Russia actually needs Donald Trump to be the following US President, judging by stories from American authorities companies and now Microsoft’s risk intelligence staff.
Primarily based on Redmond’s newest analysis on overseas trolls’ election interference efforts, the Kremlin has shifted its focus to pretend information aimed toward discrediting Vice President Kamala Harris and her run for the presidency now that incumbent Joe Biden has bowed out of the race.
In late August and September, two Moscow-aligned teams started pumping out phony video content material “designed to discredit Harris and stoke controversy round her marketing campaign,” based on Microsoft’s September 17 report [PDF].
Storm-1516, a Putin-backed on-line troll farm identified for its “outlandish pretend movies and scandalous claims,” produced mentioned video content material, with two items reaching an enormous viewers.
One purports to point out alleged Harris supporters attacking a Trump rally attendee. “Storm-1516 supposed this video, which obtained tens of millions of views, to inflame political divides by stirring racial and political tensions,” the risk intel unit reported.
The second video makes use of an actor to amplify false claims that Harris paralyzed a woman in a hit-and-run accident. This one was distributed by a pretend web site purporting to be a legit native San Francisco information outlet.
In the meantime, Storm-1679, one other Kremlin-linked crew, after specializing in the Paris Olympics for months, modified course to unfold disinformation about Harris. Two of its movies unfold conspiracy theories and false claims about her insurance policies.
One among these that obtained greater than 100,000 views on X simply 4 hours after being posted on Telegram confirmed a phony New York Metropolis billboard selling made-up insurance policies.
“MTAC has noticed, in three consecutive US presidential elections, synchronized shifts by all Russian affect actors to give attention to denigrating the Democratic candidate within the last 90 days earlier than election day,” Redmond asserts. “MTAC assesses this synchronization on themes and messages outcomes from top-down path from the highest of the Kremlin.”
Moreover, a Russian group led by a Federal Safety Service (FSB) officer that Microsoft tracks as Ruza Flood — the US authorities calls this disinformation effort Doppelgänger, and earlier this month seized 32 web domains owned by this crew — would not present any indicators of slowing down its cyber-influence operations.
“Within the days following the US authorities’s seizures of Ruza Flood’s internet domains, we noticed this actor transferring media shops from seized domains to new ones, the place content material can once more be readily accessed,” Microsoft wrote.
This gang makes use of typosquatted domains – websites with names which might be near respectable ones — reminiscent of washingtonpost.pm relatively than the actual washingtonpost.com – to trick viewers into believing they’re studying and watching content material produced by respected journos.
One among Doppelgänger’s schemes to get Trump again within the White Home, as detailed in a 277-page affidavit [PDF] used to acquire a warrant to grab the 32 web sites, is named the Good Previous USA Mission [PDF].
“It is sensible for Russia to place a most effort to make sure that the US Political Celebration A perspective (firstly, the opinion of Candidate A supporters) wins over the US public opinion,” based on this challenge.
Whereas the candidates’ names and political events have been redacted, the remainder of the doc makes it clear that Celebration A is the Republican Celebration and Candidate A is Trump.
The aim of the plan outlined within the doc is: “To safe victory of a US Political Celebration A candidate (Candidate A or one in every of his present inner social gathering opponents) on the US Presidential elections to be held in November of 2024.”®