Top officials from Google, Apple, and Meta testified Wednesday before the United States Senate Intelligence Committee about each of their company’s ongoing efforts to identify and disrupt foreign influence campaigns ahead of the country’s November elections.
The hearing, chaired by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, served largely to impress upon the companies the need for more extensive safeguards against the disinformation campaigns being funded by foreign entities with an eye on influencing US politics….
Warner, a proponent of expanding cooperation between the government and Silicon Valley to root out campaigns by Russia, Iran, and China, among other legally designated rivals, described the recent efforts by Russia as both “effective and cheap.”
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control placed sanctions this month on 10 Russian citizens, several of them employees of the state-funded news outlet RT, formerly Russia Today. US secretary of state Antony Blinken on Friday accused the Russian outlet of working hand-in-hand with the country’s intelligence services, conducting influence and cyber operations meant to covertly spread Kremlin propaganda on more than three continents. And earlier this month, US authorities accused RT employees of bankrolling right-wing influencer network Tenet Media.
Warner noted—almost as an aside—that Elon Musk’s X had refused to send a representative to testify Wednesday. A spokesperson for Warner told WIRED that X’s former chief of global affairs, Nick Pickles, had previously agreed to appear before the committee; however, he resigned from the company roughly two weeks later. X then declined to provide a replacement. (Pickles could not be immediately reached for comment.)…
Marco Rubio, the committee’s Republican vice chair, argued on the behalf of Americans who, he said, should not be punished for holding views that align with the Kremlin’s. “The question becomes is that disinformation, or is that misinformation, is that an influence operation, because that pre-existing view is being amplified?” Decisions by companies to remove the amplified information is “problematic and complicated,” he said, adding that he believes it risks “stigmatiz[ing]” Americans holding those views….