French investigators say a covert influence outfit tied to smear campaigns in this spring’s local elections has likely been plying the same trade far beyond France, including in New York City and Scotland. The methods look familiar enough that they now have a name attached to them: BlackCore, a little-known company that has abruptly found itself at the center of an international election-meddling probe.
Marc-Antoine Brillant, who heads the French foreign-interference watchdog VIGINUM, told Reuters that “the modus operandi appears to have been used to carry out foreign digital interference operations in Angola, Togo, Scotland and New York,” tying the French case to what look like earlier, scattered operations on several continents.
What Investigators Say They Found In France
In France’s March municipal races, platform sleuths and local media documented a grab bag of dirty tricks aimed at several left-wing La France Insoumise candidates. According to Le Parisien, the campaign featured fake news sites mimicking local outlets, anonymous social media accounts, AI-generated images and paid digital ads that pushed fabricated allegations.
Technical breadcrumbs from domains and subdomains, Le Parisien reports, appear to point back to infrastructure associated with companies based in Israel. That is where BlackCore enters the picture, as investigators try to sort out who actually ordered and coordinated the operation.
Prosecutors Open A Formal Criminal Inquiry
Paris prosecutors have now opened a formal investigation on their own initiative to determine whether the online campaign crossed the line into a foreign-backed interference operation. According to Reuters, the probe brings in specialized cyber prosecutors and the national cyber police, who are looking at potential offences that include espionage, fraud and manipulation of the vote.
The goal is to move beyond technical clues and see whether any of that activity violated French criminal law, and if so, who is legally on the hook.
How VIGINUM And Platforms Frame The Threat
VIGINUM, the government service tasked with tracking foreign digital meddling, says the toolbox keeps getting more sophisticated. Generative AI, lookalike domains created through typosquatting and layers of intermediaries make it harder to spot coordinated fakes and even harder to figure out who is paying for them. In public threat assessments, VIGINUM notes that it regularly shares technical indicators with major online platforms so they can remove suspect accounts and domains.
The service also warns that commercial contractors and cut-outs can be stacked like nesting dolls, which gives political clients deniability and leaves investigators peeling back layers long after the election is over.
Why New Yorkers Should Pay Attention
Across the Atlantic, U.S. election-security officials have been telling local governments for years that foreign influence is not just a “presidential year” problem. Federal guidance and independent research from the CISA and the Brennan Center point out that today it does not take a massive, noisy campaign to move the needle. A handful of targeted smears, boosted cheaply and tailored with AI, can start to warp the conversation in a city race long before anyone heads to the polls.
For now, the BlackCore story is mostly a trail of clues and unanswered emails. Reporters and authorities say the company’s public footprint shrank once questions started landing, and requests for comment have gone nowhere. As French investigators dig in and platforms continue to knock down pieces of the network, election officials in other democracies, including in New York, are quietly watching their own feeds for familiar tactics and telltale signs that someone from far away is trying to play in their backyard.
