France probes alleged foreign interference in election linked to BlackCore

French authorities are examining whether a foreign interference campaign aimed at France Unbowed before the municipal elections was run, at least in part, by an obscure Israeli firm called BlackCore. The inquiry has put a spotlight on how local races can be manipulated through deceptive websites, fake social accounts and paid digital ads that blur the line between political attack and covert influence.

The alleged campaign targeted three France Unbowed candidates ahead of the March 15 and March 22 vote across about 35,000 communes, one of the largest electoral exercises in France. Viginum, the state disinformation watchdog, had already warned in November 2025 that the municipal elections would face foreign destabilization attempts, including fake news sites generated by artificial intelligence. The agency later said it had detected inauthentic-looking websites and social media accounts with foreign technical markers aimed at candidates in Marseille and Toulouse.

The publicly named targets included Sébastien Delogu and François Piquemal. Marseille public prosecutors opened a defamation probe after Delogu filed a complaint, and both men said they were targeted because of their criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. Le Monde reported that the smear blog sat within a network of fake X accounts used to push messaging from ELNET, a pro-Israeli lobby registered in France.

Meta Platforms added another layer to the case, saying it removed a network of accounts and pages for violating its rules against coordinated inauthentic behavior. The company said the activity originated in Israel and primarily targeted France. That finding matters because it suggests the operation was not just noisy online abuse but a structured influence effort with cross-border organization and a clear political objective.

BlackCore remains the most elusive piece. Reuters said it could not independently verify who was behind the company, where it was based, or find any trace of it in Israeli corporate records. The company’s own website and LinkedIn page described it as “an elite influence, cyber, and technology company built for the modern era of information warfare,” and said it offered governments and campaigns “cutting-edge strategies, advanced tools, and robust security to shape narratives.” Reuters also reviewed documents in which BlackCore claimed credit for a separate social-media operation for an African government that began in January and lasted 14 weeks.

The case has wider implications than one municipal race. France has spent the past year confronting repeated foreign information operations, including a 2025 campaign Viginum tied to the Russian group Storm-1516, which it said used hundreds of AI-generated fake news sites. Reporters Without Borders later counted dozens of French-language propaganda sites and more than 13,900 articles since February 2025. Against that backdrop, the BlackCore inquiry has become a test of whether French election-security defenses can keep pace with private influence shops, synthetic content and the growing weaponization of local politics.