Russia, Iran Meddled in November's Election; China Did Not: U.S. Intelligence

Iran, other actors, are all trying to interfere or influence our elections for their own gain.” 

He added, however, that Beijing’s efforts stood apart. 

“China’s using a massive and sophisticated influence campaign that dwarfs anything that any other country is doing,” Ratcliffe said.  

Another top Trump official, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, echoed those thoughts less than a month later. 

“The intelligence community has made very clear, first you have China, which has the most massive program to influence the United States politically,” O’Brien told reporters at the time. 

Trump, himself, also played up the notion China was seeking his defeat. 

“China would love us to have an election where Donald Trump lost to sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump said during a news conference last August. “They would own our country.” 

Declassified Report 
In the newly declassified report, however, U.S. intelligence officials concluded Beijing did not use its well-developed influence machine to alter the results. 

“We did not identify China attempting to interfere with election infrastructure or provide funding to any candidates or parties,” the report said. 

It said Beijing had previously sought to influence U.S. politics, including in the 2018 U.S. elections. “We did not, however, see these capabilities deployed for the purpose of shaping the electoral outcome,” the report said. 

While stating it had high confidence in its findings regarding China, the ODNI report admitted there was some disagreement. 

“The National Intelligence Officer [NIO] for Cyber assesses that China took at least some steps to undermine former President Trump’s reelection chances, primarily through social media and official public statements and media,” it said, explaining the NIO gave more weight to indications that Beijing preferred Biden, seeing him as more predictable than Trump. 

The NIO also argued, with moderate confidence, that evidence suggested China increased its influence operations from June to August 2020, while calibrating its effort so as to “avoid blowback.” 

Still, several former intelligence officials who spoke to VOA about the ODNI report said its prevailing view in regard to China was not surprising. 

“[Former Director of National Intelligence] John Ratcliffe had the political mission of downplaying the whole Russian influence issue, with one way of doing that being to play up the idea that Chinese influence was at least as likely and significant as anything the Russians did,” said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA officer who has been critical of Trump. 

Pillar, now with Georgetown University, said, in his view, the more notable conclusion from the ODNI report was how Russia