Are Connecticut elections safe from foreign intelligence operations? The U.S. Intelligence Community advises that while efforts to penetrate voting systems have not succeeded, meddling to influence voters is still alive and kicking.
“Elections,” said Abraham Lincoln, “belong to the people.” So, to defend what’s ours, we the people must recognize who’s at work to skew our votes and how they’re scheming to usurp our right to decide who wins.
It’s comforting that the U.S. Intelligence Community goes to great lengths to detect outside political involvement. What’s more, both political parties and their candidates have little reason to risk engaging with foreign intelligence and espionage.
But whether we like it or not, our 21st century experiences — underscored by the National Intelligence Council’s unclassified report on foreign intrusions into the 2022 mid-term elections — constitute a red alert.
The Council’s report distinguishes between election interference (tampering with voting processes and seeking to alter vote tallies) and election influence (trying to manipulate an election outcome). Both are dangerous to our democracy, and both require serious attention.
Our imperfect, decentralized, state-run election system actually impedes interference. Our states use diverse polling equipment, methods and software, making it hard to tamper with the voting process — despite foreign efforts to do so. That’s why foreign actors focus more on campaigns and voters.
And they are serious about pursuing us.
Chinese hackers broke into both the Obama and McCain campaigns in the 2008 election. After 2008 and 2012, both China and Russia learned that — despite weak party information technology defenses — their espionage could be detected, and it was difficult to obtain desired results.
Still, election influencing efforts involving hacking, exposing (and concocting) embarrassing information, and flooding social media with false communications persist with few impediments to stop them.
Russia has developed sophisticated influence operations, especially those of the late Wagner Group founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose airplane strangely fell from the sky last summer after his attempted coup against Vladimir Putin.
About 2013, Prigozhin created the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg to intervene in our 2016 elections. His work marked a fundamental change in use of the internet. He used Facebook posts, Twitter messages and advertisements to foment chaos and help Donald Trump win the election.
Prigozhin used what the United States gave him. He impersonated Americans to post inflammatory messages on controversial issues such as abortion, gun control, immigration and minority rights. From 2015 to 2017, his trolls sent up to 126 million Facebook posts and 288 million Twitter impressions (139 million Americans voted in 2016).
Americans largely read and accepted what they wanted to believe: for example, that Susan Jones in Stamford was not really Sergei Victorovitch from St. Petersburg.
Russians focused on “purple” and “swing” states and targeted specific populations. Some of their work was subtle. Some was not, such as a depiction of Satan arm-wrestling Jesus, with Satan saying in the caption, “If I win, Clinton wins.”
It is possible to quantify, or at least estimate, damage done by election interference: What machines were compromised? How many votes were tainted?
But it is hardly possible to gauge the effects of internet propaganda. Who believed what? Who “liked” an espionage posting and passed it on?
Intelligence officials judge that the 2020 election saw far less direct interference than that of 2016. But the 2022 mid-term elections produced four key National Intelligence Council judgements:
- China approved efforts to influence some mid-term elections involving both parties.
- Iran sought to exploit social divisions in the U.S. and damage confidence in our democratic institutions.
- Russia and its proxies tried to denigrate the Democratic Party before the mid-terms and undermine confidence in the election, especially to reduce American support for Ukraine.
- These three foreign actors and others such as Cuba tried to undermine American candidates.
What should we do to counter active foreign propaganda disguised as American dialogue in 2024, which is shaping up to be an especially consequential American election? Three basic points are obvious:
- Limit the issues foreign intelligence agencies have to exploit by decreasing our vitriol and reckless accusations, focusing on serious policy differences and showing respect for our electoral process.
- Be less naïve and passive. Our elections are under attack by countries aiming to provoke dissent and chaos and steer outcomes. We need to be suspicious of social media postings from people we don’t know and do some due diligence before believing and sharing them.
- The Intelligence Community could do more as well. Post-election reports help us understand foreign intelligence attacks after the fact. But immediate, widely publicized revelations might both deter perpetrators and alert voters, in real time.
Connecticut — and American — elections can be controversial and contentious. That’s the nature of a healthy democracy. But foreign intelligence threats and nefarious use of the internet are a serious, clear and present danger.
States and election workers must certainly keep doing their part. But every voter has a dog and a role in this fight. We all need to be vigilant in order to fight our own electoral battles and protect our democracy from actors who have no business being here.
Bob Duff is Majority Leader of the Connecticut State Senate. Arthur House, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Connecticut, worked in the U.S. Intelligence Community and was Connecticut’s Chief Cybersecurity Risk Officer.