The US has issued sanctions on organizations in Russia and Iran for trying to intrude with the 2024 presidential election. The Treasury Department said on Tuesday that the teams tried to “stoke socio-political tensions” and affect voters.
One group, the Moscow-based Middle for Geopolitical Experience, has ties to Russia’s Fundamental Intelligence Directorate (GRU), and constructed a server to host its personal AI instruments “to keep away from overseas web-hosting providers that may block their exercise.” The group then used these instruments to “shortly create disinformation” that it unfold throughout dozens of pretend on-line information shops, whereas additionally offering US-based corporations with cash to keep up its AI server and function a community of “at the least 100 web sites” utilized in its marketing campaign.
Moreover, the Russian group manipulated a video to “produce baseless accusations regarding a 2024 vice presidential candidate”. In October, the US accused Russia of making a video that tried to smear Vice President Kamala Harris’s working mate, Tim Walz.
The Treasury Division additionally sanctioned the Cognitive Design Manufacturing Middle, a subsidiary of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), for planning to intrude with the election “since at the least 2023.” Within the weeks main as much as the election, the US Department of Justice indicted Iranian nationals accused of waging a cyberattack in opposition to President-elect Donald Trump’s marketing campaign, whereas OpenAI reported banning ChatGPT accounts linked to an Iranian affect operation.
“The Governments of Iran and Russia have focused our election processes and establishments and sought to divide the American folks by means of focused disinformation campaigns,” Bradley Smith, the Appearing Below Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Monetary Intelligence, stated within the press launch.
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