The U.S. has a new strategy for combating foreign election interference, but will it work?
Last week, a video popped up on social media falsely claiming to show someone ripping up ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Last week, a video popped up on social media falsely claiming to show someone ripping up ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In a matter of hours, the clip went viral, pulling in hundreds of thousands of views after a now-deleted post on X.
In a break with past practice, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials decided to quickly issue a statement the day after the video appeared, saying Russian operatives “manufactured and amplified” the material as part of a wider campaign to divide Americans and “raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election.”
The swift response, which was followed by another alert on Friday citing a second Russian-made video falsely claiming voter fraud, underscored how intelligence and FBI officials have forged a new strategy to combat the onslaught of false information from Russia and other foreign adversaries.
Scarred by their experience eight years ago when a Kremlin election interference campaign caught federal authorities off guard, intelligence agencies and the Justice Department are moving faster to expose and disrupt disinformation operations to try to knock foreign actors off balance, according to current and former officials.
Instead of relying on flagging suspected foreign disinformation posts to social media companies, U.S. authorities are declassifying information about foreign election interference in an unprecedented way, seizing web domains and issuing indictments that have exposed the mechanics of Russian and Iranian information warfare, officials and researchers said.
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