Imagine scrolling through your social media feed late at night and seeing a video of Sarah Jessica Parker looking straight into the camera, her face serious, her voice unmistakable. She says that when she hears about Democrats, she immediately thinks of “corrupt Nazi whores,” and then she tells you that if you love America, you should never vote for them. It feels absurd, like a parody or a strange dream. But the video looks real, and for anyone who does not know better, it is convincing enough to share. This is the latest front in a Russian disinformation campaign aimed at the United States midterm elections, and according to researchers, it is the Kremlin’s first serious attempt to interfere in this year’s races. The target is clear: Democrats. The method is simple: fake celebrity endorsements engineered with artificial intelligence and spread across social media. The videos have been posted to X, Bluesky and TikTok, among other platforms, and they are designed to look like authentic selfies recorded by actors on their phones. They are not authentic. But they are dangerous, because they blur the line between reality and fabrication at a moment when voters are already deeply suspicious of the information they see online. What makes this even more unsettling is that the people in the videos are not politicians. They are actors, familiar faces from movies and television, people we have invited into our homes for decades. Seeing them say hateful things creates a kind of cognitive whiplash. The campaign is not subtle, and it is not clever in the traditional sense. But it is cunning in the way it uses familiarity, trust, and shock to get a reaction.
The mechanics behind the videos are both sophisticated and surprisingly easy. The footage is real. One clip of Julia Roberts was taken from Gucci’s 2023 “Chime for Change” campaign, which was created to promote gender equality. Other clips were pulled from personalized videos that actors recorded for fans on Cameo, a service that allows celebrities to send short messages for birthdays, congratulations, or other personal moments. The audio, however, is fake. It appears to have been cloned from the actors’ voices using AI software and then layered over the original video. The visual background is also a patchwork of right-wing bogeymen: Pride parades, images of Jeffrey Epstein, stock footage of drug deals and homeless encampments. In one manufactured video, Roberts is made to claim that Democrats and Big Pharma are conspiring to push a sinister trans agenda. In another, Emma Caulfield is made to call Democrats vampires who drink the blood of children. A manipulated clip of Christopher Lloyd, best known for “Back to the Future,” has him raging against Black Lives Matter. And a voice-cloned Ed Begley Jr. is made to call Democrats “perverts.” Every video carries an unauthorized CNN logo in the top left corner, presumably to borrow the network’s credibility, and urges viewers to share the clips and join the hashtag #AllDemocratsAreCriminals. The campaign has not gone viral. The most popular posts have only a few dozen interactions. But that does not mean it is harmless. It was first flagged by @antibot4navalny, an anonymous group of analysts who track Russia-related influence operations, and the videos are already being studied by researchers who know exactly what they are looking at.
For researchers who track Russian influence operations, this campaign is immediately recognizable. It has all the fingerprints of a long-running Kremlin-backed network that goes by several names: Matryoshka, Operation Overload, or Storm-1679. This operation has spent years seeding social media with manipulated videos that carry the branding of real news outlets and law enforcement agencies, pushing false narratives across Europe and the United States. It is known for using bot networks to inflate the reach of its content, and it has even made a habit of sending the clips directly to fact-checkers and newsrooms. That last tactic is especially cunning: when journalists debunk the videos, they often repeat the claims or embed the clips, giving the disinformation even more exposure. The use of trusted logos and the names of real actors is no accident. The goal is to erode public trust in all media, not just to spread a specific message. By making people believe that CNN, Hollywood celebrities, and the mainstream news industry are all part of a coordinated lie, the operation hopes to leave voters feeling hopeless, cynical, and disconnected from the democratic process. The fact that the videos are branded with a major network’s logo is a deliberate weaponization of authority. It tells viewers: even the news you trust is part of the corruption. This is not a one-off prank or a random internet hoax. It is a structured, resourced, and patient campaign designed to poison the information environment over time.
Now the operation has turned its attention to specific American races. On Friday, the anonymous research group @antibot4navalny, which first flagged the earlier batch of videos, identified a new series of falsely branded CNN videos targeting individual Democratic candidates in the midterm elections. The list includes Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, James Talarico in Texas, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, Mary Peltola in Alaska, Roy Cooper in North Carolina, and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. The false claims are tailored to inflame different kinds of anger. One video says that Talarico hates Hasidic Jews. Another claims that Pappas funded doctors who approved gender transitions for children. A third accuses Brown’s business of harming Ohio’s bee population. These are not broad ideological attacks; they are precise, local, and designed to fit into existing political grievances. The choice of candidates also suggests a strategic focus on competitive seats and races that could determine control of Congress. By attacking Democrats with fake stories that appeal to specific communities, the network is trying to suppress turnout, poison relationships between voters and candidates, and make people feel that no one in Washington can be trusted. The researchers who flagged the videos noted that the campaign appears to be experimenting with different messages, testing which ones gain traction before the general election season intensifies. This is not a static threat. It is evolving, adapting, and learning. The first batch of videos may have been a trial run. The next batch could be more polished, more targeted, and much harder to detect.
Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor and co-director of the Watt Family Innovation Center Media Forensics Hub, called the videos Russia’s “opening salvo” in its attack on the U.S. midterm elections. “In the past year they have burned through Moldova, Armenia, Romania, France, Sweden and Germany, as well as others. Now it is our turn,” he said. For researchers, the pattern is familiar. Russian disinformation operations tend to escalate over time, starting with low-stakes experiments and then refining their techniques as they learn what works. The fact that the videos have not gone viral offers little comfort. These campaigns are often designed to be seeded early, then resurface later in more polished forms, or to be spread by bots and algorithmically boosted at moments when they can do the most damage. The actors themselves are victims in all of this: their faces and voices have been stolen and used to say things they would never say. Their personal appearances in Gucci campaigns and Cameo videos, originally created for connection and entertainment, have been repurposed as instruments of political warfare. The emotional impact on viewers is just as real. Seeing a trusted celebrity spout hatred can cause confusion, anger, and a sense that the world is unhinged. That disorientation is exactly what the operation wants. The goal is not to make you believe one thing or another. The goal is to make you stop believing in anything at all, and to make the very idea of truth feel like a matter of personal opinion rather than something that can be verified and defended.
So what can ordinary voters do? The first step is to slow down. Disinformation thrives on impulse, on the instant surge of outrage or fear that makes people click share before they think. If a video of a celebrity or a political candidate seems shocking, especially if it carries a news logo but is not on the official website of that news organization, it is worth checking. Look for the clip on the actor’s verified social media account, on the candidate’s official page, or in reporting from established outlets. Talk to friends and family. Sometimes the simplest cure for a lie is a conversation with someone you trust. More broadly, this moment is a reminder that seeing is no longer believing. AI has made it possible to put words into anyone’s mouth, and the technology is only going to get better. The Russian campaign targeting Democrats is not an isolated incident; it is a preview of the future. The most important defense is not technical, but human: skepticism without cynicism, curiosity without gullibility, and a shared commitment to verifying information before acting on it. The Kremlin’s goal is not simply to get people to vote Republican. It is to make all of us feel that nothing is true, that every source is corrupt, and that democracy itself is a sham. The best response is to refuse that despair and to show up, informed, connected, and ready to protect the shared reality on which every election depends.