The Making of the President 2024: Foreign Interference in the Election
According to a number of US intelligence agencies, foreign interference in the upcoming Presidential election is a real concern, with China, Russia, and Iran being the three nations most likely to be involved in such conduct. Methods of election interference have included propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation campaigns using inauthentic accounts and websites on social media and the internet; successful and unsuccessful attempts to hack presidential campaigns; the promotion and denigration of specific candidates and causes; and the posting of divisive content and conspiracy theories to cause domestic unrest and criticize the United States and democracy more broadly.
In March 2021, the National Intelligence Council released a report that found Russia and Iran had carried out operations to influence the 2020 election. It also stated that China conducted similar efforts during the 2022 midterms. A declassified U.S. intelligence report released in December 2023 found with "high confidence" that a "diverse and growing group of foreign actors" including China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba had all interfered in the 2022 midterms with influence campaigns on social media. These campaigns were designed to advance the interests their respective nations, increase social divisions, and shake confidence in democracy, voting, and the result of elections.
U.S. intelligence officials claim that Chinese interference has become more aggressive in recent months, focusing on American policy towards Taiwan as well as undermining "confidence in elections, voting and the U.S. in general." Iran was also described as more aggressive than in the past, while Russia was described as remaining the top threat. Iranian interference is described as attempting to tip the election against Donald Trump, who they blame for his withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, and the 2020 assassination of Quassim Suleimani. Iran has also targeted the Kamala Harris campaign, causing intelligence agencies to conclude that Iran's goal is really that of sowing internal discord and discrediting the democratic system in the United States more broadly in the eyes of the world.
U.S. intelligence has described Russian interference as supporting Donald Trump, considering him to be less likely to continue arming Ukraine. China, Russia, and Iran have all promoted disinformation criticizing Harris. FBI officials have stated that Russia, Iran, and China are using generative artificial intelligence tools to create and promote divisive messages, photos, video, and audio content to engage in covert influence campaigns. American intelligence assessments have found that Iran had covertly supported college protests against the war in Gaza using social media posing as students and having operatives offer financial assistance. Pro-Israel groups have also spent large sums of money to support pro-Israel candidates against candidates critical of the Israeli government.
On August 28, 2024, a CNN investigation in collaboration with the Centre for Information Resilience found an orchestrated effort highlighting 56 fake, pro-Trump accounts on X using stolen and altered images of attractive young women to promote pro-Trump propaganda, conspiracy theories, and "anti-LGBTQ, anti-transgender, anti-vaccination, racist and xenophobic sentiments."
In April of this year, the New York Times reported that the Chinese government had created fake pro-Trump accounts on social media "promoting conspiracy theories, stoking domestic divisions and attacking President Biden ahead of the election in November." On April 26, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the U.S. has seen evidence of attempts to “influence and arguably interfere” with the upcoming U.S. elections, despite an earlier commitment from Chinese Premier Xi Jinping not to do so. On June 4, President Joe Biden said that there was evidence of China interfering in the 2024 elections, adding, "all the bad guys are rooting for Trump". Chinese influence operations have involved networks of fake social media users that mimic Americans on social media sites such as X and TikTok. A threat report by Mets (Facebook) stated it detected 11 networks linked to China that they described as "coordinated, inauthentic behavior. Microsoft detected attempts by Chinese actors to increase tensions amid campus protests. In August 2024, Cyber security firm CyberCX released a report that revealed Beijing-based "Green Cicada," one of the largest publicly identified networks and which featured more than 8,000 accounts on social media platform X, with a suspected intention to interfere with the US elections.
According to intelligence agencies, Russia spread disinformation ahead of the 2024 election to damage Joe Biden and the Democrats, to boost candidates supporting isolationism, and to undercut support for Ukraine aid and NATO. American intelligence agencies have assessed that Russia prefers Trump to win the election, viewing him as less likely to continue U.S. support for Ukraine. Microsoft reported that Russian intelligence have been attacking Kamala Harris on social media by the use of videos.
In August 2024, the FBI raided the homes of former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter and political advisor Dimitri Simes because of their connections to Russian state media. Indictments against Simes and his wife Anastasia Simes were announced in early September. The two were charged with laundering funds and violating sanctions in order to benefit the state-controlled broadcaster Channel One Russia, as well as violating sanctions to benefit a Russian oligarch.
On September 4, 2024, the United States publicly accused Russia of interfering in the 2024 election and announced several steps to combat Russian influence including sanctions, indictments, and seizing of the web domains used to spread propaganda and disinformation. Two employees of the Russian state-owned propaganda network RT were indicted for operating a money laundering operation that had sent at least $9.7 million to support the creation and distribution of propaganda videos on American social media. A number of right-wing podcasters and influencers who were paid for the creation of pro-Russia content were identified. As a result, YouTube removed several channels and Tenet Media, a company implicated in the affair, abruptly shut down.
On September 13, the United States, Canada, and Britain announced new sanctions to cut off financing for disinformation operations and accused Russian state-owned broadcast company RT as acting as a covert arm of Russian intelligence and taking orders from the Kremlin. On September 17, Microsoft reported that Russian operatives had intensified attacks against Kamala Harris by creating videos highlighting "outlandish conspiracy theories" aimed at stoking racial and political divisions. These included a fake video of a Harris supporter attacking an attendee at a Trump rally and another false video that claimed Harris had paralyzed a young girl in a hit-and-run accident in 2011 that was promoted through a fake website masquerading as a local San Francisco media outlet.
In May and June 2024, Iran attempted to hack both the Trump and Biden campaigns, according to Google's Threat Analysis Group. The group APT42, believed to be linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, targeted approximately twelve people associated with the Trump and Biden campaigns. It succeeded in hacking the Trump campaign but not the Biden campaign.
Microsoft alerted Trump advisor Roger Stone that his Hotmail account had been compromised and told him that it suspected Iran had done it. A few weeks after Stone learned about the hack of his Hotmail account, the FBI alerted Stone that his Gmail account had also been compromised.
In late June and early July, Iranian hackers emailed people associated with the Biden campaign, revealing an excerpt of an email the hackers had stolen from the Trump campaign. Federal investigators found no evidence that any of the recipients replied.
The hackers also leaked the stolen information to the media. On July 22, Politico received emails from a sender identified as "Robert" with internal communications from the Trump campaign, including a 271-page vetting report on vice presidential candidate J. D. Vance and another on Marco Rubio. On August 10, following Politico's report, the Trump campaign confirmed it had been hacked. On August 12, the Harris campaign acknowledged having been targeted by a failed spear phishing attack by Iran. On August 19, American intelligence agencies confirmed that Iran had hacked the Trump campaign and attempted to hack the Biden-Harris campaign.
On September 23, Reuters cited a US Intelligence official saying that Iran was trying to stoke division using both English and Spanish language messaging on polarizing issues as Israel and the conflict in Gaza as well as messaging on the presidential candidates. On September 25, US officials and lawmakers stated that Iran was attempting to assassinate Trump and former Trump administration officials, but that there was no evidence that the prior assassination attempts against Trump were related to Iran. Trump has claimed that his assassination attempts in Butler, Pennsylvania and at his golf course in Florida might have involved Iran.
On September 27, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging three men with hacking Trump's campaign.
Iran has called allegations of its interference "unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing" and that the "Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intention nor the motive to interfere with the U.S. presidential election".