Russia has mounted huge social media operation to manipulate the public and influence the outcome of the US presidential election in favor of Trump, say spies

A new report shows that Russian intelligence services have once again targeted the US elections in an attempt to install former President Donald Trump in the White House.

Several U.S. officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in Washington confirmed the existence of the Russian plan when they spoke with The Wall Street Journal.

“We have not observed a shift in Russian preferences for the presidential race compared to previous elections,” a senior official is quoted as saying. Several security services have previously confirmed that similar Kremlin attacks on American democracy benefited Trump.

The report also notes a smaller Iranian influence aimed at sowing discontent and encouraging people in the US to protest Israel’s war in Gaza, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, said this week.

According to the contract, the WSJ report says that China will not engage in sabotage, as Beijing considers both US President Joe Biden and Trump to be hostile. That decree goes so far as to prohibit government officials from even stating a preference in the election.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long claimed that his security services do not interfere in foreign elections

Russian agents are again trying to install Donald Trump in the White House

In addition to the online activity, the report alleges that agents are attempting to influence members of Congress. However, the scale of the operation is smaller than the 2016 operation that helped Trump rise to power.

The Iranian operation looks more like that of a “chaos agent,” Haines said.

“Americans participating in protests are expressing their views on the Gaza conflict in good faith. This information does not indicate otherwise.”

Haines added that many protesters may not know they are talking to agents of a foreign government.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department claimed a victory after agents successfully busted a Russian bot farm.

Officials described the internet operation as part of an ongoing effort to sow division in the US by creating fictitious social media profiles claiming to belong to authentic Americans.

The profiles are in fact intended to further the goals of the Russian government, including by spreading disinformation about the war with Ukraine.

The scheme was set up in 2022 after a chief editor at RT, a Russian state-funded media organization that has registered with the Justice Ministry as a foreign agent, helped develop technology for a so-called social media bot farm, security officials said.

It received the backing and financial approval of the Kremlin, with an officer from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) heading a private intelligence agency that spread disinformation on social media through a network of fake accounts.

President Joe Biden continues to struggle in the polls against Trump as he also faces allegations of cognitive decline

RT’s press service did not directly respond to a question about the allegations.

The bot farm disruption comes as U.S. officials are raising alarms about the potential impact of AI technology on this year’s elections, as well as concerns that foreign influence campaigns by opponents could sway the opinions of unsuspecting voters.

This happened during the 2016 presidential campaign, when Russians launched a massive but covert social media trolling campaign aimed in part at helping Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“Today’s actions are the first to disrupt a Russian-sponsored, generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

“Russia intended to use this bot farm to spread AI-generated foreign disinformation. Using AI, they intended to scale their work to undermine our partners in Ukraine and influence geopolitical narratives favorable to the Russian government.”

According to the Justice Department, among the fake messages was a video posted by an alleged resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the video, Russian President Vladimir Putin says that parts of Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania were “gifts” from the Russian Liberation Forces to those countries during World War II.

In another case, the Justice Department said, someone posing as a U.S. voter responded to a federal candidate’s social media posts about the war in Ukraine with a video of Putin justifying Russia’s actions.

As part of the disruption, the Justice Department seized two domain names and searched 968 accounts on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

According to a joint cybersecurity advisory published Tuesday by US, Dutch and Canadian authorities, the software was used to spread disinformation to countries including Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Ukraine and Israel.

The advisory said the software, known as Meliorator, only worked on X until June last year, but that its functionality could likely be extended to other social media networks.