Voters in the US are facing down a barrage of disinformation from nefarious foreign actors, fueled by sophisticated artificial intelligence, said Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner, Oct. 22, at an Ethnic Media Services news briefing.
“Our adversaries, China, Russia, Iran in particular, have realized it is effective and cheap to spread misinformation and disinformation at a greater level than before,” said Warner, a Democrat who represents Virginia in the Senate.
Tim Walz kerfuffle
Earlier this month, a video posted to X accused Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz of sexually abusing a male student. Within minutes, the post went viral, generating 5.3 million hits.
In the video, a man named Matthew Metro claimed that Walz, a former school teacher, sexually assaulted him when he came out to him as gay. In a separate live-stream on the social media platform Rumble, another man accused Walz of abusing him when he was a student in the Foreign Leadership Exchange program.
Storm 1516
A statement from the US Director of National Intelligence attributed both posts to the work of Russian agents. Several news agencies identified the posts as the work of Storm1516, a Russian propagandist group.
At the news briefing, Warner lauded the intelligence community for getting word out quickly on the Walz deep fake.
“Russia wants to undermine (Democratic presidential nominee Kamala) Harris. Iran wants to undermine (Republican Presidential nominee Donald) Trump. China is more focused on non-national issues and not at the presidential level as much,” said Warner. “These are sophisticated adversaries.”
Post election manipulation
The Senator said he was increasingly concerned about foreign manipulation post election, such as deep fake technology being used to create an artificial image of an election official appearing to destroy ballots.
Such fears are heightened given the closeness of the presidential race and potential delays in announcing the winner, creating opportunities for bad actors to sow doubt about the eventual outcome.
Russia has used AI to interfere in previous US elections, said Warner. In 2016, much of the disinformation targeted Black voters. In this election cycle, Russia has targeted the Latino and Jewish communities for deep fakes, he said.
“If you see something on the internet that doesn’t seem right, take a deep breath and please don’t amplify something that may be misinformation generated by a foreign service,” said Warner, who then took questions from ethnic media reporters. A few appear here, edited for brevity. The entire news conference can be watched below.
EMS: Are you seeing misinformation coming via our allies, Israel and the Ukraine, who obviously have a lot at stake in this election?
Warner: There are efforts by a number of nation states including our allies and frenemies. What we are not seeing is the level of blatant misrepresentation that we’re seeing from Iran and Russia on the presidential level, China more focused at some of the down ballot races, North Korea some, but not nearly as sophisticated.
Elena Kuzetsnova, Slavic Sac: Do you and your committee see the biggest threat coming from the Kremlin in Russia during this election? Is it bigger than in 2016 or 2020?
Warner: In 2016, Russian misinformation and disinformation caught the American government and the social media platforms off guard. I still remember very distinctly in the aftermath of the 2016 election, when I started to raise these concerns, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said that if any politician thought that Russia was interfering on Facebook, they didn’t get it. Well, he had to eat his words.
Most social media companies have since cut back their content moderation.
And then you have platforms like X or TikTok that have very little screening at all. And in the case of X, it feels like even the owner of X (Elon Musk) sometimes spreads misinformation. So 2024, I think we’re trying to get the information out quicker.
We didn’t see artificial intelligence tools used in 2020 or 2016. AI can do this at scale and speed, and Russia is very good at this.
Henrietta Burroughs, East Palo Alto Today: Why are social media sites cutting back on their content moderators?
Warner: I think it was a financial decision of all these firms to cut back. Now, they say they are using artificial intelligence tools to do more moderation. I don’t know if I fully accept that.
We did get 27 companies to agree that they would try to take down deep fakes in political campaigns. They did that in a voluntary agreement in Munich. (The Munich Accords, signed Feb. 16, 2024)
Even though the federal government can not pass any law that prevents candidates’ images being manipulated by artificial intelligence, a number of states have passed laws. And they include Texas, Florida, Alabama, and some more traditional Democratic states. And that’s good news.
Myong Sool Chang, The Boston Korea: I have read reports about North Korea’s military involvement in Ukraine and South Korea’s potential consideration of sending troops. Do you think this geopolitical development could impact the outcome of this election?
Warner: The intelligence community is trying to figure out whether we’ve actually seen North Korean troops move into Russia. As of yesterday, I don’t think there had been any actual evidence of some of the reports that there were North Korean troops inside of Ukraine itself. So some of those reports are not true.
Tanay Gokhale, India Currents: Is there disinformation originating from India, especially given the Modi-Trump relationship and the recent diplomatic fallout because of allegations that India is committing transnational repression in Canada and the U.S.?
Warner: We have not seen Indian government disinformation. But it is a fair question to ask. We have a vibrant Indian American press in the United States. And I need to make sure we are checking all those outlets. But to date, I have no evidence of Indian government misinformation.
Carlos Roa, Te Lo Cuento News: Are there plans to tackle possible violence spread by disinformation?
Warner: The ability to actually have violence on the street is real. And I particularly worry about it. This election is as close as we expect it to be. The appearance through a deep fake of an election official destroying ballots or miscounting could spark violence. And it’s why we need to get ahead of this as quickly as possible.
I want the intelligence community to declassify as much as possible. The amount of declassified materials they’ve done on the recent incident about Governor Walz is light years ahead of where they were in terms of willing to declassify even two years ago.
Orhan Akkurt, Zaman Amerika: Is the U.S. government taking all precautions to strengthen both physical and cyber security at polling and voting locations?
Warner: We have spent an enormous amount of time, effort, and money to strengthen the physical protection around voting, making sure there’s bulletproof glass and other protections for election workers.
In terms of cyber security, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has done a good job of continuing to work with the election infrastructure.
We don’t all vote into a central voting tally the way, for example, they do in Venezuela or in many nation states. You can’t hack into our election system as easily as maybe other nations. That’s the good news. The bad news is, though, when candidates and individuals continue to make baseless claims about voting systems the way they have about the company Dominion.
At the end of the day, our adversaries’ overwhelming goal is to undermine American confidence in our democracy.
