Thurs., June 6 — Virginia U.S. Senator Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, again today leveled a stark warning about foreign interference in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, saying that “in some ways, we are more vulnerable now than four years ago.”

There are more nations now than then using these tools of disinformation, he said, because they are far cheaper than building up military capabilities for one thing. Moreover, there are more Americans who are believing “crazy conspiracy theories” that hostile foreign governments merely need to amplify rather than create from scratch.

An inability to come to an agreement with 21 major Internet companies set the effort to constrain this back six months, he added, and now, advanced artificial intelligence tools are introducing “deep fakes” that can emulate the voices and images of persons.

The gravity of the situation is underscored by the fact that European parliamentary elections are beginning today and elections in Great Britain begin July 4. He noted the case of Slovakia, which had been a pro-Ukrainian country, where as a result of such efforts a pro-Russian president has been elected, and now a majority of citizens there believe that it was the U.S. that started the war in Ukraine.

He said there will be a public hearing of the Intelligence Committee with updates on all these efforts this summer.