National security leaders warn of foreign meddling ahead of midterms
Less than three weeks before the midterms, top U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials today sounded the alarm about ongoing efforts by Russia, China and Iran to influence upcoming American elections and policies.
The “ongoing campaigns” by those countries seek to “undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and the heads of Department of Justice, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security said in a joint statement.
They said the activities are an attempt to sway voters’ opinions and decisions about the upcoming election ahead of the 2020 presidential vote.
The statement came just minutes before the Justice Department brought its first criminal case over alleged Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections.
The joint announcement follows several weeks of warnings from Trump administration officials that Beijing — not just Moscow — is increasing operations to sway U.S. public opinion. It also comes after several moves by Facebook and Twitter to strip foreign accounts that spread false or misleading political messages from their platforms.
The officials’ statement specifically pointed out English-language media like RT and Sputnik, which are both Russian-owned media outlets, as vehicles for “disseminating foreign propaganda.”
While the officials said foreign efforts to sway public opinion similar to those that preceded the 2016 election are ongoing, they’ve seen no evidence of operations to tamper with voting equipment, prevent voting or to interrupt vote counting.
The public declaration comes as federal and state officials are increasingly on-edge about the security of election systems ahead of the upcoming midterms.
On Thursday, a senior DHS official admitted he was a “little nervous” that Russian hackers have yet to target election infrastructure on the same scale as during the heated 2016 presidential campaign.
“If we’re not seeing any activity and we’re less than three weeks out, what does that mean?” Christopher Krebs, head of the DHS cyber wing, asked at a CyberScoop conference in Washington.
In their statement, leaders said increased “intelligence and information sharing among federal, state and local partners has improved our awareness of ongoing and persistent threats to election infrastructure.”
They noted some state and local governments have reported attempts to access their networks — including online voter registration data bases — though they did not offer specific examples.
“Thus far, state and local officials have been able to prevent access or quickly mitigate these attempts,” the agency chiefs said. They also urged the public, including campaigns, to defend against outside digital threats by following “sound” cybersecurity guidelines and “being responsible consumers of information, in particular from social media platforms.”
Even though the Friday’s statement includes a reference to China, President Donald Trump and other senior administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, have come under fire for suggesting the China is attempting to meddle in the upcoming midterms.
On Wednesday, a group of senior House Democrats issued a statement saying their offices had received an update from DHS about potential tampering by Beijing and found nothing to support such charges.
“Nothing we have learned through this update supports the president’s or vice president’s recent claims or changes our view that their statements on this issue are driven by partisan politics rather than the facts,” the top Democrats on the House Homeland Security, Oversight, Judiciary, Armed Services and House Administration committees said.