What To Know About Foreign Meddling In The Us Election

The target is you, voter. Russia, China, Iran, and other bad actors sought to interfere in the run-up to today’s US elections, according to research by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), which has been monitoring online... As DFRLab experts detail below, this year’s malign efforts in many ways surpass previous influence campaigns in sophistication and scope, if not in impact—and they are expected to continue well after the polls close. The Atlantic Council’s guide to the most consequential US political contest in generations. New Atlanticist By Atlantic Council experts Atlantic Council experts share their insights on the Biden administration’s newly announced response to what it alleges is an expansive malign influence operation by the Kremlin.

A new essay by former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley provides an important contribution at the early stages of a new geopolitical era. Several nations interfered in the 2024 United States elections. U.S. intelligence agencies identified China,[1][2] Iran,[3][4][5] and Russia[6][7][8] as the most pressing concerns,[9] with Russia being the most active threat.[10] Interference included propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation campaigns using inauthentic accounts and websites on social media and the internet;[1][2][7][11] successful and unsuccessful attempts to hack presidential campaigns;[4] the promotion and denigration of specific candidates and... Before the election, current and former U.S.

officials stated that foreign interference in the 2024 election was likely. Three major factors cited were "America's deepening domestic political crises, the collapse of controversial attempts to control political speech on social media, and the rise of generative AI."[12] In March 2021, the National Intelligence Council released a report that found Russia and Iran carried out operations to influence the 2020 election. It also stated that China "considered but did not deploy" influence efforts in 2020,[13] although it increased efforts by the 2022 midterms.[14] A declassified U.S. intelligence report released in December 2023 found with "high confidence" that a "diverse and growing group of foreign actors" including China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba had all interfered in the 2022 midterms with influence... In 2022, the Foreign Malign Influence Center was set up at the Intelligence Community Campus-Bethesda as a command hub to fight electoral disinformation surrounding the 2024 presidential election.[16]

A man exits a voting booth at a polling station in Lancaster, N.H., on Election Day, Nov. 5. Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images hide caption The new Trump administration is moving quickly to roll back longstanding work to counter foreign influence in U.S. elections, work that began in the first Trump term after revelations about the extent and ambition of Russia's efforts to sway the 2016 election. Staffers working on countering foreign mis- and disinformation as well as a team of 10 regional election security advisers at the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have been put...

In addition to the disruption to CISA's work, Attorney General Pam Bondi also ordered an end to an FBI task force to combat foreign influence campaigns in American politics by Russia, China and other... The order says to "free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion, the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded." She also rolled back... Experts working on technology, human rights and digital governance at the United States Agency for International Development can no longer do their work during a Trump administration effort to shut down the agency, leaving... Last updated 2 weeks ago. Our resources are updated regularly but please keep in mind that links, programs, policies, and contact information do change. The National Security Council coordinates America’s defense against foreign election interference, orchestrating intelligence agencies, cybersecurity experts, and law enforcement to protect the democratic process from adversaries seeking to undermine public confidence in voting systems...

Since 2016, foreign interference has become a persistent threat to American elections. The NSC serves as coordinator, ensuring that intelligence gathering, cybersecurity defenses, criminal investigations, and diplomatic responses work together rather than operating in silos across different government departments. The NSC functions as the President’s hub for policy coordination rather than a standalone agency that deploys agents or runs operations. Its effectiveness depends on its ability to forge consensus, manage bureaucratic conflicts, and ensure presidential decisions are based on comprehensive, thoroughly vetted options from across the government. The NSC was established by the National Security Act of 1947, landmark legislation passed after World War II. Policymakers recognized a critical flaw in government structure: no formal mechanism existed to coordinate diplomatic, military, and domestic policies essential for navigating Cold War complexities.

U.S. intelligence officials say the spy community's Foreign Malign Influence Center has been busier than ever this election cycle. Russia, they claim, remains most active in targeting U.S. elections, but China and Cuba are likely to try their hand at influencing American voters. Iran is also interested in influencing the cycle, as it has in the past. But it's more focused on sowing chaos, and possibly even violence, than in promoting a particular candidate, according to two officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who briefed reporters Wednesday...

And foreign adversaries are likely to target "down ballot" local and state races in addition to the presidential race, the two officials said. That race likely will be a rematch between President Joe Biden and the presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations. Published by The Lawfare Institute in Cooperation With Over the past decade, U.S. institutions—from federal agencies to tech companies and civil society—worked to form a comprehensive shield against foreign interference in American politics.

Over the past few weeks, the second Trump administration has turned itself to the task of undoing this project—setting America’s posture toward foreign meddling back, even as foreign adversaries continue to sharpen their tactics. And it has done so for transparently political reasons, offering little justification for this destruction beyond a desire for retribution. Amidst the chaos of the current moment—a slew of executive actions, an ever-mounting pile of temporary restraining orders and injunctions in response, and the single-handed dismantling of agencies created by Congress—this story has received... But it’s worth watching closely. This rollback not only weakens America’s defenses, but telegraphs to U.S. adversaries that the country’s current leadership prioritizes appeasing a political base—one that it taught to dismiss foreign interference as a hoax—over protecting the country from real and ongoing threats.

As in other policy areas, state capacity is now determined in response to conspiracy theories on X. The assault on this infrastructure began even before Trump took office, but has accelerated in recent weeks. In December, Congress failed to extend funding for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), whose mandate had charged it to identify and expose foreign propaganda efforts; it had become a frequent target of... Then, Pam Bondi, Trump’s newly-confirmed attorney general, announced in a memo that the Justice Department was disbanding the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF)—a group of operators and analysts tasked with combating foreign malign... democratic institutions. Among its other responsibilities, FITF engaged with social media platforms, occasionally providing them with information and signals that they could use if they chose.

Bondi also indicated that the department would roll back its recent use of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and its cousin statute, 18 USC 951, to respond to foreign interference. Within the Department of Homeland Security, employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) working on countering foreign influence were placed on leave while the agency—another frequent target of House Republican censorship theories—“conducts... This dismantling is all the more striking because of the urgency of the work being done. After all, in 2024, Trump’s own presidential campaign was targeted by hackers linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp in an apparent hack-and-leak operation—and that was only one of the election interference efforts identified... But countering malign influence has fallen prey to a narrative embraced on the right, and by the new administration, that baselessly portrays concerns over foreign interference as a scam to steal presidential elections from... To understand this dynamic, it’s useful to rewind the tape to take a look at why these programs were established in the first place—and how they became politicized.

With the deeply divisive U.S. presidential election less than a week away, propaganda is of the greatest value because of the lack of time to rebut it. As for such propaganda? Foreign interference in U.S. presidential elections goes back to the early 1800s and even decades before then. The methods may have changed, but not so much the strategies.

These were some of the key takeaways from panelists at the recent 11th George Washington Leadership Lecture Series at Mount Vernon in Washington, D.C. Held in person and online Oct. 22, the event featured two guests: New York Times correspondent David E. Sanger and historian Tyson Reeder. In today’s newsletter, understanding the true threats to election integrity, and then: A group of intelligence officials confers about when to alert the public to foreign meddling.

This Presidential race is a prime opportunity for foreign meddling. Although the Trump campaign would have us believe that ballot boxes are being ambushed, attacks on the mechanics of vote counting are only a slight risk. The real election-interference threat lies with hacks and leaks, bots and trolls, hidden payments, A.I. deepfakes, and targeted attack ads—coming from places such as Iran, Russia, and China. In rigorous reporting for this week’s issue, David D. Kirkpatrick spoke with intelligence officials, including those at the Foreign Malign Influence Center, to assess the danger of adversaries using these tactics to twist public opinion, discredit the vote, and sway its outcome.

In an election that may hinge on tens of thousands of votes across a handful of states, almost any illicit advantage could arguably decide the outcome and gin up doubt about the results. Those tasked with protecting the Presidential election from manipulation by foreign powers must find ways to alert the public when harm is being done—without disclosing their sources and methods. How worried should we be about the threat, and what can individual voters do to tell fact from fiction? John Kelly, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, spoke with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg about an exchange he had with the former President, in which Trump expressed frustration at disloyalty among the military and... In light of these comments, it’s worth revisiting Adam Gopnik’s essay, from earlier this year, on the ways in which Hitler didn’t so much seize power as he was given it by those around... “In history, it’s true, the same thing never happens twice,” Gopnik writes.

“But the same things do.” Foreign adversaries will try to shake Americans’ confidence in the legitimacy of election results in November by giving voice to false claims or spreading their own disinformation about ballot counting, U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday. “As we approach Election Day, the intelligence community is also stressing that foreign efforts to undermine America’s democracy won’t end on Nov. 5,” a senior intelligence official told reporters in a virtual briefing. In its latest assessment of foreign threats to the election, intelligence officials said the main foreign powers seeking to shape the outcome of the vote — Russia and China — also were focusing on...

Intelligence agencies expect foreign actors “to continue their campaigns by calling into question the validity of the election’s results after the polls close,” the senior official said. Expecting another tightly contested election for the presidency and Congress, “foreign actors probably will use tactics similar to those that they are using today to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and... The foreign adversaries are likely to try to amplify false claims circulating in the U.S. about ballot tampering, as well to seek to “manufacture” falsehoods questioning the legitimacy of the election, the official said. Foreign meddling in U.S. elections is on the rise.

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