Ahead of the Nov. 3 U.S. midterms, threat intelligence firm Alethea and X have separately reported suspected foreign influence activity online, while lawmakers sought more reporting on election threats in an Oct. 2 letter.
X said Oct. 14 that it had suspended more than 13,000 accounts connected to three suspected operations it linked to Iran, Russia and China. It said the accounts posted or amplified political material concerning candidates and public figures across the political spectrum. X gave no account count for each country and did not publish evidence for its attributions.
Alethea assessed with high confidence that a network it called Operation Doppelgänger, which it attributed to Russia’s Social Design Agency and Structura, was aimed at the U.S. midterms, Israel’s Oct. 27 election and France’s 2027 presidential race. The firm identified more than 50 fabricated personas that posted from Oct. 7 to 9. It estimated that amplification by other accounts generated at least 150,000 quote-posts on X.
Alethea based that estimate on a sample of account timelines. Fewer quote-posts were visible after X removed posts by suspended accounts, the firm said. It said one post used an AI-generated image to make Israel a partisan issue. Alethea reported little engagement from genuine users and assessed that the operation sought to weaken trust between the United States and its allies.
In an Oct. 2 letter to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, Sen. Mark R. Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Rep. Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said they had received the first of several required reports on foreign threats to the midterms. Other required reports were outstanding at the time, they said. The lawmakers also sought public release of an assessment of foreign threats to the 2024 election.
The reported online activity does not, by itself, establish interference with registration, voting or counting. The New York Times reported Sept. 18, citing U.S. officials, that classified assessments had found no evidence of attempts against voting machinery that could compromise the vote.
A Senate Intelligence Committee review found that Russian-linked actors targeted election infrastructure in at least 18 states in 2016 and accessed voter-registration databases in a small number of cases. It found no evidence that vote tallies were manipulated or registration records deleted or changed. A 2020 U.S. intelligence assessment found no indication that foreign actors tried to alter technical voting processes, while identifying Russian and Iranian influence operations.
At an April 28 Senate hearing, Army Gen. Joshua M. Rudd, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, said past elections made further foreign interference reasonable to expect. He said he did not know whether the Election Security Group had been established.
The Oct. 8, 2024 National Intelligence Council memorandum assessed possible threats after voting in that year’s election, but was written before the election. Warner and Himes requested a classified update by Oct. 31. The midterm vote is set for Nov. 3.
