Russia-backed disinfo groups target Harris-Walz campaign, Microsoft says

Kremlin spin doctors have shifted their influence and disinformation strategies toward Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s White House ticket, standing up fabricated videos and other sham content in an effort to discredit the campaign, new Microsoft findings say.

The move is reflective of Moscow’s strategy to exploit any perceived vulnerabilities about the Democratic candidates — who entered the race just this summer after President Joe Biden made a historic decision to not run for a second term — according to Clint Watts, head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center that authored the Tuesday report.

In late August and earlier this month, one of the influence collectives produced and spread inauthentic videos. One video, according to Microsoft, depicted alleged Harris supporters attacking what the video said was a Trump rally attendee, which received millions of views online.

Another video deployed by the operatives, dubbed Storm-1516, “used an on-screen actor to fabricate false claims that Harris paralyzed a girl in a 2011 hit-and-run accident,” the findings said. The video was pushed out through a website masquerading as a San Francisco-based news outlet that was stood up just days beforehand, said Microsoft. 

The report likely refers to BSF-San Francisco News. Numerous fact checkers earlier this month found that site to have been just created and assertions around the accident to be false. A video appearing to show the fake accident victim coming forward has been taken down on the X platform.

A separate Russian group labeled Storm-1679 disseminated a video on Telegram that depicted a fake New York City billboard which spread conspiracies about the Harris campaign’s policies on transgender rights. It received 100,000 videos on X just four hours after landing on Telegram, according to Microsoft.

Telegram “is not an effective platform for the spread of misinformation as it does not use algorithms to promote sensational content. Users receive only the information to which they explicitly subscribe,” a company spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW. Telegram is “developing a fact-checking tool that will allow national fact-checking agencies to add verified information to posts for users in their country,” the spokesperson added. 

X and representatives for the Harris campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Russia’s foreign ministry also did not return a comment.

A third Russian group dubbed Volga Flood, whose covertly-run accounts are branded as military blogs, is actually a Kremlin-backed “media propaganda enterprise,” Microsoft says.

The group is “forward-thinking and has shown the ability to adapt quickly to shifting US political discussion, a capability that should be closely monitored during breaking news events related to the 2024 US presidential election.”

A fourth entity, Ruza Flood, has been linked to recent Justice Department and intelligence disclosures connecting the group to a major disruption of a Kremlin-backed operation aimed at influencing the presidential election. Ruza’s platforms were among the 32 internet domains seized by the FBI as part of the operation, but in the days following the takedown, the group has been seen “moving media outlets from seized domains to new ones, where content can again be readily accessed,” the findings say.

The U.S. intelligence community in July assessed that Russia has not changed its political interests from previous elections and is aiming to sway U.S. votes in favor of former president Donald Trump.

On Friday, the State Department said that Russia’s state-owned RT news agency has grown into a sophisticated, key arm of the Kremlin’s military intelligence network. An official last week also doubled down on the intelligence community’s earlier assessments, saying that RT and other Russia-backed actors are “supporting Moscow’s efforts to influence voter preferences in favor of the former president and diminish the prospects of the vice president.” 

Election interference concerns are back on the table again after the intelligence community confirmed last month that Iranian hackers breached Trump’s campaign. Criminal charges against individuals tied to Iran’s efforts are expected soon, the Washington Post reported last Thursday.