Russian operatives have in recent weeks intensified their online attacks on Harris’ campaign by producing and disseminating videos promoting “outlandish conspiracy theories” aimed at stoking US racial and political divisions, Microsoft researchers said this week.
At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday on foreign meddling in US elections, tech executives from Microsoft, Meta and Google touted their work to shut down fake accounts set up by Russian, Iranian and Chinese operatives on their platforms.
But multiple lawmakers on the committee worried that not enough was being done by the tech platforms on the issue. The panel invited social media platform X to testify, but the company did not send a representative, according to Senate Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner.
An X spokesperson told CNN in an email that its invited witness to the hearing was its former head of global affairs, Nick Pickles, who resigned on September 6.
US tech companies have made “uneven” progress in curbing foreign disinformation on their platforms since the 2016 election, Warner said at the hearing.
“Too many of the companies have dramatically cut back on their own efforts to prohibit false information [from foreign sources],” the Virginia Democrat said.
Microsoft President Brad Smith told the lawmakers that “every day we know that there is a presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.”
“But this has also become an election of Iran versus Trump, and Russia versus Harris,” he added.
The Iranian hackers did breach the email account of longtime Trump ally Roger Stone to target campaign staff in June, CNN has reported. US officials believe the hackers work for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Investigators believe the suspected Iranian hackers breached Stone’s account and then used that email account to try to break into the account of a senior Trump campaign official as part of a persistent effort to access campaign networks.
The Iranian government has denied US allegations that it is trying to meddle in the November election.
Russia, meanwhile, has conducted its own covert influence operations aimed at denigrating Harris’ campaign, according to US officials.
CNN previously reported that Iranian government-backed hackers this summer stole internal Trump campaign documents and shared them with news organizations. The law enforcement statement Wednesday said that the hackers’ efforts to send information to US media outlets have continued.
The hack is one of several efforts by the Iranian government attempting to “stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process,” the statement said.
Beginning on July 22, Politico reported, it had received emails that contained internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official and a research dossier the campaign had put together on Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
The New York Times and The Washington Post later reported that they, too, had been sent a similar cache, including a 271-page document on Vance dated February 23 and labeled “privileged & confidential,” that the outlets said was based on publicly available information.
“Iran hacked into my campaign. I don’t know what the hell they found. I’d like to find out, couldn’t have been too exciting, but they gave it to the Biden campaign. I can’t believe it – oh yes I can,” he said.
Iranian government-linked hackers have also previously unsuccessfully tried to hack the Biden-Harris campaign, according to US officials and private experts, but the activity disclosed Wednesday appears to be another Iranian attempt to disseminate information stolen from the Trump campaign.
Along with Russia, Iran has emerged as one of the most aggressive foreign powers trying to influence the 2024 US presidential election, according to US intelligence officials. And in doing so, Iran is using a hack-and-leak playbook that Russia used to try to sway the 2016 US election.
During the 2016 election, Trump famously called for Russia to “find” tens of thousands of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic presidential candidate. Russian military intelligence hackers did steal emails from Clinton campaign officials and the Democratic National Committee and sent them to WikiLeaks in a bid to undermine Clinton’s candidacy, according to US intelligence and Justice Department reports.
During a rally Wednesday night in New York, Trump claimed without evidence that Biden was involved in the hack despite the law enforcement statement.
CNN
