Washington——

U.S. security officials are bracing for an onslaught of fast-paced influence operations from a wide range of adversaries aimed at influencing the country’s upcoming presidential election.

In the latest warning for U.S. voters who will decide who to support when they go to the polls in November, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a meeting of security experts on Thursday that technologies such as artificial intelligence are already changing the threat landscape. .

“In this election cycle, the United States will face more adversaries who move faster and are enabled by new technologies,” Wray said.

“Advances in Generative Artificial Intelligence [artificial intelligence]For example, barriers to entry are being lowered, making it easier for sophisticated and unsophisticated foreign adversaries to carry out malign influence, while making foreign influence efforts by new and existing actors more realistic and less detectable,” he said.

The warning echoed concerns raised earlier this week by a senior lawmaker and the White House, both of whom specifically targeted Russia.

“I am concerned that we are less prepared for foreign interference in the 2024 election than we were in 2020,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner said during a cybersecurity meeting on Tuesday.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that there was “very good reason to be concerned.”

“There is a history of presidential elections in the Russian Federation and its intelligence services,” Sullivan said.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

But Russia is not alone.

A declassified intelligence assessment of the 2022 midterm elections concludes there is high to moderate confidence that Russia, along with China and Iran, sought to influence the outcome.

“China has tacitly endorsed efforts to influence a small number of midterm elections involving members of both political parties in the United States,” the report said.

“Tehran relies primarily on its intelligence services and Iranian cyber influencers to conduct covert operations,” it said. “Iran’s influence activities reflect its intent to exploit social divisions and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions during this election cycle.”

The United States also claims that other adversaries such as Cuba, Venezuela and Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as allies such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, are also trying to influence the election.

Warnings by Wray and others have been met with resistance from some lawmakers and conservative commentators who see such claims as an attempt to resurrect what they call the “Russia hoax” — claims that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help former President Donald Trump. Trump’s victory is worthless.

However, Warner dismissed that notion in response to questions from VOA during a security meeting on Tuesday. “Anyone who doesn’t believe that Russian intelligence has interfered and will continue to interfere in our elections … I wonder where they start to get their information,” he said.

Wray said Thursday that the list of countries and other foreign groups seeking to influence American voters will expand. “AI is most useful for what I call mediocre bad guys, allowing them to become like middlemen,” he said.

“Really sophisticated adversaries are using AI more to increase the speed and scale of their operations,” he said. “But we’re going to get to a day soon where what I call experts, the most sophisticated adversaries, will find ways to leverage AI. Ways to become more elite.”

Some private cybersecurity companies also see this growing danger.

Last September, Microsoft warned that Beijing had developed a new artificial intelligence capability that could produce “compelling content” that was more likely to go viral than previous Chinese influence operations.

Others agree.

“Whether it’s robocalls, whether it’s fake videos, all of these things are not that prevalent even back in 2022,” Trellix CEO Bryan Palma told VOA. “You’re not going to get any high-quality Deepfake videos.

“I think you’re going to see more and more of this as we get closer to the election,” he said.