Microsoft says Russian operatives are ramping up attacks on Harris campaign with fake videos

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN

(CNN) — Microsoft said Tuesday that Russian operatives have in recent weeks intensified their online attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign by producing and disseminating videos promoting “outlandish conspiracy theories” aimed at stoking US racial and political divisions.

One of the inauthentic videos, which Microsoft said had been viewed millions of times, claimed to show Harris supporters attacking an attendee of a Donald Trump rally. Another video falsely claimed that Harris paralyzed a young girl in a 2011 hit-and-run accident. Russian operatives promoted the latter story through a website pretending to be a local San Francisco media outlet, Microsoft researchers said.

Both videos were still accessible on X as of Tuesday afternoon, with one post of the video garnering 1.5 million views on its own. CNN has requested comment from the social media platform.

The report is the latest evidence that Kremlin-linked trolls and digital operatives are ramping up their efforts to denigrate Harris’s campaign just weeks before the presidential election. US intelligence agencies warned in July that Russia planned to “covertly use social media” to try to sway public opinion and undermine support for Ukraine in swing states.

Russia’s preferences for the presidential race haven’t shifted since 2020 or 2016, when Moscow conducted a range of influence operations aimed at denigrating Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, respectively, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

CNN has requested comment on the Microsoft report from the Harris-Walz campaign and from the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC.

Russians ‘struggled to pivot’ to attacking Harris

There was an initial period after Biden withdrew from the presidential race in July when Russian influence operations“struggled to pivot” to find new ways to target the Democratic ticket, according to Microsoft. But then, in late August and early September, the videos attacking Harris and her supporters emerged.

“The shift to focusing on the Harris-Walz campaign reflects a strategic move by Russian actors aimed at exploiting any perceived vulnerabilities in the new candidates,” Clint Watts, general manager of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, said in a blog post.

The research comes amid a flurry of US government action aimed at blunting Russian disinformation efforts targeting American voters in the final stretches of the presidential campaign.

The State Department last week declassified intelligence alleging that Russian state-run media outlet RT has become fully integrated into Russia’s intelligence operations around the world, including those targeting elections.

That followed an indictment unsealed by the Justice Department that accused two RT employees of funneling nearly $10 million into a US company, identified by CNN as Tenet Media, to create and amplify content that aligned with Russian interests.

US social media giant Meta on Monday announced a ban on RT over the Russian network’s “foreign interference activity.”

Iran has been the other foreign power that has actively tried to shape the US presidential campaign, according to US intelligence officials.

Tehran has conducted a covert social media activity in an effort to undercut Trump’s candidacy, US officials have said. Iranian government-backed hackers have also targeted the Trump campaign with a hack-and-leak of internal campaign documents to US media outlets, according to a statement from the FBI and other agencies.

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