US officials sound alarm about foreign interference in election as fake video aimed at Harris surfaces

New York, Nov 4 (IANS) As a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence-driven fake video reaching to the highest level of the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket surfaced, US officials have sounded the alarm about foreign interference in Tuesday’s election and beyond.

Iran is backing Vice President Kamala Harris and Russia is rooting for former President Donald Trump, while China is involved in Congressional elections, they said.

Three US Intelligence agencies said that Moscow “manufactured a video falsely accusing an individual associated with the Democratic presidential ticket of taking a bribe from a US entertainer.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in their statement did not identify the persons in the video.

However, ABC TV network quoting the FBI said that one of the persons in the fake video was Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff, a lawyer specialising in the entertainment business.

The agencies said, “This Russian activity is part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans.”

Earlier the ODNI said that “Russian influence actors” had gone after the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz.

They created and “amplified” fake content about “illegal activity committed by the Democratic vice-presidential candidate during his earlier career”, the agency said.

When Intelligence agencies reviewed the electronic media associated with the fake video, they found “several indicators of manipulation that are consistent with the influence efforts and tactics Russian actors have used”, it said.

The meddling in US politics will continue after the tightly-contested election, sowing doubts about its legitimacy, an official from the ODNI told reporters in a briefing last month.

“The Intelligence Community (IC) continues to assess that Russia prefers the former president and Iran prefers the Vice President”, the official said.

After the elections for president and Congress close, “in such a contested post-election atmosphere, foreign actors probably will use tactics similar to those they are using today to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and election processes, as well as to further exacerbate divisions among Americans”, the official said.

In the most brazen example of interference, Iranian agents allegedly hacked into Trump’s campaign and leaked the material they stole to several media outlets and Democratic Party operatives.

In September, the US charged three hackers connected with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in connection with the hacking.

While media outlets like Politico refused to run stories based on the leaked information given to them, last week a Political Action Committee that supports Democrats and is virulently anti-Trump posted on its website some of the documents from the Trump campaign and related entities.

The leaks posted by the group, American Muckrakers, include research on candidates for vice president like Florida Senator Marco Rubio, minutes of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, and notes that Trump used when calling donors.

The group would not comment on the source of the leaked documents.

The ODNI official said that Cuba was also involved along with Russia and China in trying to influence Congressional, state, and local elections.

They “are supporting or denigrating” candidates based on their evaluation of how “an individual candidate’s foreign policy positions affect their national security interest”, the official said.