Putin’s favorite congressman loses; election interference in 2018; factory of lies, and more

Second, consider the maturation in Russia’s approach compared to what it did in 2016.  Coverage of 2018 election interference has tended to focus on whether particular candidates were favored by online influence operations, whether particular votes were changed, or whether disinformation about whether, when, and how to vote on Election Day was circulating.  But, even if there was less of that than some expected, the democratic dialogue leading up to Election Day 2018 was still unquestionably infected by Russian influence.  Think of the major themes that dominated political discourse during this period, including #ReleaseTheMemo, the Kavanaugh hearings, and immigration.  Those topics generated significant political fights in the long build-up to the election.  As has been well documented for each of these topics, the online discussions about all of them have been polarized, aggravated, and in some instances even driven by Kremlin-backed online influence campaigns.  In other words, just zoom out, and the 2018 election interference comes into clearer focus.  And there’s also the potential interference we seem narrowly to have avoided this election cycle, as evidenced by Russia’s reported laying of the groundwork for spreading disinformation about widespread voter fraud in battleground states where Democrats had the possibility of achieving greater gains than ultimately materialized.
Third, consider Russia’s domestic counterparts in the dark arts of disinformation. America’s experience in 2016 trained us to focus on foreign election interference, in particular.  But it’s not only foreigners who can spread disinformation online in a deliberate effort to distort our democracy.  Americans, too, can mislead and distort their fellow citizens—and they are increasingly doing so, taking a page from hostile foreign actors.  In so doing, they’re pitting Americans against each other on cooked-up issues like the so-called migrant caravan and the purported influence of billionaire George Soros, as powerfully documented this week in the Washington Post.  What’s more, online there’s no clear separation between foreign and domestic influence campaigns; instead, in our digital age these voices cross national boundaries and echo, amplify, and feed off each other.
So, breathe a brief sigh of relief that Tuesday’s election results appear, in a direct sense, ones we can and should honor.  As I’ve emphasized elsewhere, be sure to maintain a healthy skepticism of any claims to the contrary unless grounded in clear and concrete evidence, especially if such claims appear politically driven.  But don’t think that we’ve cleansed our political system and discourse of the taint of election interference.  It’s still happening, and it may well be escalating.  If anything, we’re missing it because it’s become insidiously ingrained in our national debates on an ongoing basis, rather than just materializing to favor particular candidates in the immediate prelude to Election Day.  And that status quo, in which we as Americans don’t even notice that our biggest political arguments are being fueled by disinformation peddled at home and abroad, should be decidedly disconcerting and should in turn demand an improved response from the government, the tech sector, and civil society in the months to come—especially with Election Day 2020 suddenly looming large.

The surprising good news about voting security (Natasha Bertrand, Defense One)
With Tuesday’s midterms, America’s election infrastructure has never been more carefully monitored by government officials. But will that be enough?

Dana Rohrabacher, Putin’s favorite congressman, on verge of losing his seat to Democrat Harley Rouda (Daily Beast)
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher—the pro-Russia Republican who once boasted about a drunken arm-wrestling contest with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the 1990s—appears to be losing his seat to Democrat Harley Rouda. As of Wednesday morning, with all precincts counted, Rouda has a lead of more than 2,680 votes; “several thousand” provisional and late vote-by-mail ballots are still to be counted, The Orange County Register reports. Rohrabacher has been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump and his deeply Republican 48th House District in California re-elected him for three decades running. He was dubbed “Putin’s favorite congressman” after it was revealed that he used information he received directly from the Russian government to promote one of the Russian president’s top priorities: removing the name of the murdered Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky from a global anti-corruption law. FBI agents also once warned him that he was so favored by the Kremlin that he was considered a target for recruitment by Russian intelligence operatives. Rouda is a real-estate executive and former Republican who switched parties. She said ahead of the election: “President Trump has changed everything.”

Factory of lies: Russia’s disinformation playbook exposed (Ben Popken, NBC News)
‘Twenty years ago the Russians had to recruit journalists to find people to disseminate something… nowadays they just have to start a meme.’

How Estonia secures its electronic elections from Kremlin attacks (Patrick Tucker, Defense One)
Could innovations like a volunteer infosec corps and ‘data embassies’ help the U.S.?

Facebook takes down fake accounts over Russian troll farm concerns (Donie O’Sullivan and David Shortell, CNN)
Facebook says it removed more than 100 accounts this week from the main service as well as its subsidiary Instagram over concerns they may be connected to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) — the same troll operation targeted by special counsel Robert Mueller in his sprawling Russia investigation. The social media giant acknowledged Tuesday that it removed the pages following a tip from the FBI.

Russia has given up on outright fake news for meddling in midterms, experts say — but is using more subtle techniques instead

Russia has given up on outright fake news for meddling in midterms, experts say — but is using more subtle techniques instead (Sinéad Baker, Business Insider)
Russia is stepping away from using fake news and has adopted different tactics to bait and divide Americans and influence elections, experts say. The apparent playbook for interfering in the midterm elections is harder for people and social media companies to detect, experts told Reuters. New tricks include boosting existing partisan memes from both political extremes, and promoting divisive posts online which originate from Americans. Experts say that this strategy relies less on pure fiction, and makes it much more difficult to detect.