had identified similar influence campaigns in years past, including by Russia, all trying to sow discord over contentious topics.
Lisa Kaplan, the founder of Alethea, said none of the inauthentic posts linked to Doppelgänger had high numbers of views or interactions.
But the volume of posts in the current campaign, and replies under postings that had high engagement, indicated that the messaging was likely getting in front of people.
Propaganda campaigns by the Kremlin and others have evolved over the years to include different platforms, new tactics and, increasingly, the use of artificial intelligence.
In some ways, such operations have grown more difficult to track amid a broad pullback by many social media firms on trust and safety work after years of criticism from conservatives who accused the companies of collaborating with the U.S. government to stifle free expression.
American officials briefed on intelligence reports said they did not know of the precise campaign identified by Alethea. But they said spy agencies have flagged that Doppelgänger and the Social Design Agency have been active ahead of the midterms.
In addition to the influence operations targeting the U.S. midterms, Alethea has tracked posts aimed at Israeli voters, who go to the polls on Oct. 27, and French voters, who will vote next April. U.S. officials confirmed stepped-up Russian campaigns in all three countries.
The New York Times reported in September that classified U.S. intelligence assessments in recent months had concluded that the Kremlin once again had approved a digital influence campaign to peddle covert disinformation across social media in hopes of seeding or amplifying domestic divisions during the election season.
The assessments did not find evidence of any attempts to take aim at voting machinery in a way that could compromise the actual voting process, the officials added.
The new Doppelgänger campaign included more than 50 fake personas — often posing as Israeli women — on X that posted in “synchronized waves” beginning on Oct. 7, the three-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.
Then, a separate network of more than 1,000 accounts deposited those posts into unrelated, high-traffic conversations, yielding an estimated 150,000 posts in total.
“You basically need to conceptualize the Russian influence operations like a dark money political action committee,” Ms. Kaplan said. “If you want to understand their perspective, you have to find out what they are pushing.”
Ms. Kaplan said there are always questions about how effective influence campaigns are, particularly ones built around pushing out thousands and thousands of low-engagement posts. But she said Russia and other adversarial governments would not continue the campaigns if they didn’t think they worked.
“Think about it. It is really hard to hack someone; it is really easy to lie online,” she said. “That is what it boils down to. And if that lie is believed it is just as effective, especially if your goal is to erode trust.”
The posts by the fake personas included links that often directed audiences to fake news articles on clones of legitimate news sites.
Despite the low level of engagement, the Russian propaganda outfit seems determined to amplify perceptions that Democrats have retreated from supporting Israel.
In appearing to target Democrats with negative content, the Doppelgänger push is just the latest effort by Russia to harm the party and support President Trump since his first run for office in 2016.
U.S. intelligence findings and numerous reviews have consistently found that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has favored Mr. Trump over Democrats, most of whom are more sympathetic to Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invasion.
In September, a network previously linked to Kremlin trolls posted a series of videos on social media that appeared to rely on A.I. to churn out baseless claims against Democrats running in closely contested Senate races.
Graphika, another 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.
New campaigns targeted Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, both Democrats, with fabricated reports of corruption allegations, according to a Graphika analysis.
In October, posts linked to the Matryoshka campaign promoted a conspiracy theory that Democrats in the United States were behind the attempted hijacking of the FlyDubai flight to Tel Aviv, the company said, while another Russian influence operation promoted Mr. Trump’s recent deal with Mr. Putin to purchase diesel fuel from Russia.
The campaigns “give us a glimpse of what their objectives are,” said Jean le Roux, a senior researcher at Graphika. “They’re not targeting Republican candidates in the same way.”
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