Understanding the Threats to U.S. Election Security in 2024
artificial intelligence (AI) systems to auto-generate pages for the groups—and continue to coordinate over the platform to conduct vigilante monitoring of ballot boxes to prevent “ballot stuffing,” a move better suited to intimidating voters than illuminating electoral irregularities.
The unrest could continue up to Inauguration Day on January 20, 2025, and even beyond.
How serious has outside interference been in this year’s election cycle?
Despite reports of attempted interference [PDF] by China, Iran, and Russia, evidence indicates that the electoral process itself remains safe and secure from foreign interference as the election nears. Intelligence officials continue to provide regular public briefings to clarify threats, maintaining a trend of rapid declassification in the interest of filling information vacuums susceptible to conspiracy theories with credible, vetted information.
Although concern about a possible cyberattack on or near Election Day continues to loom large for state and local officials, domestic extremists seeking to undermine the election by intimidating electoral workers, engaging in political violence, or disrupting the voting process likely pose a more significant immediate threat than foreign interference. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has repeatedly emphasized the cybersecurity benefits of the United States’ decentralized elections infrastructure; the lack of any single point of attack makes a comprehensive cyberattack on U.S. elections much harder to achieve.
2024 has been the year of elections. What lessons can the United States take from other countries about how threats to the information environment have evolved?
As predicted, the super-cycle of global elections has provided valuable insights into how the U.S. electoral environment would evolve in 2024. Disinformation campaigns in Bangladesh, Serbia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe in 2023 and 2024 sought to undermine electoral trust in those countries by attacking institutions, intimidating officials, and fueling narratives of foreign interference or fraud. These campaigns particularly targeted women in prominent political roles.
The rise of generative AI has added a new tool to these operations, which often involve bots, fake news sites, and collaboration with state-controlled media to distort the information landscape. Despite that, the impact on electoral outcomes appears to have remained minimal.
The United States has experienced similar tactics, both through (seemingly) domestic campaigns of pro-Trump bots operating on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, and through foreign influence operations, such as the creation of
