DEMOCRACY WATCHInterference Interrupted: The US Government’s Strides Defending Against Foreign Threats to the 2024 Election
Foreign interference in U.S. elections has undoubtedly evolved, becoming more sophisticated and extensive, since Russia’s sweeping operation in 2016. But so have the US government’s strategies to expose, counter, and mitigate these attacks.
This year’s US election cycle was marked by increasingly brazen attempts by foreign actors to interfere and influence voters. Iran orchestrated a murder-for-hire plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump and successfully accessed documents from his campaign and leaked them to the media. Russia created dozens of websites that masqueraded as legitimate US news outlets and funneled money to a Tennessee-based company that contracted American media personalities to spread Kremlin talking points. Finally, the People’s Republic of China sought to sway down-ballot races by using bot accounts to post negative content about congressional candidates it deemed anti-China.
Foreign interference has undoubtedly evolved, becoming more sophisticated and extensive, since Russia’s sweeping operation in 2016. But so have the US government’s strategies to expose, counter, and mitigate these attacks. Despite widespread efforts by foreign actors to interfere in this year’s election, it remained secure and ran smoothly. This success can be attributed in part to the federal government increasingly prioritizing the issue and building on lessons learned from the 2016 and 2020 election cycles to improve coordination across government and with the states and using more instruments of power to unmask and disrupt foreign interference operations.
Early Flagging and Swift Debunking
The federal government made a more concerted effort to alert the public of foreign influence efforts in the months leading up to this year’s election, often in real time. In May, at a hearing of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, officials from the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) outlined the foreign threats they identified ahead of the election and how their respective agencies were working to counter them. To increase transparency about evolving foreign threats, ODNI also issued regular election security updates, including 100 days, 45 days, 30 days, and 15 days before the election. These assessments summarized predominant threat actors and their overarching goals and tactics.
In the final days of voting, intelligence officials also took the unprecedented step of debunking false content about the election in real time. In joint statements, ODNI, FBI, and CISA flagged two videos “manufactured and amplified” by Russia that purported to show election fraud in swing states.
