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Disinformation is expected to be among the top cyber risks for elections in 2024.

Andrew Brookes | Image Source | Getty Images

Britain is expected to face a barrage of state-backed cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns as it heads to the polls in 2024 — and artificial intelligence is a key risk, according to cyber experts who spoke to CNBC. 

Brits will vote on May 2 in local elections, and a general election is expected in the second half of this year, although British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has not yet committed to a date.

The votes come as the country faces a range of problems including a cost-of-living crisis and stark divisions over immigration and asylum.

“With most U.K. citizens voting at polling stations on the day of the election, I expect the majority of cybersecurity risks to emerge in the months leading up to the day itself,” Todd McKinnon, CEO of identity security firm Okta, told CNBC via email. 

It wouldn’t be the first time.

In 2016, the U.S. presidential election and U.K. Brexit vote were both found to have been disrupted by disinformation shared on social media platforms, allegedly by Russian state-affiliated groups, although Moscow denies these claims.

State actors have since made routine attacks in various countries to manipulate the outcome of elections, according to cyber experts. 

Meanwhile, last week, the U.K. alleged that Chinese state-affiliated hacking group APT 31 attempted to access U.K. lawmakers’ email accounts, but said such attempts were unsuccessful. London imposed sanctions on Chinese individuals and a technology firm in Wuhan believed to be a front for APT 31.

The U.S., Australia, and New Zealand followed with their own sanctions. China denied allegations of state-sponsored hacking, calling them “groundless.”

Cybercriminals utilizing AI 

Cybersecurity experts expect malicious actors to interfere in the upcoming elections in several ways — not least through disinformation, which is expected to be even worse this year due to the widespread use of artificial intelligence. 

Synthetic images, videos and audio generated using computer graphics, simulation methods and AI — commonly referred to as “deep fakes” — will be a common occurrence as it becomes easier for people to create them, say experts.  

State-backed cyber attacks are on the rise this year: DXC Technology

“Nation-state actors and cybercriminals are likely to utilize AI-powered identity-based attacks like phishing, social engineering, ransomware, and supply chain compromises to target politicians, campaign staff, and election-related institutions,” Okta’s McKinnon added.  

“We’re also sure to see an influx of AI and bot-driven content generated by threat actors to push out misinformation at an even greater scale than we’ve seen in previous election cycles.”

The cybersecurity community has called for heightened awareness of this type of AI-generated misinformation, as well as international cooperation to mitigate the risk of such malicious activity. 

Top election risk

Adam Meyers, head of counter adversary operations for cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, said AI-powered disinformation is a top risk for elections in 2024. 

“Right now, generative AI can be used for harm or for good and so we see both applications every day increasingly adopted,” Meyers told CNBC. 

China, Russia and Iran are highly likely to conduct misinformation and disinformation operations against various global elections with the help of tools like generative AI, according to Crowdstrike’s latest annual threat report.  

“This democratic process is extremely fragile,” Meyers told CNBC. “When you start looking at how hostile nation states like Russia or China or Iran can leverage generative AI and some of the newer technology to craft messages and to use deep fakes to create a story or a narrative that is compelling for people to accept, especially when people already have this kind of confirmation bias, it’s extremely dangerous.”

A key problem is that AI is reducing the barrier to entry for criminals looking to exploit people online. This has already happened in the form of scam emails that have been crafted using easily accessible AI tools like ChatGPT. 

Hackers are also developing more advanced — and personal — attacks by training AI models on our own data available on social media, according to Dan Holmes, a fraud prevention specialist at regulatory technology firm Feedzai.

“You can train those voice AI models very easily … through exposure to social [media],” Holmes told CNBC in an interview. “It’s [about] getting that emotional level of engagement and really coming up with something creative.”

In the context of elections, a fake AI-generated audio clip of Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, abusing party staffers was posted to the social media platform X in October 2023. The post racked up as many as 1.5 million views, according to fact correction charity Full Fact.

It’s just one example of many deepfakes that have cybersecurity experts worried about what’s to come as the U.K. approaches elections later this year.

Elections a test for tech giants

Measures to tackle cyber threat may be implemented before midterms: Analyst

Deep fake technology is becoming a lot more advanced, however. And for many tech companies, the race to beat them is now about fighting fire with fire. 

“Deepfakes went from being a theoretical thing to being very much live in production today,” Mike Tuchen, CEO of Onfido, told CNBC in an interview last year. 

“There’s a cat and mouse game now where it’s ‘AI vs. AI’ — using AI to detect deepfakes and mitigating the impact for our customers is the big battle right now.” 

Cyber experts say it’s becoming harder to tell what’s real — but there can be some signs that content is digitally manipulated. 

AI uses prompts to generate text, images and video, but it doesn’t always get it right. So for example, if you’re watching an AI-generated video of a dinner, and the spoon suddenly disappears, that’s an example of an AI flaw. 

“We’ll certainly see more deepfakes throughout the election process but an easy step we can all take is verifying the authenticity of something before we share it,” Okta’s McKinnon added.

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Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says, as shareholder, tariffs are ‘not good’

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Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says, as shareholder, tariffs are 'not good'

President Trump’s new tariffs on goods that the U.S. imports from over 100 countries will have an effect on consumers, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told CNBC on Friday. Investors will feel the pain, too.

Microsoft’s stock dropped almost 6% in the past two days, as the Nasdaq wrapped up its worst week in five years.

“As a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good,” Ballmer said, in an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin that was tied to Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebration. “It creates opportunity to be a serious, long-term player.”

Ballmer was sandwiched in between Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and current CEO Satya Nadella for the interview.

“I took just enough economics in college — that tariffs are actually going to bring some turmoil,” said Ballmer, who was succeeded by Nadella in 2014. Gates, Microsoft’s first CEO, convinced Ballmer to join the company in 1980.

Gates, Ballmer and Nadella attended proceedings at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, campus on Friday to celebrate its first half-century.

Between the tariffs and weak quarterly revenue guidance announced in January, Microsoft’s stock is on track for its fifth straight month of declines, which would be the worst stretch since 2009. But the company remains a leader in the PC operating system and productivity software markets, and its partnership with startup OpenAI has led to gains in cloud computing.

“I think that disruption is very hard on people, and so the decision to do something for which disruption was inevitable, that needs a lot of popular support, and nobody could game theorize exactly who is going to do what in response,” Ballmer said, regarding the tariffs. “So, I think citizens really like stability a lot. And I hope people — individuals who will feel this, because people are feeling it, not just the stock market, people are going to feel it.”

Ballmer, who owns the Los Angeles Clippers, is among Microsoft’s biggest fans. He said he’s the company’s largest investor. In 2014, shortly after he bought the basketball team for $2 billion, he held over 333 million shares of the stock, according to a regulatory filing.

“I’m not going to probably have 50 more years on the planet,” he said. “But whatever minutes I have, I’m gonna be a large Microsoft shareholder.” He said there’s a bright future for computing, storage and intelligence. Microsoft launched the first Azure services while Ballmer was CEO.

Earlier this week Bloomberg reported that Microsoft, which pledged to spend $80 billion on AI-enabled data center infrastructure in the current fiscal year, has stopped discussions or pushed back the opening of facilities in the U.S. and abroad.

JPMorgan Chase’s chief economist, Bruce Kasman, said in a Thursday note that the chance of a global recession will be 60% if Trump’s tariffs kick in as described. His previous estimate was 40%.

“Fifty years from now, or 25 years from now, what is the one thing you can be guaranteed of, is the world needs more compute,” Nadella said. “So I want to keep those two thoughts and then take one step at a time, and then whatever are the geopolitical or economic shifts, we’ll adjust to it.”

Gates, who along with co-founder Paul Allen, sought to build a software company rather than sell both software and hardware, said he wasn’t sure what the economic effects of the tariffs will be. Today, most of Microsoft’s revenue comes from software. It also sells Surface PCs and Xbox consoles.

“So far, it’s just on goods, but you know, will it eventually be on services? Who knows?” said Gates, who reportedly donated around $50 million to a nonprofit that supported Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ losing campaign.

— CNBC’s Alex Harring contributed to this report.

WATCH: There will be many LLM winners, says infrastructure investor Morrison

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AppLovin can offer TikTok ‘much stronger bid than others,’ CEO says

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AppLovin can offer TikTok 'much stronger bid than others,' CEO says

Piotr Swat | Lightrocket | Getty Images

AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi provided more clarity on the ad-tech company’s late-stage effort to acquire TikTok, calling his offer a “much stronger bid than others” on CNBC’s The Exchange Friday afternoon.

Foroughi said the company is proposing a merger between AppLovin and the entire global business of TikTok, characterizing the deal as a “partnership” where the Chinese could participate in the upside while AppLovin would run the app.

“If you pair our algorithm with the TikTok audience, the expansion on that platform for dollars spent will be through the roof,” Foroughi said.

The news comes as President Trump announced he would extend the deadline a second time for TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance to sell the U.S. subsidiary of TikTok to an American buyer or face an effective ban on U.S. app stores. The new deadline is now in June, which, as Foroughi described, “buys more time to put the pieces together” on AppLovin’s bid. 

“The president’s a great dealmaker — we’re proposing, essentially an enhancement to the deal that they’ve been working on, but a bigger version of all the deals contemplated,” he added.

AppLovin faces a crowded field of other interested U.S. backers, including Amazon, Oracle, billionaire Frank McCourt and his Project Liberty consortium, and numerous private equity firms. Some proposals reportedly structure the deal to give a U.S. buyer 50% ownership of the company, rather than a complete acquisition. The Chinese government will still need to approve the deal, and AppLovin’s interest in purchasing TikTok in “all markets outside of China” is “preliminary,” according to an April 3 SEC filing.

Correction: A prior version of this story incorrectly characterized China’s ongoing role in TikTok should AppLovin acquire the app.

WATCH: AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi on its bid to buy TikTok

AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi on its bid to buy TikTok

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Trump’s tariff rates for other countries radically larger than World Trade data

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Trump's tariff rates for other countries radically larger than World Trade data

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event announcing new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, April 2, 2025.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

President Donald Trump announced an aggressive, far-reaching “reciprocal tariff” policy this week, leaving many economists and U.S. trade partners to question how the White House calculated its rates.

Trump’s plan established a 10% baseline tariff on almost every country, though many nations such as China, Vietnam and Taiwan are subject to much steeper rates. At a ceremony in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, Trump held up a poster board that outlined the tariffs that it claims are “charged” to the U.S., as well as the “discounted” reciprocal tariffs that America would implement in response.

Those reciprocal tariffs are mostly about half of what the Trump administration said each country has charged the U.S. The poster suggests China charges a tariff of 67%, for instance, and that the U.S. will implement a 34% reciprocal tariff in response.

However, a report from the Cato Institute suggests the trade-weighted average tariff rates in most countries are much different than the figures touted by the Trump administration. The report is based on trade-weighted average duty rates from the World Trade Organization in 2023, the most recent year available.

The Cato Institute says the 2023 trade-weighted average tariff rate from China was 3%. Similarly, the administration says the EU charges the U.S. a tariff of 39%, while the 2023 trade-weighted average tariff rate was 2.7%, according to the report.

In India, the Trump administration claims that a 52% tariff is charged against the U.S., but Cato found that the 2023 trade-weighted average tariff rate was 12%.

Many users on social media this week were quick to notice that the U.S. appeared to have divided the trade deficit by imports from a given country to arrive at tariff rates for individual countries. It’s an unusual approach, as it suggests that the U.S. factored in the trade deficit in goods but ignored trade in services.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative briefly explained its approach in a release, and stated that computing the combined effects of tariff, regulatory, tax and other policies in various countries “can be proxied by computing the tariff level consistent with driving bilateral trade deficits to zero.”

If trade deficits are persistent because of tariff and non-tariff policies and fundamentals, then the tariff rate consistent with offsetting these policies and fundamentals is reciprocal and fair,” the USTR said in the release.

There is at least a 60% chance of recession if Trump's tariffs stick, says JPMorgan's David Kelly

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