Top U.S. intelligence officials say Russia, China and Iran are continuing to target voters in the U.S. with disinformation and propaganda related to the upcoming presidential election.

The Kremlin is turning to unwitting Americans and commercial public relations firms in Russia to spread disinformation about the U.S. presidential race, top intelligence officials said Monday, detailing the latest efforts by America’s adversaries to shape public opinion ahead of the 2024 election.

The warning comes after a tumultuous few weeks in U.S. politics that have forced Russia, Iran and China to revise some of the details of their propaganda playbook. What hasn’t changed, intelligence officials said, is the determination of these nations to seed the internet with false and incendiary claims about American democracy to undermine faith in the election.

“The American public should know that content that they read online — especially on social media — could be foreign propaganda, even if it appears to be coming from fellow Americans or originating in the United States,” said an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under rules set by the office of the director.

Russia continues to pose the greatest threat when it comes to election disinformation, authorities said, while there are indications that Iran is expanding its efforts and China is proceeding cautiously when it comes to 2024.

  • voluble@lemmy.world
    10·
    4 months ago

    We desperately need improved lines of communication between the state and the public regarding foreign disinformation. Like, a free newspaper that comes out every Monday with confirmed examples of foreign propaganda from the previous week. And official social media accounts that give up-to-date information. Surely it’s in the public interest to establish offices that rapidly assemble and distribute this kind of information. Finding out, ‘oh hey, that protest way back in 2022 was organized as part of a foreign interference campaign’, it’s just too late. This sort of information needs to be centralized, summarized, and rapidly disseminated.

    It’s not enough for the state to simply say ‘be cautious’. Citizens need to know what to be cautious of. A general message that you shouldn’t trust anything you see on social media, that’s actually a benefit to the propagandists creating chaos in information spaces.

    I just don’t see how the problem of disinformation gets addressed without intelligence agencies getting more modern and engaged in their approach to communication with the public.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
      4·
      4 months ago

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Engagement_Center

      In 2017, some members of Congress, including Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Chris Murphy, co-sponsors of the FY2017 NDAA, criticized the lack of funding for GEC.

      Portman and others suggested that the agency had turned a corner in 2019 when it hired Lea Gabrielle, a former Navy pilot and intelligence officer who worked for Fox News, as head of the organization. As of May 2020, GEC had a staff of only 120.

      In April 2020, the inspector general for the State Department concluded that the GEC lacked safeguards to ensure that independent organizations it was working with were acting appropriately, such as when it funded a project called “Iran Disinfo” which aggressively targeted groups including the National Iranian American Council.

      Critics of the Trump administration also cited Trump’s “lack of credibility on misinformation” as an impediment to advancing the agency’s efforts to combat fake news.

      • voluble@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 months ago

        GEC looks like a legit project, and I like how their news releases are multilingual. Thank you for sharing that.

        I note that the US Foreign Malign Influence Center is also at work in this space, and authored the alert yesterday that I think is motivating this particular news item.

        I think funding these governmental agencies, incentivizing inter-agency communication, and modernizing & centralizing the communication of their findings is something America needs badly, as well as the country I live in.

        It’s a bit crazy that the only way to look at & share the FMIC alert is via a direct link to a pdf. In order to find it, you have to already know what you’re looking for. Give 20 millennials a job with a mandate to find a way to organize and disseminate this information, and things would be so much better. Right now, a person has to be a sleuth to put these pieces together, and that’s not right.

        Anyway, I’m not taking issue with what you posted, I’m just soapboxing. An effective response to the issue of foreign disinformation campaigns seems relatively straightforward to me. The only thing missing is the political will.

      • voluble@lemmy.world
        3·
        4 months ago

        Well done. I just discovered the Media Bias Fact Check - so, thank you for that!

        Keep doing what you’re doing. Assembling this information and making it easy to access is critically important.