NBC News is already laying the groundwork for another election loss they can blame on Russia.
In an article published Monday, the network cites former U.S. officials and cyber security experts as saying that Moscow is already attempting to tilt the 2024 election in Donald Trump’s favor.
The report explained:
The dissemination of attacks on Biden is part of a continuing effort by Moscow to undercut American military aid to Ukraine and U.S. support for and solidarity with NATO, experts said.
A similar effort is underway in Europe. France, Germany and Poland said this month that Russia has launched a barrage of propaganda to try to influence European parliamentary elections in June.
It goes on to explain that Russia will use the rise of deepfake and AI-driven technology to create false narratives or stage a cyber attack against an element of the Biden campaign:
U.S. officials and experts are most concerned that Russia could try to interfere in the election through a “deepfake” audio or video using artificial intelligence tools or through a “hack and leak,” such as the politically damaging theft of internal Democratic Party emails by Russian military intelligence operatives in 2016.
The type of pro-Russia online propaganda campaigns that thrived on Twitter and Facebook ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election is now routine on every major social media platform, though it’s rare for individual accounts to go as viral now as they once did.
The said experts are also raising the alarm about Twitter (or now X) under the ownership under the leadership of Elon Musk, which is now allowing information to spread without censorship:
Moscow and its proxies have long sought to exploit divisions in American society. But experts and former U.S. officials said Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, the country’s deepening political polarization and sharp cuts in disinformation and election integrity teams at X and other platforms provide fertile ground to spread confusion, division and chaos.
Although the article does not accuse Trump of collaborating with Russia’s efforts, it does claim that the “potential rewards for Russian President Vladimir Putin are high” and that Trump’s recent rhetoric around the conflict in Ukraine has solidified support in Moscow for his re-election effort later this year.
While there is no guarantee that Trump will win a second term as president, such articles are likely part of an effort to excuse a potential Biden defeat in November. Following the 2016 presidential election, alleged Russian interference was widely cited by Hillary Clinton supporters as the reason behind Trump’s victory.
Meanwhile, Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent over two years investigating Trump’s alleged collusion with the Kremlin before publishing a report that found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Putin, meanwhile, recently said he would prefer Biden to triumph in November because he is a more traditional politician. “[Biden] is a more experienced, predictable person,” Putin said in an interview with Russian broadcaster Rossiya 1 TV. “He is a politician of the old school. But we will work with any leader of the United States who is trusted by the American people.”
