(Bloomberg) — After President Joe Biden ended his campaign to return to the White House, Russian efforts to influence the US election shifted to smearing Vice President Kamala Harris with doctored and misleading videos, according to new research from Microsoft Corp.
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In late August and early September, two Russian groups began publishing videos that pushed conspiracy theories about the new Democratic presidential nominee, including a bogus claim that Harris was involved in a hit-and-run car crash, the company said in a report published Tuesday. The groups posted videos that maligned Harris on social media, and one of them tried to use a website posing as a local US news outlet to promote one of the videos, Microsoft said.
One of the videos garnered millions of views, researchers said. Microsoft didn’t comment on the campaign’s effectiveness.
The report outlines recent developments in the ongoing efforts by American adversaries to spread false information — and deploy cyberattacks — to push their political preferences and sow discord in the US ahead of the general election in November.
Clint Watts, general manager of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, wrote in a blog post accompanying the report that Russian influence operations initially struggled with how to handle Biden’s exit from the race, before directing those efforts at Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.
“The shift to focusing on the Harris-Walz campaign reflects a strategic move by Russian actors aimed at exploiting any perceived vulnerabilities in the new candidates,” Watts wrote.
The Russian government has long denied accusations of meddling in US election.
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