In recent news, Russia has been acting, as the FBI states, as “the most active threat” for the U.S election 2024 and the weeks that follow.
While other foreign adversaries have also been involved in threats, Russia has played the biggest role. Russia’s main source of threat is their published videos that spread false information on Democratic voters in an attempt to raise more support for Trump and more distrust within the Democratic Party. Videos like these depict someone associated with the Democratic Party taking a bribe, an immigrant voicing how he is going to illegally vote for Harris in two separate countries, and even videos where they themselves pretended to be the FBI discussing how they are “arresting groups linked to the Democratic Party for ballot fraud”, the U.S News shares. All of which were fake scenarios. These videos are very similar to the propaganda we’ve seen Trump publish, except the fact that it’s coming from a source outside of the U.S. While this is not surprising given the U.S's historical feud with Russia, it still raises great concern.
While the FBI has gone on to try and debunk these lies, concerns over the future of the dangers remain, especially with AI technology advancing and expanding in popularity. Even more frightening, it doesn’t just stop at cyber threats, bomb threats were also sent to polling sites in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania - which are all of course swing states, another attempt at preventing Democratics from voting. Although the FBI soon found out that these were all hoaxes, it instilled a lot of fear in voters and citizens within these states and the country as a whole. Could people's fear still have
remained and affected who voted even after it had been announced as false? Afterall, Trump did take victory in the election. It would not be unfair to assume that being targeted for bomb threats would scare away voters and misleading information online would instill distrust that then prevents voting action.
It’s truly alarming the extent to which other countries and even our own like with January 6th, are willing to go through just to get their political opinion on an election publicized and turn the odds in their favor. Violence should never be the answer to responding to simply differing opinions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/us/politics/election-threats-russia.html
6 comments:
Always hilarious that the voter fraud claims disappear as soon as Trump pulls ahead with a now-decisive victory. I wonder what they'll do with the whole trifecta... almost scared to wonder. Clearly, voter fraud is a big scam designed to sow distrust in the system ahead of time so Trump can get away with complaints at least in terms of support from his base and even rally them into dangerous events like January 6. The problem is that this crude messaging is effective over long time frames, similar to what Mr. Silton said in class about how over time, when Trump repeated things over and over they either just became funny or they became normalized over longer time frames, a testament to perhaps Trump's ability to be an entertainer and also a propagandaist.
I don't think these scenarios and those like it that have happened in the past can be explained by America's historic feud with Russia. As Darren mentioned, these claims of voter fraud and distrust towards the Democratic party either cease or slow down significantly as soon as Trump is put into office. By stirring distrust with the electoral system and in the Democratic party, Trump is highlighted and praised as the savior. I wouldn't be surprised if Trumps highly succesfull "propaganda campaign" was fueled/backed up by Russian election interference and misinformation.
I don't think the issue here is necessarily what Russia is doing, per se. There will always be people posting false videos and creating false news. That's existed as long as the Internet has been around, even as long as the news has been around. The issue here is people actually believing them. Why are people believing some random Internet user's post about how voter fraud and trusting that it is true? It sounds silly, and yet I think it's another point about people's lack of media literacy. It's next to impossible to see something actually reliable on the Internet recently, and people have turned to distrust most news outlets in the U.S., leading to misinformation spread from people that... don't even live in the country.
Another point is about the bomb threats. You say that it's meant to discourage Democratic voters, but I can't really imagine how that could be the case. Has Russia invented some kind of magical bio-weapon that targets only voters that are going blue? If not, then I think everyone has something to fear from a bomb threat. So the whole argument just strikes me as silly, in a way. While bomb threats on voting locations is still a serious problem, it's not like they can target any specific group. This is a problem for every voter, not half of them.
I agree with Michael on his point about how the problem is not in people posting misinformation (not saying it isn't a problem), but in that people actually believe the crazy stuff they see online. For example, one of the most craziest lies that the Trump campaign was using was the supposed immigrants that were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. It came up during the presidential debate, and even though it was debunked live on air, it maintained its momentum within the conservative party. The main problem I have with people believing all these lies is that they are so easy to debunk. In this information age, everyone is simply one search away from finding anything they want online, including if what they saw posted on X is true or not. It is pretty sad in my opinion that a huge portion of the population choose to live misinformed lives when they have all the resources they need to free themselves.
Now about the Russian bomb threats. If the election was razor close, such as the 2020 election that saw Biden win by 14,000 votes, it would definitely be a possibility that election interference like this could have decided the entire election. However, since this is not the case and Trump won by 150,000 votes in critical swing state Pennsylvania, it is extremely unlikely that threats like this could have swayed 150,000 people to not vote, much less every single one of them be democratic.
Also, I want to argue against another point that Michael made. He said that bomb threats on voting locations are not able to target a specific party, which isn't true. If they were to target urban areas which are historically democratic, they could threaten a lot more democratic votes than republican. The opposite happens if threats were to occur in rural locations: the GOP part would lose votes. The location of the disturbance definitely matters, as polls show vast differences between the political standing of urban and rural areas.
I agree with other people's point about how the trust in fake news while being cynical of legitimate news sources is the main issue in the spread of false information. Furthermore, I also wanted to make the point that the development of advanced AI technology is making it harder and harder for people to distinguish true from false. A famous saying is "I'll believe it when I see it". With the advancements of new technology this saying can no longer be accurate, which can pose great problems for our generation and the next that are to come.
The fact that a foreign country can have so much influence and implement so much fear into the election is frightening. However, I agree that the main issue is the fake media and sources that have been made by AI. I feel like this only cements the fact that people should learn how to be more aware of how AI can be used by others and learn how to check sources and check the reliability of these sources in order to determine for themselves what is real and what is fake. This plays a huge role in elections especially, as people making fake news will continue to do so in order to put down another candidate, or boost another candidate. However, the most important thing is to not believe everything that appears online, and to see where absurd and random information is coming from.
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