Transcript of Inside the high-security facility tackling digital threats | BBC News

One of the world's busiest tourist spots, Times Square, here in New York City. It's an unlikely location for a highly secure facility that monitors foreign government's attempts to destabilize democracy. But that's precisely what's going on in an office building that way. Away from the crowds and traffic, we've gained exclusive access to MTAG, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center. The work that's carried out here is extremely sensitive with the very first people that have been permitted to film inside.

Take a look now at an actor founded by former employees of the Russian Ministry of Defense. Individuals from this organization serve on a special presidential committee in the Kremlin advising Putin on Russia's war in Ukraine.

Analysts here advise governments like the UK and US, as well as private companies, about a variety of digital threats.

They're known as MTEX. Its job is to detect and assess and disrupt any influence threats. We would say cyber-enabled influence threats to democracies worldwide.

Specialist teams here focus on different potential perpetrators of digital threats. Us. They call the people behind these disruptions threat actors.

We have a Russia analysis team, an Iran team, and a China team to try and detect everything from propaganda to disinformation. For Russia, it's always a constant. They see political warfare share is part and parcel of their foreign policy objectives worldwide. So we've seen them continue their campaigns with disinformation outlets we've tracked.

The US Department of Justice recently announced it had seized 32 websites tied to a Kremlin Online-aligned online influence campaign. Dubbed Doppelganger, it uses AI-generated content targeting US elections, the war in Ukraine, as well as spreading pro-Russian narratives. The FBI had this to say about Doppelganger.

By seizing these websites, the FBI is making clear to the world what they are, Russian attempts to interfere in our elections and influence our society.

Doppelganger is best known for cloning the websites of well its own international media. It makes fake versions of Fox News, Washington Post, which look very much like the original but are reworked entirely with Russian propaganda.

You got some examples up on your screen here. This one here, this is an article which says it's from Fox News, but is in fact an article which is from this group called Doppelganger.

This was in fact made in Moscow.

Iran has just entered the fold in recent months. Four years ago in 2020, we saw them come in very late using both cyber attacks and influence operations to try and cause chaos.

This is one of the newer sites the Iranians have stood up as part of a set of inauthentic news sites, fake social media accounts, retweet and support them. They're focused on stories that are anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, anti-American, and those are often telltale signs that something is potentially Iranian run.

Then China. In previous cycles, we saw almost nothing from China. But in this case, we do see them establishing social media accounts and websites which they use to provoke some conversations with American voters. And this is the first cycle where we've had all three that we can definitely point to.

And the dramatic nature of the US election has created complications for those attempting to interfere with the process.

The biggest impact of the switch of President Biden for Vice President Harris has been it's really thrown the Russians so far off their game. They had focused everything really on President Biden. Had going back to 2018, '19, they had really focused on Biden as somebody they needed to remove from office to get what they wanted in Ukraine. Today, that has changed almost entirely.

But what is the real-world effect of these digital threats? Henry Ida is an expert on AI, deepfakes, and synthetic media.

The jury is still out on how effective these campaigns are, at least right now. But what it might be doing is really increasing the amount of hostile agile engagement on social media. But at this moment in time, we don't have the evidence to prove that it's actually swinging elections.

While it's debatable the digital efforts influence election results. With seven weeks of campaigning left, there's plenty of time for online surprises to emerge. Which is mine. Part of my my.