Russian disinformation peddlers are targeting Harris-Walz campaign with fake videos, Microsoft says

Russian disinformation peddlers are producing videos targeting the Harris-Walz campaign with false and disparaging claims, Microsoft said Tuesday.

At least three Russian disinformation actors have been working to denigrate the Harris-Walz campaign, Microsoft said. One is a “marketing” firm that the Justice Department indicted this month, while Microsoft identified the other two only by pseudonyms.

A spokesperson for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.

Some of the disinformation comes in the form of two videos that have been disseminated since late August, Microsoft said. One purports to show two Black men or boys kicking the shoes of a bloodied, crying white woman or girl who wears a Trump shirt. No one’s face is shown.

NBC News has viewed an upload of that video posted to X, which Microsoft confirmed is the alleged Russian disinformation. The video was live and had more than 49 million views Tuesday.

Darren Linvill, a professor and director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson who tracks Russian disinformation, said the video and the group that made it “hits several notes that are familiar to Russian disinformation operations.” 

“It is appealing to an extremist world view, is overtly racist, plays into stereotypes, and it serves to further entrench certain viewers in their perhaps already existing beliefs,” Linvill said.

The other video uses an actor to pretend to work for a nonexistent San Francisco news outlet to falsely claim that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, had paralyzed a girl in 2011 by hitting her with her car, Microsoft said. 

Linvill said the videos fit into a pattern that’s been established by Russia in previous elections, referring to efforts by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) ahead of the 2016 presidential election. 

The IRA, widely referred to as a “troll factory,” invested substantial resources into dividing Americans in 2016. That largely consisted of dozens of IRA employees using social media to pretend to be Americans with extreme political views, according to analyses of their tactics. 

The report comes after the U.S. accused the Kremlin of running a multifaceted disinformation campaign to boost former President Donald Trump and disparage Harris. That alleged effort included a Russian state media outlet, RT, covertly funding popular right-wing influencers through a media network that appears to be Tenet Media and a separate operation to steer Americans to fake news sites that resemble real ones.

In a call with reporters in July to discuss foreign governments’ efforts to influence the election in November, an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that Russia would have to recalibrate its strategy to target Harris now that President Joe Biden was no longer running for re-election.

Intelligence officials have also consistently said that Russia prefers candidates who don’t seek to undermine its invasion of Ukraine. Harris has said she would continue to support the Biden administration’s arms support for Ukraine. Trump, who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, twice refused to say in his debate with Harris last week that he wants Ukraine to win the war.

Officials have said that Iran, in contrast to Russia, aims to hurt Trump and his chances in the election. The FBI and other agencies said in August that Iran was behind an operation that hacked Trump’s campaign and tried to share stolen documents with some American journalists through an online persona, though so far those documents have not been published. The Justice Department plans to file charges over that operation. Iranian authorities have denied interfering in the election.

The U.S. intelligence community believes that China, another country often accused of influence operations, aims to destabilize U.S. belief in the democratic process and influence the outcome of smaller races but does not plan to support either Trump or Harris this year.

In its report, Microsoft said that it had observed a China-linked influence actor publishing both anti-Harris and anti-Trump content, which the company said is indicative of an effort to sow general confusion and doubt among American voters rather than affect a particular candidate.