US takes down Putin’s sophisticated ‘bot farm’ that ran hundreds of fake social media accounts on X to spread anti-Western lies and propaganda

The Justice Department is claiming a victory after announcing the closure of a Kremlin-backed bot farm that was set up to sow division in the U.S. over Russian foreign policy.

According to a press release from the Department of Justice, the bot farm controlled nearly 1,000 accounts on Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

The South African billionaire has posted dozens of messages about election integrity in recent days, but has so far not mentioned the presence of politically active bot accounts on X.

“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.”

The person behind the plan is said to be a Russian citizen registered as a foreign agent with the Foreign Ministry, who was previously editor-in-chief of the state-controlled Russia Today.

“Since 2022, RT’s management has been committed to developing alternative means of disseminating information, in addition to RT’s standard news reports on television,” the Justice Ministry statement said.

‘In response, Person A led the development of software that created and managed a social media bot farm.’

Agents from Russia’s FSB security service also gained access to the bot farm, where accounts posed as Americans and posted pro-Kremlin content.

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.

A joint cybersecurity advisory from the countries involved in the operation, including Canada and Israel, calls on the tech giants behind social media sites to improve their defenses against malicious foreign agents.

“We support all forms of community engagement, civil dialogue, and a robust exchange of ideas. But those ideas should be generated by Americans, for Americans. The disruption announced today protects us from those who use unlawful means to deceive our citizens and communities,” U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino said Tuesday.

The bot farm disruption comes as US officials raise alarms about the potential impact of AI technology on this year’s elections and amid ongoing concerns about foreign influence campaigns by opponents.

Officials worry that bot farms could sway the opinions of unsuspecting voters, as happened during the 2016 presidential campaign when Russians launched a massive but covert social media trolling campaign aimed in part at helping Republican Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

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 the farm was shut down, U.S. intelligence officials said they had not seen Russia change its preference from previous presidential elections on who it would like to win this year, a U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday, indicating that Moscow once again favors Trump.

The official, who briefed reporters on US election security, did not name the former president and presumptive Republican nominee when asked who Moscow wants as the next US president.

However, he indicated that Russia favored Trump. According to him, the US intelligence community had not changed its assessments compared to previous elections.

Those assessments showed that Moscow tried to help Trump win in 2016, opens new tab against Hillary Clinton, and in 2020 against President Joe Biden through influence campaigns.

“We have not observed a shift in Russian presidential preferences from previous elections, given the role the U.S. plays with respect to Ukraine and its broader policy toward Russia,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) official said.

Trump’s campaign responded to this accusation by arguing that Biden was weak on Russia, as evidenced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“When President Trump was in the Oval Office, Russia and all of America’s adversaries were afraid because they were afraid of the United States’ response,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Trump has frequently criticized the size of US military aid to Ukraine — some $60 billion since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 — and called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “the best salesman ever.”

Two of Trump’s national security advisers have presented him with a plan to end U.S. military aid to Ukraine unless it enters into talks with Russia to end the conflict.

On NATO policy, Trump has said he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever they want” to any alliance member that doesn’t spend enough on defense, and that he wouldn’t defend them.

The NATO Charter obliges members to defend countries that are attacked.

The ODNI official gave the briefing on condition of anonymity to ODNI colleagues and officials from the FBI and the National Coordinator for Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, an agency that conducts cyber defense work for the government and works with the private sector.

He defined electoral influence as attempts to influence the outcome of elections or undermine democratic processes, while interference is attempts to disrupt the US’s ability to conduct free and fair elections.

The US has not monitored any country’s plans to “weaken or disrupt” the country’s ability to hold the November election, he said.

But Russia, he continued, has begun using social media and other means to influence specific groups of American voters in key states, “spreading divisive narratives and smearing specific politicians,” whom he did not name.

“Russia is taking a whole-of-government approach to influencing elections, including the presidential election, Congress and public opinion,” he said.

Moscow “determines which candidates they are willing to support or oppose based largely on their stance on further U.S. assistance to Ukraine and related issues,” the official said. “It’s all the tactics we’ve seen before, primarily through social media efforts” and “using American voices to amplify their narratives.”

A new intelligence assessment published this week on the ODNI website found that Russia “remains the single greatest threat to our elections” and that unnamed “Russian influential actors” are secretly planning to “influence public opinion” in swing states and “decrease U.S. support for Ukraine.”

Russia has recently attempted to influence the American public through “encrypted direct messaging channels,” the official said. He did not elaborate.

According to the official, China currently has no plans to “influence the outcome of the presidential election.”

The U.S. sees China as its main geostrategic rival. Beijing and Washington have worked to ease tensions. The Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the official, Beijing is trying to expand its capabilities to collect and monitor data from social media platforms, “probably to better understand and ultimately manipulate public opinion.”

The official called generative artificial intelligence an “accelerator of malign influence” that is increasingly being used to make videos and other content “more persuasively tailored” in the run-up to the November vote.