Foreign election influence campaigns have bark but questionable bite

At least four major foreign influence operations aimed at the U.S. election have been identified by authorities and researchers in recent months, and U.S. intelligence officials warned Friday that foreign actors are ramping up their efforts to meddle.

The Justice Department alleged the most high-profile influence operation of the 2024 cycle in an indictment Wednesday, accusing two Russian propagandists who work for the Russia-backed state media outlet RT of committing money laundering by funneling nearly $10 million to a conservative media outlet.

The Justice Department also seized 32 domains from a Russia-based group of fake news sites that researchers call "Doppelganger." Those websites often mirrored legitimate news operations in an effort to spread pro-Russia narratives. 

Less than a month earlier, Iran was accused by the former President Donald Trump campaign of hacking into the email accounts of some of its staffers and leaking emails to U.S. news outlets. China has been accused of creating fake social media accounts pretending to be Americans. Representatives for those countries have denied the accusations. 

Together, the efforts highlight the ongoing concerns about foreign efforts to alter the 2024 U.S. election, which forecasters and pundits say has the chance to be a historically close race.

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But the campaigns also appear to have floundered. The Russia-backed media company had a middling YouTube presence that failed to attract