Russia has helped spread false and misleading information on the internet about Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, two climate change-fueled natural disasters that recently struck the American southeast.
According to the recent report, which was published by the London-based think tank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), social media accounts linked to Russian state-affiliated media spread content focusing on right -wing themes. They incorrectly depicted incompetence in the government's hurricane response to discredit the Biden administration, and often argue this insufficient response is due to U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. On one occasion, a Russian state-owned news agency known as RIA Novosti shared an AI-generated image of Florida's Disney World being supposedly destroyed by Hurricane Milton, which quickly went viral.
