Multiple Foreign Powers Targeted 2024 US Election with Disinformation

On Novem­ber 8, 2024, CNN report­ed that US agen­cies faced an unprece­dent­ed wave of elec­tion inter­fer­ence from Rus­sia, Iran, and Chi­na, includ­ing bomb threats that dis­rupt­ed polling sta­tions in swing states. The arti­cle begins:

Fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors are run­ning down email address­es from Russ­ian inter­net domains that were used to make a slew of non-cred­i­ble bomb threats across swing states on Elec­tion Day. The effort under­lines that though the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is over, US intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies are still grap­pling with and ana­lyz­ing a del­uge of dis­in­for­ma­tion and online threats aimed at sow­ing dis­cord among voters…

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Key Points:

1. Fed­er­al agen­cies faced unprece­dent­ed lev­els of for­eign dis­in­for­ma­tion, respond­ing faster than in pre­vi­ous elec­tions to debunk fake content.
2. Elec­tion Day bomb threats appear linked to ear­li­er threats against LGBTQ+ events using Russ­ian email domains.
3. Mul­ti­ple for­eign actors, includ­ing Rus­sia, Iran, and Chi­na, con­duct­ed sophis­ti­cat­ed online influ­ence oper­a­tions tar­get­ing voters.
4. Despite dis­rup­tion attempts, includ­ing net­work scan­ning and swat­ting calls, no suc­cess­ful breach­es of elec­tion sys­tems were reported.