Online activity by the two American adversaries is showing that Iran is opposing Donald Trump and Russia Kamala Harris, Microsoft’s president Brad Smith told a Senate intelligence hearing on Wednesday.
Smith appeared at the hearing alongside two senior managers from Google and Meta on Wednesday and all three tech giants have recently experienced and reported cases of cyber interference from sources linked to Iran.
“We know that there is a presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, but this has also become an election of Iran versus Trump and Russia versus Harris,” Smith said during his opening statement.
“It is an election where Russia, Iran and China are united with a common interest in discrediting democracy in the eyes of our own voters and, even more so, in the eyes of the world”.
Smith’s testimony followed the release of a Microsoft report that found Russian operatives were behind a viral video falsely accusing Vice President Harris of a vehicular hit-and-run incident.
Foreign influence first appeared as an issue during the 2016 election campaign, mainly involving Russia . Multiple investigations concluded that the Russian government had engaged in a multi-faceted campaign to disrupt the election, largely to benefit Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.
Iran was not a big player in the cyber influence game at that time but that appears to have changed in the run up to the 2024 election. "Iran is becoming increasingly bold in its attempts to stoke discord and erode trust in our democratic institutions," the US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in July.
The issue peaked on Wednesday when the FBI announced that Iran had been spying on Trump’s campaign and attempted to pass stolen information to the Harris campaign.
“Wow, just out! The FBI caught Iran spying on my campaign and giving all of the information to the Kamala Harris campaign. Therefore she and her campaign were illegally spying on me. To be known as the Iran, Iran, Iran case! Will Kamala resign in disgrace from politics? Will the communist left pick a new candidate to replace her?"
Iran was also alleged to have meddled in the 2020 presidential election, and US investigators said two Iranian hackers stole confidential US voter information from at least one election website.