Latest in election interference
The television show “The Americans” imagined KGB agents deployed to the U.S. undercover as regular suburbanites. If the show’s Russian operatives were in the U.S. today, what might they do in the run-up to November?
On Thursday, June 18, at 12:00 p.m., the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will hold a hearing titled, "Emerging Trends in Online Foreign Influence Operations: Social Media, COVID-19, and Election Security." The committee will hear testimony from: Nathan
The heads of numerous departments and federal agencies, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other agencies belonging to the intelligence community, released a joint statement today describing preparations to prevent foreign election interference during “Super Tuesday” presidential primaries.
You can read the statement here and below:
Rather than waiting on Congress, states can use unspent funds for cybersecurity.
Somewhat lackluster attention to Roger Stone’s trial raises the question of who still cares about the Mueller investigation.
Democrats and Republicans alike should prioritize responding to interference from Beijing, imposing additional sanctions on malign actors, closing financial loopholes, raising standards for technology companies and improving election security.
There have been many pieces, in Lawfare and elsewhere, about the weaknesses in America’s political and election systems. In my career as a security executive, I sometimes found it difficult to communicate risk to non-expert audiences when focusing on a specific vulnerability. It is often more effective to paint a dire but realistic scenario relying on the proven capabilities of real adversaries combined with a variety of known, systemic issues.
Editor’s Note: With the exception of the president of the United States, we all know that Russia and other powers have run amok in their attempts to influence U.S. elections and those of other democracies around the world. Learning the scope of the problem, however, has proved difficult. In a groundbreaking study, Arya Goel, Diego Martin and Jacob Shapiro, all of Princeton University, find that more than 20 countries have been targeted. Russia (no surprise) is by far the most active, but Iran, China and Saudi Arabia all are joining the fray.
The years since the 2016 election have been a national trauma that the U.S. shouldn’t be eager to revisit. Yet almost no policy changes have been made as a result of what the country has learned from the Mueller investigation and related events. In this post, I’d like to start assembling a menu of possible reforms that address the lessons learned from what Lawfare sometimes calls L’Affaire Russe.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on Order from Chaos.
The redacted Special Counsel report released this morning confirms that the Russian government, through various proxies, carried out a multi-pronged campaign against the United States before, during, and after the 2016 election. That campaign involved three distinct elements: