Heightened online misinformation and disinformation campaigns by Russia, China, and Iran could mislead voters in next year’s presidential election and spark real-world violence, cybersecurity firm Recorded Future warned in a report released on Thursday.
The Russian war in Ukraine, Iran-supported Hamas fighting Israel, and China’s “increasing assertiveness” toward Taiwan are motivating increasing activity heading into the election, the Somerville firm said in the 15-page report.
The three countries will spread misinformation on social media in an attempt to increase polarization among US voters, undermine confidence in election results, and weaken support for providing aid to US allies, the report said. The false information will also aim to trigger violence from extremist groups in the United States, the report warned.
“During the past year, domestic violent extremists (DVEs) have rebroadcast several state-sponsored malign influence operations that align with their ideological goals and have produced narratives and content that has been cited in foreign malign influence operations — likely creating a feedback loop between DVE and state-sponsored influence operations,” the report noted. “Instances of US DVEs physically attacking and threatening election personnel, officials, or infrastructure are very likely.”
Recorded Future chief executive Christopher Ahlberg said his firm has also seen evidence that adversarial nations were adopting generative artificial intelligence, the technology underlying ChatGPT and other seemingly creative apps, to make their attacks even more potent.
Recorded Future analysts monitor the tactics of criminal hackers and state-sponsored groups across the internet.
“As our adversaries advance their AI capabilities, we must accelerate our investments in strategic technologies to safeguard our democracy against those who seek to exploit it,” Ahlberg said in an email to the Globe.
The report’s warnings did not come as a surprise. Russia and other countries have relentlessly launched disinformation attacks around the past three national election cycles. After Russia’s efforts around the 2016 election in support of then-candidate Donald Trump, a US Intelligence Community Assessment warned that such information attacks should be considered the “new normal.”
Brian Liston, lead analyst on the Recorded Future report, said US adversaries could use generative AI programs to create more convincing false information quickly with fewer resources. “There’s just an insane amount of growth in generative AI and the use of that technology for all sorts of different content, from texts to video and audio,” he said.
The United States may be more vulnerable than ever to misinformation and disinformation campaigns because of cutbacks at social media companies and restrictions on efforts to police false posts.
Elon Musk slashed staff that moderated posts on Twitter, now called X, while Meta has said it will allow advertising including false claims about the 2020 election. And a federal court ruling in July banned most US government agencies from contacting social media companies to warn them about misinformation campaigns — though the ruling is on hold while the Supreme Court considers the case.
“There’s always that risk of malign content popping out as a result of reduced moderation policies or changes in policies, or [a reduced] amount of communication between the federal government and social media companies,” Liston said, without naming specific social media companies. “I think we’re seeing a lot of that right now. Just across the board.”
Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him @ampressman.