Considered opinion: Election securityAs midterm elections approach, a growing concern that the nation is not protected from Russian interference
The United States has done little to protect the country’s election systems against Russian interference – or interference by other foreign state actors. Two years ago, Russian government hackers and disinformation specialists conducted an effective campaign of interference in the 2016 presidential election. Their disinformation campaign on social media — aiming to deepen divisions in American society along racial, ethnic, and religious lines and increase political polarization and acrimony – has never stopped. It is on-going. There is evidence that the Russian government hackers have already began their hacking efforts to help shape the 2018 midterm congressional elections. Ellen Nakashima and Craig Timberg write in the Washington Post that Russian efforts to manipulate U.S. voters through misleading social media postings are likely to have grown more sophisticated and harder to detect, and there is not a sufficiently strong government strategy to combat information warfare against the United States.
The United States has done little to protect the country’s election systems against Russian interference – or interference by other foreign state actors.
Two years ago, Russian government hackers and disinformation specialists conducted an effective campaign of interference in the 2016 presidential election. Their disinformation campaign on social media — aiming to deepen divisions in American society along racial, ethnic, and religious lines and increase political polarization and acrimony – has never stopped. It is on-going.
There is evidence that the Russian government hackers have already began their hacking efforts to help shape the 2018 midterm congressional elections. The first two known targets of the second wave of Russian government hacking: Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) and Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire).
Ellen Nakashima and Craig Timberg write in the Washington Post that lawmakers and independent analysts say that voting systems are more secure against hackers, thanks to action at the federal and state levels — and that the Russians have not yet targeted those systems to the degree they did in 2016. But Russian efforts to manipulate U.S. voters through misleading social media postings are likely to have grown more sophisticated and harder to detect, and there is not a sufficiently strong government strategy to combat information warfare against the United States, outside experts said.
Nakashima and Timberg write:
Despite Facebook’s revelation this week that it had closed down 32 phony pages and profiles that were part of a coordinated campaign, technology companies in general have struggled to curb the flow of disinformation and hacking and have received little guidance from the U.S. government on how to do so.
“Twenty-one months after the 2016 election, and only three months before the 2018 elections, Russian-backed operatives continue to infiltrate and manipulate social media to hijack the national conversation and set Americans against each other,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia) said Wednesday at a hearing of Senate Intelligence Committee, of which he is vice chairman. “They were doing it in 2016; they are still doing it today.”
