Report: Russia, China, Iran Use AI Bots to Target American Women
State-linked operators from Russia, China, and Iran are deploying thousands of automated social media accounts and artificial intelligence tools to target women and girls in an effort to sow political discord and public distrust, according to a report discussed on NewsNation.
Foreign Adversaries Deploy Automated Networks
Foreign actors are actively utilizing artificial intelligence to manipulate public discourse in the United States. Meaghan Mobbs, director of the Center for American Safety and Security at Independent Women, stated on NewsNation that 13,000 active bots tied to China, Iran, and Russia were identified attempting to sway American audiences.
“The intent is to make us distrust one another, distrust our institutions and just, quite frankly, hate America,” Mobbs said.
Country singer and political commentator Alexis Wilkins joined the discussion, sharing her firsthand experience with online attacks designed to disrupt her public life last year. Wilkins explained that these operations aim for general disarray rather than loyalty to any specific political side.
Strategic Focus on Women and Young People
Foreign influence campaigns have increasingly concentrated on women and young girls because they represent vital cultural terrain. Mobbs explained that adversaries believe shifting the perspectives of young women allows foreign narratives to permeate deeper into American culture.
Platforms like TikTok expose younger demographics to false narratives that provoke strong emotional responses. Wilkins noted that it takes minimal automated accounts to amplify an algorithm and spark division, pointing to how tragic public events are routinely exploited by opposing online narratives.
Artificial intelligence now personalizes propaganda by analyzing individual user behavior to determine which messages successfully persuade people or keep them engaged online longer.
Anthropic Threat Intelligence Discloses Model Misuse
On September 10, 2026, Anthropic published a threat intelligence report titled “Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI: September 2026,” detailing how state-linked groups in Iran, Russia, and China—alongside Houthi-affiliated groups in Yemen—attempted to misuse Claude models between December 2025 and August 2026.
We're publishing our most detailed threat intelligence report to date. It covers how people tried to misuse Claude—for cyberattacks, influence operations, surveillance, biology, and building weapons—and how we found and stopped them.We disrupted every operation in the report,…
The company disrupted malicious activity spanning cyber operations, conventional weapons research, biological misuse, and influence campaigns. Threat clusters identified in the report included a Russian espionage group targeting more than 20 organizations and commercial influence-as-a-service operations running hundreds of inauthentic accounts and fabricated news sites.
Independent testing by NewsGuard and NPR, running parallel to the Anthropic disclosures, revealed that chatbots continue to repeat state-backed propaganda during a meaningful share of interactions.