Indian shadow campaign industry extends to US midterms, investigation finds

The New York Times first reported posts supporting Democrat Haley Stevens ahead of Michigan's August 4 Senate primary, which she lost to Abdul El-Sayed, the party's candidate for the midterm election. The disinformation research group Antibot4Navalny told Al Jazeera it found at least 28 accounts on X sharing videos backing Stevens's campaign, drawing more than seven million views. At least 15 of the accounts were posting from India, a review by Al Jazeera found. Researchers at Clemson University's Media Forensic Hub have identified similar tactics used by for-hire Indian accounts and pages.

The US is only the latest theatre for consultants who have run shadow campaigns in several South American and African countries. Political consultancies selling persuasion as a service emerged in the US in the 1930s, and with the social media boom, dirty tricks moved online, including targeted advertising on Meta and Google platforms. Previous reports have found Russia used similar tactics to influence US voters. During India's 2024 national election, an Al Jazeera investigation revealed a sprawling network of shadow pages on Meta and Google products, skirting the platforms' policies.

For Rajan Kumar, a 22-year-old content creator in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, the trade meant working through the nights designing posters and editing videos for William Ruto's 2022 Kenyan presidential bid. Kumar said the 50 social media posts he created, paid at about $7 a day, were shared through shadow accounts that conceal their identity to make coordinated messaging appear independent. He described trimming opponents' speeches to twist their statements and making posters with false claims amplifying Ruto's prospects. "If there's a woman politician, we simply link her to someone to damage her reputation. It's one of the easiest ways to discredit," he said. Ruto won the election.

Nearly a dozen Indian political consultants who spoke with Al Jazeera said such campaigns operate with no limits, guardrails or red lines. "We are manipulating elections; there is no other way to say it," said Tushar Giri, a political consultant in New Delhi. "The concept of electoral democracy is so overrated. There is no free will for voters. Everything is manipulated." Giri said India has become "a big wholesale market to run these shadow political campaigns": "It is like you buy toys from China; similarly, you can manipulate elections anywhere in the world at the cheapest cost in India."

Meta and Google policies generally require political advertisers to verify their identities and disclose who paid for election ads. Consultants told Al Jazeera those rules are routinely violated. Premium VPNs are go-to tools for consultancies facing restrictions in one geography; sometimes, changing an account's country of origin enables someone abroad to run targeted political advertisements. "These platforms have long pages of such rules, but when you read between the lines, there are several loopholes one can exploit," Giri said.

Amogh Dhar Sharma, author of Backstage of Democracy, a book on Indian political consultancies, said the work is "perhaps an extension of the global outsourcing industry that has been central to India's economic growth", and that the distance between those behind shadow promotions and the campaigns they serve gives everyone involved "plausible deniability" if operations are revealed. "The way it creates certain, hidden sources of power in a democracy is one of the biggest ethical concerns."

The trade carries risks. Two Indian consultants working for Ruto's campaign, Zulfiqar Ahmad Khan and Mohamed Zaid Sami Kidwai, went missing in Nairobi in July 2022 and were found dead in October, allegedly abducted by an elite police unit. Ruto disbanded the unit after winning. Fifteen officers were accused of murder, but in August 2026 Kenya's High Court terminated the charges after prosecutors requested that the investigation be discontinued.

The shadowy nature of the work extends to payments. "Black money is a pillar of political consultation," one consultant told Al Jazeera, describing companies abroad that hire people on paper for random work as fronts to funnel money. At least three consultants identified export-focused businesses in Delhi's Chandni Chowk market as such a hub, and one consultant recalled carrying an Indian banknote bearing a specific serial number as a code to identify and collect the payment. "I saw people use 10-rupee notes to collect millions in cash," the consultant said. "It was like I'm in a movie."

Giri said consultants are rewarded for how far they are willing to go. "The dirtier you can get, the more money and opportunities there are."