Microsoft executive raises alarm over potential election interference in final 48 hours

The threat of foreign interference in the US election will spike during the last two days of the presidential campaign, said Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith, according to a report by Bloomberg.

“The most perilous moment will come, I think, 48 hours before the election,” Smith told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

That was the "lesson to be learned," Smith said, referring to the Slovakian election last fall, when fake audio of one of the top candidates circulated online days before the election.

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Foreign actors already have been spreading manipulated videos and false posts to sow discord around the US presidential election, Smith and other executives with the country's largest tech companies testified.

Smith said that earlier on Wednesday, Microsoft identified an "AI-enhanced" video from a Russian group showing Vice President Kamala Harris saying words she didn't say at a recent rally.

Groups from adversarial nations, including Russia, China and Iran, have spread false information and news reports about both Harris and Donald Trump's campaigns, the executives said.

The hearing took testimony from Smith, Alphabet Inc. parent Google's president and chief legal officer Kent Walker, and Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta Platforms Inc.

New developments in artificial intelligence are shaping those attacks, Walker said.

“We are seeing some foreign state actors experimenting with generative AI to improve existing cyber attacks, like probing for vulnerabilities or creating spear phishing emails,” Walker said. “We see generative AI being used to more efficiently create fake websites, misleading news articles and robot social media posts.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee hearing focused on foreign interference in US elections, which follows a recent Microsoft report saying the Russian effort to influence the US election has now turned to smear Harris with doctored and misleading videos. Meta said on Tuesday it would ban the Russian state media outlet Russia Today from its services over "foreign interference.".

The Biden administration and America's leading tech companies stopped talking to each other about risks online to US elections as they waited for a decision in Murthy v. Missouri, a case centred on whether it is constitutional for government officials to request social media companies to take down certain posts.

In June, the US Supreme Court opened the gates for the Biden administration to communicate freely with social media companies, and an election-year ruling strengthened the government's ability to seek removal of what officials see as misinformation. The justices, voting 6-3, tossed out court-imposed restrictions on contacts by the White House and several federal agencies.

Mark Warner, the Democrat senator of Virginia and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, several times voiced frustration over the refusal of Elon Musk's X Corp. to send a representative to testify before the committee.