Securing Democracy Dispatch

ASD’s Co-Managing Director Rachael Dean Wilson and Senior Fellow Bret Schafer will join World Affairs Council Pittsburgh for an in-person discussion of threats to the 2024 US presidential election and lessons learned from around the world. Join us on September 25 and find out more here!

ASD is launching a dashboard to detect websites laundering content from Russian state media outlets. Using data from ASD’s Hamilton 2.0 Dashboard and the Information Laundromat, this tool will provide near real-time insight into how Russian state propaganda targets democracies’ information environments. Read more here!

“There are many examples going back to the Cold War, but certainly more recently, of Russia trying to covertly finance news organizations or content creators who produce content that’s beneficial to Russia,” Senior Fellow Bret Schafer told NBC News about the recent indictment of two RT employees for financing pro-Kremlin disinformation in the United States. This time, they have been linked to especially influential commentators, including some who have millions of followers.

Iran’s probe of both US presidential candidates’ campaign infrastructure shows that, despite any preference for a particular candidate, Tehran’s ultimate goal is to denigrate US democracy, Co-Managing Director David Salvo told CNN. Indeed, when it comes to spreading disinformation ahead of the US election, Iran is clearly “not concerned about blowback”, which allows them to “be pretty aggressive” in their efforts, Senior Fellow Bret Schafer told the New York Times.

Memes increasingly dominate today’s digital information space—and the conversation around elections and global events. Investigative Data and Research Analyst Peter Benzoni explains the meme culture surrounding US Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy in a GMF video explainer.

Russian diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week:

• Reaction to Allegations of Russian Interference: RT and the Russian government provided a now rote response to allegations that RT employees were actively involved in covert efforts to interfere in the upcoming US elections. RT published multiple articles citing comments from Russian government officials in the aftermath of the indictments and sanctions announcements, accusing the United States of trying to “cleanse the media space of inconvenient truths” and of becoming a “neoliberal dictatorship”. As is customary, the Kremlin ignored Russia’s deplorable record on press freedoms to accuse the United States of restricting “free access to information and media pluralism”. RT, for its part, provided a glib reply to the allegations, publishing a list of its suggested responses to US media inquiries about its role, including “2016 called and it wants its clichés back” and “three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT’s interference in the US elections”.
• Kursk Offensive: Roughly one month after the Ukrainian army’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast, Russian state media and intelligence-linked sites continued to frame the offensive as a “failure”. TASS reported that Russia used only a “token force” to inflict “massive casualties”, with Sputnik reporting that Ukraine has lost 9,000 troops since the invasion. Multiple Russian state media outlets also promoted alleged quotes from a Ukrainian prisoner of war who claimed that NATO participated in both the attack and supposed plans to blow up the Kursk nuclear power plant. Other outlets ran alleged quotes from a “Ukrainian prisoner” (it is unclear if it was the same prisoner or different prisoners) who alleged that Ukrainian soldiers were misled about the incursion and that they were ordered to “kill civilians”. 

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week: 

• Sullivan in Beijing: PRC diplomats and state media’s reaction to US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s trip to China last week was generally positive. CGTN called the exchanges between Sullivan and his counterparts “candid, substantive, and constructive” while a Xinhua op-ed argued that the trip showed that both sides “are making efforts (…) to get along with each other”. At the same time, PRC President Xi Jinping warned that the United States had to decide whether they were “rivals or partners,” while Foreign Minister Wang Yi implicitly admonished Washington for “acting from a position of strength”. On X, more hawkish pro-PRC talking heads denounced Sullivan’s answer to a question about PRC election interference as “BS” and derided the ineffectiveness of US sanctions.
• Africa in Beijing: This week, Beijing is hosting officials from 53 African countries for the 2024 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). For the occasion, PRC state media promoted China-Africa ties, from stories about African engineers and interpreters working in Chinese companies, to experts talking about the need for the continent to “shake off colonial legacy”. Diplomats and state media alike promoted every handshake between Xi and an African leader, with the PRC leader hailing the growth of China-Africa friendship “through generations”. On a less positive note, the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs singled out the small nation of Eswatini as the lone uninvited country over its ties with Taiwan.

DOJ disrupts two Kremlin-sponsored influence operations: The US Department of Justice (DOJ) seized 32 internet domains used in a Kremlin-sponsored influence campaign to promote Russian narratives on Ukraine and influence the 2024 US election that mimicked legitimate US news outlets and imitated American and other non-Russian citizens’ social media profiles. The same day, the DOJ also unsealed an indictment against two RT employees for funneling almost $10 million to a Tennessee-based online content creation company that published nearly 2,000 videos that earned more than 16 million views on YouTube alone. Co-Managing Director Rachael Dean Wilson said, “The slew of activity, reporting on, and prosecution of foreign attempts to interfere in US democracy should make clear that foreign interference isn’t a thing of the past. Our adversaries didn’t stop after 2016. The announcement of the faux-local and national news site takedown and the indictment of two RT employees show that the federal government is actively working to disrupt influence campaigns ahead of this election. It also builds on what we know about Russia’s operations, highlighting Russia’s willingness to use Americans, many of whom are unwitting, to achieve its geopolitical goals.”

Former aide to two N.Y. governors charged with acting as PRC agent: US federal prosecutors charged a former aide to New York Governor Kathy Hochul and former Governor Andrew Cuomo with working on behalf of the PRC and its interests, including blocking Taiwanese representatives’ access to New York state officials and removing references to the persecution of Uyghurs from speeches in exchange for bribes and favorable treatment for her business interests in China. Research Analyst Etienne Soula told the Dispatch, “This indictment brings to light yet another instance of the PRC’s blatant disregard for the processes and institutions of democratic states. The willingness of US authorities to investigate and go after such activity is laudable and can hopefully raise the costs on others who engage in similar behavior. Ideally, one can also hope that such a case will incentivize law enforcement in other democracies to follow suit and to allocate more resources to the monitoring of the PRC interference attempts.”

In Case You Missed It

• Amazon corrected an error that caused its Alexa device to list reasons to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 US presidential election when prompted, but state that it “cannot provide content” backing particular politicians when asked for reasons to vote for former President Donald Trump.
• A Russian influence campaign targeted Europeans via social media posts and domains that mimicked legitimate news outlets in an attempt to heighten criticism of aid to Ukraine and relations with the United States, an FBI document assessed.
• X shut down several accounts linked to a seemingly coordinated campaign that used stolen photos of unaffiliated European online influencers and images generated by artificial intelligence to promote content backing former US President Donald Trump.
• A PRC-linked online influence group has stepped up its efforts to influence the US elections, creating social media profiles impersonating Americans to amplify divisions on issues like homelessness and the Israel-Hamas war, according to a Graphika report.
• TikTok will expand its 2024 US election resources, promoting videos about how elections work and increasing security requirements for US politicians’ accounts.

Russian money was funneled to right-wing creators through a pro-Trump media outlet, prosecutors say. Senior Fellow Bret Schafer quoted in NBC News

Activists Charged With Pushing Russian Propaganda Go on Trial in Florida. Senior Fellow Bret Schafer quoted in The New York Times

Iran hack response shows lessons learned from 2016 election. Senior Fellow Bret Schafer quoted in AP News

AI-generated “fake” information is part of the political landscape. Senior Fellow Bret Schafer quoted in FOX 8 NOLA

A look at the Information Laundromat website analysis tool. Investigative Data and Research Analyst Peter Benzoni quoted/Information Laundromat highlighted in Digital Investigations

Campaign Hacks Blamed on Iran Draw FBI Investigation of Election Interference. Co-Managing Director David Salvo quoted in Bloomberg

GeoLegal Weekly #32 – Deepfakes and the Liar’s Dividend. Co-Managing Director David Salvo interviewed for GeoLegal Weekly newsletter

Is Iran Trying To Tip The Election Against Trump With A Recent Hack Of His Campaign. Co-Managing Director David Salvo interviewed on The Lars Larson Show

“The collaboration and coordination and focus on identifying threats to the election and addressing them using the full suite of authorities and capabilities of this whole community this time around … is in much better shape than it was in 2016. It does not mean our adversaries will not try, but we are in a much better posture in 2024.”

—Commander of the US Cyber Command and Director of the National Security Agency Timothy Haugh, during the Intelligence and National Security Alliance’s 2024 summit on August 28.

The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the author alone.