Russia has created a fake news agency to influence elections in the United States, according to American intelligence agencies and Microsoft, as reported by Slavicsac.
According to U.S. intelligence, Russian propaganda groups launched a website called KBSF-TV, which published a fabricated article about U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on September 2. The article claimed that in 2011, Harris allegedly struck a 13-year-old girl, leaving her paralyzed.
It turned out that the article, the video, and the website itself were fabricated. The website was registered in Iceland and was used for other fraudulent activities. Despite this, the fake news quickly spread on social media, including X.com (formerly Twitter), where the hashtag #HitAndRunKamala garnered over 2.7 million views.
Microsoft stated in its report that this campaign is backed by a Russian group known as Storm-1516, linked to the Kremlin. They use actors to create fake news and conspiracy theories aimed at discrediting election candidates.
- Storm-1516, identified by news reports as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm, produced and disseminated two inauthentic videos, each generating millions of views. One video depicted an attack by alleged Harris supporters on a supposed Trump rally attendee, while another used an on-screen actor to fabricate false claims about Harris’s involvement in a hit-and-run accident. This second video was laundered through a website masquerading as a local San Francisco media outlet — which was only created days beforehand.
- Storm-1679, a newer group reportedly aligned with the Kremlin, pivoted its focus from producing content about the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to publishing false videos discrediting Vice President Harris. One of the videos, which was shared on X shortly after it was published to Telegram, depicted a fake New York City billboard advancing false claims about Harris’ policies. The X post received more than 100,000 views in the four hours after it was published on Telegram.
With the start of the 2024 election campaign, Russia has ramped up its interference efforts aimed at undermining confidence in Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris.
U.S. intelligence agencies note that Russia is actively using artificial intelligence to create misleading content in various formats: text, video, images, and audio. Microsoft warns that Russian cyber groups will continue to spread propaganda and fake news ahead of the elections, using social media and other online platforms.
"Collectively, these three nation states — Iran, China and Russia — demonstrate the complexities of foreign interference that the US faces, and the need for the public to remain vigilant against these evolving threats," written in a Microsoft blog.
