Michael Wilner and Gillian Brassil | (TNS) McClatchy Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — Russian actors created a pretend San Francisco information station that printed a staged video this month in an try and generate a scandal about Vice President Kamala Harris — the newest instance of Moscow’s try and denigrate the Democratic presidential nominee in her marketing campaign in opposition to former President Donald Trump, U.S. intelligence officers mentioned on Monday.
A web site posing as a nonexistent San Francisco information outlet, known as KBSF-TV, printed a narrative on Sept. 2 claiming Harris was concerned in a hit-and-run within the metropolis whereas serving as California’s legal professional basic in 2011. The story included a video through which a lady alleged that Harris was concerned within the incident, leaving her paralyzed.
The story was completely fictitious, as was the web site, registered in Iceland and created only a few weeks previous to the story’s publication. However the fabrication nonetheless unfold rapidly throughout right-wing social media.
Officers with the Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence and the FBI advised reporters Monday that the U.S. intelligence group “assesses Russian affect actors have been answerable for staging a broadly reported video through which a lady claims she was a sufferer of a hit-and-run automobile accident by the vp.”
“This content material can be in step with Russia’s broader efforts to spice up the previous president’s candidacy and denigrate the vp and the Democratic Celebration, together with via conspiratorial narratives,” one ODNI official mentioned.
The area, kbsf-tv.com, was registered via Namecheap on Aug. 20, and the registrant used an handle in Reykjavik that had been utilized in different on-line scams.
Articles on the location have been posted with out attribution and seem to take textual content from actual information shops’ tales.
On X, previously referred to as Twitter, group notes indicating the allegations have been fabricated have been appended to posts that circulated the story.
It isn’t the primary, nor will probably be the final, use of know-how aiming to unfold narratives about candidates. Microsoft, in its personal, unbiased evaluation printed final week, additionally discovered that Russian actors had switched to a playbook of denigrating the vp.
“Russia has generated essentially the most AI content material associated to the election, and has carried out so throughout all 4 mediums — textual content, photos, audio and video,” the ODNI official mentioned.
Whereas intelligence officers don’t make an evaluation of the affect of international efforts to affect or intervene with U.S. elections, the ODNI official mentioned that the intelligence group so far believes that AI-generated content material is serving to “enhance and speed up international affect operations.” It has not but grow to be a “revolutionary affect instrument,” the official mentioned.
Actors such because the Russians are deploying AI-generated content material by “laundering materials via distinguished figures, utilizing inauthentic social media accounts, creating web sites pretending to be professional information shops, or releasing supposed leaks of AI-generated content material that seem delicate or controversial,” the official added.
The Harris marketing campaign didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
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