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  • Russia Is Going All Out on Election Day Interference

    Russia Is Going All Out on Election Day Interference

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    As the 2024 US presidential election comes to a close, and with Donald Trump on the ballot once again, Russian actors are spreading disinformation with unprecedented and alarming intensity—and US officials say that the Kremlin’s efforts to undermine confidence in the election and foment unrest are likely to continue into January.

    Russian disinformation operations have had a prominent presence in United States elections since the Kremlin’s sea-changing influence campaign during the 2016 presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Trump. But with so much scrutiny and investigation into that operation’s mechanics and impact—including the use of hack-and-leak tactics against the Democratic National Committee, Clinton campaign, and other targets—Russia was less technically aggressive and more focused on influence operations in the midterms and 2020 presidential election. That momentary respite is now over.

    In calls with reporters on Monday night and Tuesday, as well as in public statements, US intelligence and law enforcement officials working on election security warned repeatedly that foreign influence actors including Iran, but “particularly Russia,” are ramping up their activity with an “increasing volume of inauthentic content online.” And while officials say they haven’t detected cyberattacks beyond floods of junk traffic, or DDoS attacks, attempting to knock election-related sites offline, Russian activity has become increasingly menacing.

    On Tuesday morning, for example, Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger attributed multiple bomb threats against two Georgia polling places to Russia. The threats were deemed non-credible, but they briefly disrupted voting at the two poll sites. The FBI added later on Tuesday that poll sites in “several states” faced non-credible bomb threats that appeared to “originate from Russian email domains.”

    “It is a greater scope and scale of foreign influence operations we have seen in 2024 than in prior cycles, and yes, Russia presents, in terms of our adversaries, the greatest degree of capability and sophistication,” Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told reporters in a call on Tuesday afternoon. “Overall, I think the range of tactics we are seeing being employed, and the level of sophistication, is greater than prior cycles.”

    In a joint statement on Monday evening, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, CISA, and the FBI emphasized that “Russia is the most active threat” to the US election. “Influence actors linked to Russia in particular are manufacturing videos and creating fake articles to undermine the legitimacy of the election, instill fear in voters regarding the election process, and suggest Americans are using violence against each other due to political preferences,” they wrote.

    The agencies cited some specific examples of content from Russian influence campaigns. One was a fake interview with someone purporting to be a former aide to Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes, claiming a vast election fraud campaign involving the manufacture of fake overseas ballots. Another involved alleged Russian influence actors amplifying an article that falsely claimed US officials in swing states were committing election fraud using a variety of tactics, including ballot stuffing and cyberattacks.

    A video claiming to show evidence of fraud in Georgia was also linked to “Russian influence actors” in late September. Last month, experts also credited Russia-aligned propaganda network Storm-1516 with amplifying baseless claims that Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz previously assaulted one of his former students.

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  • A Russian Disinfo Campaign Is Using Comment Sections to Seed Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theories

    A Russian Disinfo Campaign Is Using Comment Sections to Seed Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theories

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    “Video has come out from Bucks County, Pennsylvania showing a ballot counter destroying ballots for Donald Trump and keeping Kamala Harris’s ballots for counting,” an account called “Dan from Ohio” wrote in the comment section of the far-right website Gateway Pundit. “Why hasn’t this man been arrested?”

    But Dan is not from Ohio, and the video he mentioned is fake. He is in fact one of hundreds of inauthentic accounts posting in the unmoderated spaces of right-wing news site comment sections as part of a Russian disinformation campaign. These accounts were discovered by researchers at media watchdog NewsGuard, who shared their findings with WIRED.

    “NewsGuard identified 194 users that all target the same articles, push the same pro-Russian talking points and disinformation narratives, while masquerading as disgruntled Western citizens,” the report states. The researchers found these fake accounts posting comments in four pro-Trump US publications: the Gateway Pundit, the New York Post, Breitbart, and Fox News. They were also posting similar comments in the Daily Mail, a UK tabloid, and French website Le Figaro.

    None of the websites responded to a request for comment from WIRED.

    “The actors behind this campaign appear to be exploiting a particularly vulnerable part of the media landscape,” McKenzie Sadeghi, the AI and foreign influence editor at NewsGuard, tells WIRED. “Comment sections designed to foster reader engagement lack robust security measures, allowing bad actors to post freely, change identities, and create the illusion of genuine grassroots campaigns rather than orchestrated propaganda.”

    The disinformation narratives being pushed by these accounts are linked to Storm-1516, according to Newsguard. Storm-1516 is a Russian disinformation campaign with a history of posting fake videos to push Kremlin talking points to the West that was also connected to the release of deepfake video falsely claiming to show a whistlelbower making allegations of sexual assault against vice presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz. (WIRED first reported that the Walz video was part of a campaign by Storm-1516. A day later, the US government confirmed WIRED’s reporting.)

    Links to the video were posted by multiple accounts with names like “Disobedient Truth” and “Private Patriot” in the comment section of outlets like Breitbart and the Gateway Pundit.

    “More bad news for the Dems: Breaking: Tim Walz’s former student, Matthew Metro, drops a shocking allegation- claims Walz s*xually assaulted him in 1997 while Walz was his teacher at Mankato West High School,” the comments read.

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  • Election Fraud Conspiracy Theories Are Already Thriving Online

    Election Fraud Conspiracy Theories Are Already Thriving Online

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    Election workers in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, are not destroying mail-in ballots cast for former President Donald Trump. The Department of Defense did not issue a directive last month giving US soldiers unprecedented authority to use lethal force against Trump supporters who riot if the former president loses next week. And no, 180,000 Amish people did not register to vote in Pennsylvania—given there are only 92,600 Amish living in the state, including minors. Ron DeSantis never said that Florida would not use Dominion Voting machines in next week’s election. And municipalities in California are not allowing noncitizens to vote in this year’s presidential elections.

    These are just a small sample of the flood of voting-related disinformation narratives that are being seeded and spread on social media platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook in the build up to November 5.

    The election denial movement never left, and it’s bigger than ever.

    In the weeks before the 2020 vote, Trump and his allies had already begun to spread claims that the election would be stolen, but those allegations were vague and unorganized. Over the last four years, however, a well-funded network of election denial groups across the US have worked tirelessly to marshal their supporters and drum up conspiracy theories about voting machines flipping votes in the middle of the night, votes being shredded by the bagful, and “mules” stuffing drop boxes with ballots.

    These conspiracy theories are being shared by right-wing election denial networks, the Trump campaign, and Russian propaganda groups. With a week left to go before the historic vote, fully-formed conspiracy theories about threats to voting are being pushed to audiences that have been primed to believe everything they hear.

    Many of these narratives are spreading virtually unchecked on social media platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook; where those in charge have all but abdicated their responsibility to fact check information around one of the most critical votes in US history—and have also made it harder for everyone else to see what is going on.

    “What worries me most about this year is that we have a much more opaque window into the penetration of these lies, no matter where they come from,” Nina Jankowicz, the former Biden administration disinformation czar, who is now CEO of the American Sunlight Project, tells WIRED. “Social media platforms have by and large stopped moderating such content, and just as worryingly, have cut off researcher access to data streams that allowed us to objectively report on the scale of these campaigns, all due to political pressure on disinformation researchers and social media platforms.”

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  • Cybercriminals Pose a Greater Threat of Disruptive US Election Hacks Than Russia or China

    Cybercriminals Pose a Greater Threat of Disruptive US Election Hacks Than Russia or China

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    Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state-backed hackers have been active throughout the 2024 United States campaign season, compromising digital accounts associated with political campaigns, spreading disinformation, and probing election systems. But in a report from early October, the threat-sharing and coordination group known as the Election Infrastructure ISAC warned that cybercriminals like ransomware attackers pose a far greater risk of launching disruptive attacks than foreign espionage actors.

    While state-backed actors were emboldened following Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, the report points out that they favor intelligence-gathering and influence operations rather than disruptive attacks, which would be viewed as direct hostility against the US government. Ideologically and financially motivated actors, on the other hand, generally aim to cause disruption with hacks like ransomware or DDoS attacks.

    The document was first obtained by the national security transparency nonprofit Property of the People and viewed by WIRED. The US Department of Homeland Security, which contributed to the report and distributed it, did not return WIRED’s requests for comment. The Center for Internet Security, which runs the Election Infrastructure ISAC, declined to comment.

    “Since the 2022 midterm elections, financially and ideologically motivated cyber criminals have targeted US state and local government entity networks that manage or support election processes,” the alert states. “In some cases, successful ransomware attacks and a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on such infrastructure delayed election-related operations in the affected state or locality but did not compromise the integrity of voting processes … Nation-state-affiliated cyber actors have not attempted to disrupt US elections infrastructure, despite reconnaissance and occasionally acquiring access to non-voting infrastructure.”

    According to DHS statistics highlighted in the report, 95 percent of “cyber threats to elections” were unsuccessful attempts by unknown actors. Two percent were unsuccessful attempts by known actors, and 3 percent were successful attempts “to gain access or cause disruption.” The report emphasizes that threat intelligence sharing and collaboration between local, state, and federal authorities help prevent breaches and mitigate the fallout of successful attacks.

    In general, government-backed hackers may stoke geopolitical tension by conducting particularly aggressive digital espionage, but their activity isn’t inherently escalatory so long as they are abiding by espionage norms. Criminal hackers are bound by no such restrictions, though they can call too much attention to themselves if their attacks are too disruptive and risk a law enforcement crackdown.

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  • Chinese Hackers Target Trump Campaign via Verizon Breach

    Chinese Hackers Target Trump Campaign via Verizon Breach

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    The Chinese spy operation adds to the growing sense of a melee of foreign digital interference in the election, which has already included Iranian hackers’ attempt to hack and leak emails from the Trump campaign—with limited success—and Russia-linked disinformation efforts across social media.

    Ahead of the full launch next week of Apple’s AI platform, Apple Intelligence, the company debuted tools this week for security researchers to evaluate its cloud infrastructure known as Private Cloud Compute. Apple has gone to great lengths to engineer a secure and private AI cloud platform, and this week’s release includes extensive detailed technical documentation of its security features as well as a research environment that is already available in the macOS Sequoia 15.1 beta release. The testing features allow researchers (or anyone) to download and evaluate the actual version of PCC software that Apple is running in the cloud at a given time. The company tells WIRED that the only modifications to the software relate to optimizing it to run in the virtual machine for the research environment. Apple also released the PCC source code and said that as part of its bug bounty program, vulnerabilities that researchers discover in PCC will be eligible for a maximum bounty payout of up to $1 million.

    Over the summer, Politico, The New York Times, and The Washington Post each revealed that they’d been approached by a source offering hacked Trump campaign emails—a source whom the US Justice Department says was working on behalf of the Iranian government. The news outlets all refused to publish or report on those stolen materials. Now it appears that Iran’s hackers did eventually find outlets outside the mainstream media that were willing to release those emails. American Muckrakers, a PAC run by a Democratic operative, did publish the documents after soliciting them in a public post on X, writing, “Send it to us and we’ll get it out.”

    American Muckrakers then published internal Trump campaign communications about North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson and Florida Republican representative Anna Paulina Luna, as well as material that seemed to suggest a financial arrangement between Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the third-party candidate who dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump. Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein also received and published some of the hacked material, including a research profile on Trump running mate and US senator JD Vance that the campaign assembled when assessing him for the role. Klippenstein subsequently received a visit from the FBI, he’s said, warning him that the documents were shared as part of a foreign influence campaign. Klippenstein has defended his position, arguing that the media should not serve as “gatekeeper of what the public should know.”

    As Russia has both waged war and cyberwar against Ukraine, it’s also carried out a vast campaign of hacking against another neighbor to the west with whom it’s long had a fraught relationship: Georgia. Bloomberg this week revealed ahead of the Georgian election how Russia systematically penetrated the smaller country’s infrastructure and government in a yearslong series of digital intrusion operations. From 2017 to 2020, for instance, Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, hacked Georgia’s Central Election Commission (just as it did in Ukraine in 2014), multiple media organizations, and IT systems at the country’s national railway company—all in addition to the attack on Georgian TV stations that the NSA pinned on the GRU’s Sandworm unit in 2020. Meanwhile, hackers known as Turla, working for the Kremlin’s KGB successor, the FSB, broke into Georgia’s Foreign Ministry and stole gigabytes of officials’ emails over months. According to Bloomberg, Russia’s hacking efforts weren’t limited to espionage but also appeared to include preparing for disruption of Georgian infrastructure like the electric grid and oil companies in the event of an escalating conflict.

    For years, cybersecurity professionals have argued about what constitutes a cyberattack. An intrusion designed to destroy data, cause disruption, or sabotage infrastructure? Yes, that’s a cyberattack. A hacker breach to steal data? No. A hack-and-leak operation or an espionage mission with a disruptive clean-up phase? Probably not, but there’s room for debate. The Jerusalem Post this week, however, achieved perhaps the clearest-cut example of calling something a cyberattack—in a headline no less—that is very clearly not: disinformation on social media. The so-called “Hezbollah cyberattack” that the news outlet reported was a collection of photos of Israeli hospitals posted by “hackers” identifying as Hezbollah supporters that suggested weapons and cash were stored underneath them and that they should be attacked. The posts seemingly came in response to the Israeli Defense Forces’ repeating similar claims about hospitals in Gaza that the IDF has bombed, as well as another more recently in Lebanon’s capital city of Beirut.

    “These are NOT CYBERATTACKS,” security researcher Lukasz Olejnik, the author of the books The Philosophy of Cybersecurity and Propaganda, wrote next to a screenshot of the Jerusalem Post headline on X. “Posting images to social media is not hacking. Such a bad take.”

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  • Microsoft Warns Foreign Disinformation Is Hitting the US Election From All Directions

    Microsoft Warns Foreign Disinformation Is Hitting the US Election From All Directions

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    As November 5 draws closer, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) warned on Wednesday that malicious foreign influence operations launched by Russia, China, and Iran against the US presidential election are continuing to evolve and should not be ignored even though they have come to feel inevitable. In the group’s fifth report, researchers emphasize the range of ongoing activities as well as the inevitability that attackers will work to stoke doubts about the integrity of the election in its aftermath.

    In spite of escalating conflict in the Middle East, Microsoft says that Iran has been able to keep up its operations targeting the US election, particularly targeting the Trump campaign and attempting to foment anti-Israel sentiment. Russian actors, meanwhile, have been focused on targeting the Harris campaign with character attacks and AI-generated content, including deepfakes. And China has shifted its focus in recent weeks, researchers say, to target down-ballot Republican candidates as well as sitting members of Congress who promote policies adversarial to China or in conflict with its interests.

    Crucially, MTAC says it is all but certain that these actors will attempt to stoke division and mistrust in vote security on Election Day and in its immediate aftermath.

    “As MTAC observed during the 2020 presidential cycle, foreign adversaries will amplify claims of election rigging, voter fraud, or other election integrity issues to sow chaos among the US electorate and undermine international confidence in US political stability,” the researchers wrote in their report.

    As the 2024 campaign season enters its final phase, the researchers say that they expect to see AI-generated media continuing to show up in new campaigns, particularly because content can spread so rapidly in the charged period immediately around Election Day. The report also notes that Microsoft has detected Iranian actors probing election-related websites and media outlets, “suggesting preparations for more direct influence operations as Election Day nears.”

    Chinese actors focusing on US congressional races and other figures also indicates a fluency and far-reaching approach to deploying influence operations. China-backed groups have recently launched campaigns against US representative Barry Moore, and US senators Marsha Blackburn and Marco Rubio (who is not currently up for reelection), pushing corruption allegations and promoting opposing candidates.

    MTAC says that many influence campaigns from all of the actors fail to gain traction. But the efforts are still significant, because the narratives that do break through can have significant impact, and the activity in general contributes to the volume and intensity of false and misleading claims circulating in the information landscape surrounding the election.

    “History has shown that the ability of foreign actors to rapidly distribute deceptive content can significantly impact public perception and electoral outcomes,” MTAC general manager Clint Watts wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. “With a particular focus on the 48 hours before and after Election Day, voters, government institutions, candidates and parties must remain vigilant to deceptive and suspicious activity online.”

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  • Which AI chatbot is best at avoiding disinformation?

    Which AI chatbot is best at avoiding disinformation?

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    Russian propaganda about its invasion of Ukraine is affecting AI chatbot accuracy

    Roman Pilipey/AFP/Getty

    Artificial intelligence chatbots struggle to consistently provide accurate answers about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sometimes regurgitate Kremlin propaganda – an especially noticeable problem for Google’s Gemini chatbot.

    “Increasingly, chatbot users tend to trust the output of these new digital tools,” says Elizaveta Kuznetsova at the Weizenbaum Institute in Germany. “Therefore, the way in which chatbots frame information about current events can have a substantial effect on political attitudes about crucial events, like the ongoing war in Ukraine.”

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  • Notorious Evil Corp Hackers Targeted NATO Allies for Russian Intelligence

    Notorious Evil Corp Hackers Targeted NATO Allies for Russian Intelligence

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    International law enforcement has worked for years to disrupt the cybercriminal gang Evil Corp and its egregious global crime spree. But in a crowded field of prolific Russian cybercriminals, Evil Corp is most notable for its singular relationship with Russian intelligence.

    On Tuesday, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency released new details about the real world identities of alleged Evil Corp members, the group’s connection to the LockBit platform, and the gang’s ties to the Russian state. Researchers have increasingly established that there are loose, quid pro quo connections between Russian cybercriminals and the country’s government. But NCA officials emphasize that Evil Corp is an unusual example of a gang that has direct relationships with multiple Russian intelligence agencies—including Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB; Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR; and military intelligence agency known as the GRU. And the NCA reports that before 2019, Evil Corp was specifically “tasked” by Russia’s intelligence services with conducting espionage operations and cyberattacks against unidentified “NATO allies.”

    For more than a decade, Evil Corp has used its Dridex malware and other hacking tools to compromise thousands of bank accounts around the world and steal funds. In 2017, the group expanded into ransomware, using strains like Hades and PhoenixLocker, and then using the LockBit platform as an affiliate beginning in 2022. The group has extorted at least $300 million from victims on tops of its other spoils, and the United States Department of State is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the gang’s alleged leader, Maksim Yakubets.

    “Evil Corp’s story is a prime example of the evolving threat posed by cybercriminals and ransomware operators,” the NCA wrote on Tuesday in a joint report with the FBI and Australian Federal Police. “In their case, the activities of the Russian state played a particularly significant role, sometimes even co-opting this cybercrime group for its own malicious cyber activity.”

    Unlike many Russian cybercrime groups that have evolved a distributed leadership structure online, NCA officials say that Evil Corp is organized like a more traditional crime syndicate around Yakubets’ family and friends. His father, Viktor Yakubets, allegedly has a background in money laundering, and Maksim’s brother Artem, along with cousins Kirill and Dmitry Slobodskoy, are all allegedly involved with the group. Officials also allege that the group has operated out of physical locations, including Chianti Café and Scenario Café in Moscow.

    Officials say that Maksim Yakubets has always been the primary liaison between Evil Corp and Russian intelligence. But other members, including his father-in-law, Eduard Benderskiy, also allegedly contribute to the relationships. Benderskiy is reportedly a former FSB official who worked in the mysterious ‘Vympel’ unit and, according to Bellingcat, may have been involved in a series of overseas assassinations. NCA officials say that after the US’s 2019 sanctions and indictments against Evil Corp members, Benderskiy worked to protect the gang’s senior members within Russia.

    In spite of its longtime dominance, Evil Corp has had to continue evolving to keep making money. While it denies a relationship, the group seemed to have used the notorious ransomware-as-a-service platform LockBit to conduct attacks since 2022. And Yakubets’s alleged second in command, whom NCA officials named on Tuesday as Aleksandr Ryzhenkov, was apparently overseeing this work. After international law enforcement launched a major disruption of LockBit in February, the gang has been operating in a diminished capacity, according to the NCA.

    “Born out of a coalescing of elite cybercriminals, Evil Corp’s sophisticated business model made them one of the most pervasive and persistent cybercrime adversaries to date,” the NCA wrote. “After being hampered by the December 2019 sanctions and indictments, the group have been forced to diversify their tactics as they attempt to continue causing harm whilst adapting to the changing cybercrime ecosystem.”

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  • An International Space Station Leak Is Getting Worse—and Keeping NASA Up at Night

    An International Space Station Leak Is Getting Worse—and Keeping NASA Up at Night

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    US space officials do not like to talk about the perils of flying astronauts on the aging International Space Station, elements of which are now more than a quarter of a century old.

    However, a new report confirms that NASA managers responsible for operating the space station are seriously concerned about a small Russian part of the station, essentially a tunnel that connects a larger module to a docking port, which is leaking.

    Russian and US officials have known that this small PrK module, which lies between a Progress spacecraft airlock and the Zvezda module, has been leaking since September 2019. A new report, published Thursday by NASA’s inspector general, provides details not previously released by the space agency that underline the severity of the problem.

    New Details About the Leak

    For example, in February of this year NASA identified an increase in the leak rate from less than 1 pound of atmosphere a day to 2.4 pounds a day, and in April this rate increased to 3.7 pounds a day. Despite years of investigation, neither Russian nor US officials have identified the underlying cause of the leak.

    “Although the root cause of the leak remains unknown, both agencies have narrowed their focus to internal and external welds,” the report, signed by Deputy Inspector General George A. Scott, states.

    The plan to mitigate the risk is to keep the hatch on the Zvezda module leading to the PrK tunnel closed. Eventually, if the leak worsens further, this hatch might need to be closed permanently, reducing the number of Russian docking ports on the space station from four to three.

    Publicly, NASA has sought to minimize concerns about the cracking issue because it remains, to date, confined to the PrK tunnel and has not spread to other parts of the station. Nevertheless, Ars reported in June that the cracking issue has reached the highest level of concern on the space agency’s 5×5 “risk matrix” to classify the likelihood and consequence of risks to spaceflight activities. The Russian leaks are now classified as a “5” both in terms of high likelihood and high consequence.

    At the time, NASA would not comment on, or confirm, the space agency’s concerns about the risk matrix rating. However, the new report confirms the agency’s concerns.

    “In May and June 2024, ISS Program and Roscosmos officials met to discuss heightened concerns with the increased leak rate,” the inspector general’s report states. “The ISS Program subsequently elevated the Service Module Transfer Tunnel leak risk to the highest level of risk in its risk management system. According to NASA, Roscosmos is confident they will be able to monitor and close the hatch to the Service Module prior to the leak rate reaching an untenable level. However, NASA and Roscosmos have not reached an agreement on the point at which the leak rate is untenable.”

    An Uncertain Future in Low Earth Orbit

    The report comes as NASA is considering the future of the space station. The US space agency and Russia have an agreement to continue flying the station through 2028, and NASA would like to extend operations to 2030. NASA had anticipated that it would agree to this extension more than a year ago, but as of yet no agreement has been finalized.

    Once the station reaches the end of its life, NASA intends to transition its activities in low Earth orbit onto private space stations, and it has funded initial development work by Axiom Space, Northrop Grumman, Blue Origin, and Voyager Space. Northrop has since dropped out of the competition—determining that it would not be a profitable business. There is general uncertainty as to whether any of the private space station operators will be ready in 2030.

    NASA’s other potential option is extending the life of the space station beyond 2030, but this would require a lot of work to ensure the space station’s structure remains viable and yet another extension agreement with Russia. The US partnership with that nation has been severely strained by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    “Extending the ISS past 2030 will require significant funding to operate and maintain the station, acceptance of increased risk stemming from its components and aging structures, and assurances of continued support from NASA’s international partners,” the new report states. “Further complicating matters is the likelihood that NASA may continue to face a flat or reduced budget, inflation, and supply chain challenges.”

    This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.

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  • Tesla’s Cybertruck Goes, Inevitably, to War

    Tesla’s Cybertruck Goes, Inevitably, to War

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    “They are cool because they look like something out of a video game and portray Kadyrov as a sort of futuristic warlord,” Cancian tells WIRED in an email. “They are useless because they don’t provide a new capability, except perhaps a bit of stealth.”

    Indeed, the Cybertruck is not totally suited for hostile and chaotic environments like the front lines of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. First, the EV’s exoskeleton actually consists of steel panels attached to a standard “unibody” frame that’s more akin to the chassis of a conventional car rather than the “body-on-frame” design of most pickup trucks like the Hilux. This design, according to Motor Trend, makes the former a weaker and less resilient vehicle. Second, while the Cybertruck is certainly off-road capable, it’s still significantly heavier than Hilux, which can make maneuverability and traction on rough terrain a challenge. Third, while its armor portends to offer at least some additional coverage compared to the conventional pickup truck-based technical, the vehicle’s bulletproofing only appears to work with subsonic rounds like the .45 ACP ammo used in Tesla’s tests and not the ubiquitous NATO-standard 5.56 mm round or, say, a shot from a .50 caliber rifle. (Though, to be fair, aftermarket armor packages for the vehicle do exist.)

    Beyond design and engineering challenges, there’s also the critical matter of maintenance and logistics, the lifeblood of any motorized conflict. As Tracy points out, the Cybertruck’s unique complexity and software-forward design (like the lack of a physical connection between steering wheel and wheels) means a distinct lack of spare parts and higher potential for catastrophic system failures, challenges that all but guarantee that the vehicle is unable to operate reliably and ensure consistent uptime—not necessarily ideal for troops whose lives may depend on them.

    “Simplicity is everything; simplicity and parts availability,” Tracy says. “If you’re driving a complex vehicle and there’s a failure of some sort and you need someone to flash it with a computer, you’re hosed if you’re in the middle of nowhere. The beauty of the Hilux is that they’re very tough, for one, but they can be repaired with simple tools and fairly ubiquitous parts. The Cybertruck does not really make a whole lot of sense in that regard.”

    “It’s great that it is safe in a crash and can take a bullet,” he adds. “But if you break a control arm and can’t get the part, it’s pretty useless.”

    Plus, the Cybertruck’s reliance on charging stations would make a fleet of armed vehicles “likely impossible to support” in any sort of protracted conflict like that taking place in Ukraine, according to CSIS’s Cancian.

    “I doubt there are garages or mechanics near the front lines who can fix these complex devices, which are so unlike the fossil fuel vehicles that the region is accustomed to,” he says. “Further, I doubt there are many recharging stations in the battle area. Unlike with fossil fuel vehicles, where the fuel can be brought to the vehicle if necessary, the Cybertrucks must go to the recharging point.”

    How the Cybertruck will actually perform in a combat situation remains to be seen. But if the Kadyrov video is any indication, it’s only a matter of time before an armed Cybertrucks makes the transition from YouTube sensation to tried-and-true, battle-tested technical.

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