The US has imposed new sanctions on Iranian and Russian entities that attempted to interfere in the 2024 election, the Treasury and State Departments announced on Tuesday.
The sanctions focus on a subordinate of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called the Cognitive Design Production Center (CPDC), as well as a Moscow-based affiliate of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) called the Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE) and its director, Valery Mikhaylovich Korovin.
“These actors sought to stoke sociopolitical tensions and undermine our election institutions during the 2024 US general election,” the State Department said in a statement.
The sanctions “prohibit all transactions by US persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or otherwise blocked persons.”
Treasury accuses Iran’s CDPC of running “influence operations” in the lead-up to the election. Microsoft flagged something similar in an October report, which stated that Iranian hackers were persuading Americans to boycott the elections over the candidates’ support for Israel via AI-generated fake news websites.
Treasury also says Moscow-based CGE ordered and financed the creation of candidate deepfakes, which includes a manipulated video that produced “baseless accusations concerning a 2024 vice presidential candidate.”
The agency didn’t specify the candidate or the video, but according to the New York Post, it is most likely referring to a deepfake on X that shows a man accusing Governor Tim Walz of sexually assaulting him as a child. X is yet to take down that AI-generated video even though the person depicted in the clip came forward to say it’s a fake.
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According to the Treasury, the CGE also used “generative AI tools to quickly create disinformation that would be distributed across a massive network of websites designed to imitate legitimate news outlets to create false corroboration between the stories, as well as to obfuscate their Russian origin.
“The GRU provided CGE and a network of US-based facilitators with financial support to: build and maintain its AI-support server; maintain a network of at least 100 websites used in its disinformation operations; and contribute to the rent cost of the apartment where the server is housed,” the Treasury adds.
“The Governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns,” Acting Under-Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith said in a statement. “The United States will remain vigilant against adversaries who would undermine our democracy.”
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