U.S. officials dealing with election security widely agree that the United States is far better prepared to deal with possible foreign meddling this November than it was when the Russians injected themselves into the 2016 race.
A senior Department of Homeland Security official said during an election threats briefing with reporters on Wednesday that “over the last three years, we’ve worked really hard at the U.S. government level to foster an election security community” by working with all the states and territories, along with local officials, to prepare for the 2020 election. “Election officials have done a ton over the last three years to respond to the lessons that we learned in 2016,” including improved security systems, better communication, and more than 90% of votes to be cast having a record that can be audited, the DHS official said.
“We didn’t have nearly the level of visibility or awareness in 2016 that we have now. And so, part of what we’ve been able to do over the last three years is really baseline the types of activity, the level of visibility in what we’re seeing in and around state and local election networks in order to understand what that threat environment looks like. We didn’t have that visibility, near that level. We are literally exponentially better in understanding that because of the types of information sharing, the sensors deployed, items like that … We are way ahead of where we were in 2016 to even be able to understand what that activity looks like,” the official said.
The first volume of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian meddling concluded that “Russian government-affiliated cyber actors conducted an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure in the run-up to the 2016” and likely attempted intrusions in all 50 states. The committee found “no evidence” that vote tallies were altered. The report determined Russia’s cyberefforts were led largely by Russian military intelligence, known as the GRU, the same group that special counsel Robert Mueller determined hacked the Democratic National Committee’s email systems. The report noted that “state election officials, who have primacy in running elections, were not sufficiently warned or prepared to handle an attack from a hostile nation-state actor.”
The DHS official Wednesday said that “we have changed our approach pretty significantly,” including both the FBI and DHS vastly improving their ability to investigate potential incidents and to push notifications to the broader election security community. The official said that the amount of reporting from state and local officials and from the private sector has been “tremendous” and helps the federal government “gain visibility” and detect “tremors in the Force” in ways it couldn’t before. The DHS official said that election officials from across the country were getting a classified briefing Wednesday about the “current threat environment.”
The DHS official also shed some light on current foreign cyberintrusion efforts, noting that “much of that activity has been unsuccessful activity and largely been just scanning or probing looking for common vulnerabilities.”
DHS has deployed sensors on state networks in every state. “We haven’t seen to date a ramp-up in activity targeting election infrastructure over the last few months,” unlike what happened in 2016, the DHS official said, adding, “the activity level and reporting from states has been relatively consistent.” He said, “We certainly haven’t seen something like what we saw with Illinois in 2016 at this point in time” when the Russians hacked the Illinois State Board of Elections website and compromised the sensitive details from at least 76,000 voters.
“We know the targeting of election infrastructure is in the playbook. We saw it in 2016, and we know it’s an option now,” the DHS official said, adding, DHS had seen “nothing specific where we’ve seen lots of attempts specifically against any given system but cognizant that we need to look for that type of activity.”
A senior official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also said intelligence agencies have found “no information or intelligence” that foreign adversaries were looking to “undermine” the mail-in voting process.
Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen gave a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday, where he argued that the “good news” is “that our election infrastructure, things like our polling places and printed ballots, have been well protected and that protection has improved over the last three years.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s second volume criticized the FBI’s failure to warn and work with Twitter and Facebook to battle Kremlin-backed trolls interfering in the 2016 election. The fifth volume criticized the bureau’s response to the DNC hack, saying, “It is clear to the Committee that the FBI could have, and should have, escalated its messages within the DNC much sooner than it did.”
A senior FBI official promised Wednesday that “election security is, and obviously will continue to be, one of our highest national security priorities.”
“We are alert to any indications that our adversaries are using cybermeans to exploit networks and targets associated with political organizations, campaigns, and election infrastructure. We and our partners continue to share actionable intelligence with network defenders so they can protect their systems,” the FBI official said during the election threats briefing. “We also investigate suspicious or malicious cyberactivity to identify who is responsible, warn others, and impose risks and consequences on any adversary seeking to interfere in our elections.”
Mueller’s report, released in April 2019, said Russians interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” criminal collusion between any Russians and anyone in President Trump’s orbit.
Bill Evanina, who leads the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, released an intelligence assessment in early August warning that Russia is actively trying to denigrate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The same statement also said China “prefers” that Trump not win reelection and is “expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020.” The counterintelligence official also said Iran “seeks to undermine” Trump’s presidency.
