Commentary: Progress in Countering Foreign Malign Influence on the Election
As U.S. election approached, the intelligence community pushed back harder against Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation
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Progress in Countering Foreign Malign Influence on the Election
By Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard Co-CEO, and McKenzie Sadeghi, NewsGuard AI and Foreign Influence Editor
It took until the final stretch before the U.S. election, but the U.S. intelligence community finally pushed back against Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation operatives and their efforts to undermine the U.S. elections. The foreign operatives created numerous false claims, often enhanced with AI tools to make the claims more credible, and managed to attract tens of millions of page views.
A Reality Check commentary last week noted that the intelligence community had until then debunked only a few false election claims from hostile governments. But especially during the week before the election, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), through its Foreign Malign Influence Center, accelerated its work, debunking several claims almost as quickly as they arose. Some examples:
ODNI debunked a claim that Haitian migrants illegally voted in Georgia’s Gwinnett and Fulton counties by sending the alert that “Russian influence actors manufactured a recent video that falsely depicted individuals claiming to be from Haiti and voting illegally in multiple counties in Georgia.”
In response to a video showing ballots with votes for Donald Trump being destroyed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, ODNI said it assessed “that Russian actors manufactured and amplified a recent video that falsely depicted an individual ripping up ballots in Pennsylvania, judging from information available to the [intelligence community] and prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities.”
ODNI announced that “Russian influence actors also manufactured and amplified a recent video that falsely depicted an interview with an individual claiming election fraud in Arizona, which involved creating fake overseas ballots and changing voter rolls to favor Vice President Kamala Harris.”
In all, ODNI debunked eight recent examples of false election claims by Russian and Iranian disinformation operations. It’s a big step for the U.S. government to identify and publicize these false claims, but there’s a lot more to do. The eight false claims the intelligence community called out is a fraction of the 31 false election claims that NewsGuard analysts had previously tied to Russian, Chinese, or Iranian operatives. In turn, these 31 false claims created by hostile governments are a significant percentage of the 82 false election-related claims in NewsGuard’s 2024 U.S. Election Misinformation Monitoring Center. The 31 false election claims created by hostile governments represent 38 percent of the 82 false election-related claims we’ve found and debunked.
Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation is a year-round menace, not limited to election seasons. The more fast alerts people get to debunkings of these false claims, the less influence these claims will have. It’s new for the U.S. intelligence community to be in the business of calling out foreign disinformation so publicly, but undermining disinformation from hostile governments targeting Americans and our allies is a growing requirement of national defense.
Gordon Crovitz is the Co-CEO and Co-Editor-In-Chief of NewsGuard. Previously, he was publisher of The Wall Street Journal. McKenzie Sadeghi is AI and Foreign Influence Editor of NewsGuard.
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