Intel officials: Moscow built U.S. influencer networks, danger growing from Iran ahead of vote

U.S. intelligence officials said hostile foreign nations are escalating efforts to influence the upcoming elections, including through Russian-built networks of American influencers and stepped-up Iranian cyber operations.

Russia is the most active foreign threat to manipulate voters, the officials told reporters on Friday. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the Russian-controlled RT had assembled networks of American and other Western personalities to create and spread pro-Russian narratives.

Officials said the influencers aim to boost former President Donald Trump’s bid for the White House and denigrate incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris.

“These actors, among others, are supporting Moscow’s efforts to influence voter preferences in favor of the former president and diminish the prospects of the vice president,” an ODNI official said.

ODNI officials refused to answer questions regarding whether they had spoken with Mr. Trump or anyone on his campaign about the foreign threats. The officials told reporters in July that they “conducted outreach” to presidential candidates but said Friday that they only “offered briefings” to campaigns.

In August, Mr. Trump told the British-based Daily Mail that he was refusing intelligence briefings with U.S. officials because he suspected they would leak the content of the meetings and blame him.

As evidence of Russia’s operations, intelligence officials pointed to the Justice Department case announced Wednesday accusing two RT employees of covertly funding and publishing videos to advance Russia’s interests. Alongside RT, U.S. intelligence officials said organizations sanctioned by the federal government, including the Social Design Agency and ANO Dialog, supported Moscow’s agenda.

U.S. officials emphasized that they had seen no attempts to degrade or disrupt the ability to hold the vote.

Iran’s covert influence operations are similar to Russia’s, officials said. Tehran is relying on fake social media personas to divide voters in the U.S. at a greater tempo than previously seen.

“The [intelligence community] assesses that Iran is making a greater effort than in the past to influence this year’s elections, even as its tactics and approaches are similar to prior cycles,” an ODNI official said. “Like Russia, Iran has a multipronged approach that looks to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process.”

The U.S. intelligence community’s election security update for September notes that Iran has a “suite of tools at its disposal.”

Tehran has already deployed some of its cyber tools, including for a hack-and-leak operation against Mr. Trump’s campaign, U.S. intelligence officials said.

Although U.S. government officials are sounding the alarm about Iran’s cyber capabilities, Microsoft is not convinced that Tehran’s tools match the standard set by Moscow and Beijing.

Microsoft Threat Analysis Center’s Clint Watts said his team is closely studying Russia, Iran and China’s cyber and influence operations and has spotted some glaring differences in how each adversary is deploying artificial intelligence as a weapon.

Mr. Watts told attendees at the Billington CyberSecurity Summit that the Russians recognize “they need to use their own tools from the start rather than Western tools because they’re afraid they’ll get knocked off those systems.”

China knows it can insource needed tools, but Iran cannot, Mr. Watts said.

“A weakness of Iran in particular and why they’re further behind [is that] they’ve tried different tools, [but] they just can’t get access to most of them, for the most part,” Mr. Watts said. “So it’s kind of a dynamic between application and access, and I think a long-term trend just to look at is who has AI or can develop the tools on scale more quickly, and it’s the U.S. and China.”

U.S. intelligence officials told reporters on Friday that China is taking a much different approach than Russia and Iran to influence voters.

“China is also continuing its long-standing efforts to build relationships with U.S. officials and entities at state and local levels because it perceives Washington as largely opposed to China,” an ODNI official said. “This view likely informs Beijing’s greater interest in some nonpresidential races.”

The U.S. officials assessed China’s actions on the heels of the arrest of a former deputy chief of staff to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul accused of working as an influence agent of the Chinese Communist Party.

U.S. officials say they are on guard for an increasing number of nations looking to influence the November vote.

While focusing on Russia, Iran and China, the U.S. intelligence community is becoming more vocal about other countries looking to meddle.

“We are seeing a number of countries considering activities that, at a minimum, test the boundaries of election influence,” the intelligence community said in its election security update. “Such activities include lobbying political figures to try to curry favor with them in the event they are elected to office.”