Microsoft said Tuesday that Russian operatives have in recent weeks intensified their online attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign by producing and disseminating videos promoting “outlandish conspiracy theories” aimed at stoking US racial and political divisions.
One of the inauthentic videos, which Microsoft said had been viewed millions of times, claimed to show Harris supporters attacking an attendee of a Donald Trump rally.
Another video falsely claimed that Harris paralyzed a young girl in a 2011 hit-and-run accident.
Russian operatives promoted the latter story through a website pretending to be a local San Francisco media outlet, Microsoft researchers said.
The report is the latest evidence that Kremlin-linked trolls and digital operatives are ramping up their efforts to denigrate Harris’s campaign just weeks before the presidential election.
CNN has requested comment on the Microsoft report from the Harris-Walz campaign and from the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC.
But then, in late August and early September, the videos attacking Harris and her supporters emerged. »
