In 2016, Americans unwittingly took part in demonstrations set up by the Russian government. There were “Florida Goes Trump” rallies in Ft. Lauderdale and Coral Spring, and dueling protests at an Islamic center in Houston—all of them, federal officials assert, orchestrated on Facebook by Russian agents.
After the 2020 elections, Iran was behind a website filled with death threats against U.S. election officials. And during this year’s election, the FBI foiled a plot by Iran to pay an assassin $1 million to kill Donald Trump.
With Election Day now here, America’s spy agencies are warning that Russia and Iran are not done.
Declassified intelligence shows that adversaries like Russia and Iran are still attempting to sow chaos in the country’s jittery politics and are expected to step up those efforts in the weeks between and Jan. 6—when Congress officially counts the electoral college votes and declares a winner of the presidential contest.
Disinformation is being peddled by foreign adversaries “at a greater level than ever before,” Jen Easterly, the head of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that leads the government efforts to safeguard the election, told reporters on Monday. Easterly said there have been “low-level” attempts to disrupt election computer systems and destroy ballot drop boxes, but the agency sees “no evidence of activity that has the potential to materially impact the outcome of the presidential election.”
The main concern is what happens after the election. Iran and Russia could use tactics that “foment or contribute to violent protests,” says a declassified National Intelligence Council Memorandum dated Oct. 8.
The weeks between Election Day and the formal electoral vote count on Jan. 6 would be a time when “foreign actors” could amplify calls for violent protests and physical threats to election officials needed to certify results, the memo states.
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The Biden administration intends to publicize these efforts as much as possible. During the weeks after the election, the U.S. government plans to issue direct warnings to adversaries attempting to disrupt the election and release information to the public about fake videos and false information.
Some of that work has already started. In recent weeks, U.S. intelligence officials declassified assessments and attempted to publicly debunk fake videos. On Nov. 1, U.S. intelligence agencies announced that a Russian propaganda unit was behind a fake video purportedly showing someone saying Vice President Kamala Harris was bribed to tip off a celebrity before a police raid, and that the same unit is behind a fake video claiming to show mail-in ballots for Trump being destroyed in Pennsylvania.
Those efforts to disrupt the elections also came in the form of hacking. In late June and early July, Iranian-backed hackers sent emails to President Biden’s presidential campaign that included excerpts from emails illegally stolen from Trump’s campaign. Those same Iranian actors, according to a U.S. intelligence security update, also sent such material to U.S. media organizations. Iranian hackers were able to use social engineering tricks against Republican and Democratic campaigns. The resulting thefts were intended to influence the U.S. election process, the intelligence community concluded. Iran wants to “stoke discord and undermine confidence” in U.S. elections, the security update states.
But the intelligence agencies concluded that while foreign adversaries may try to spread lies about the election, they won’t be able to manipulate the official results. Voting machines aren’t connected to the Internet or each other, they say, and security measures in place are expected to ensure any attempts at tampering would be detected.
