This week the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a 15-page report “Foreign Threats to the 2020 U.S. Federal Elections” at the direction of DNI, Avril Haines. The report was culled from a classified report provided to the White House in January. The ODNI notes the analytic conclusions are identical in the unclassified version, though the unclassified document “does not include the full supporting information and does not discuss specific intelligence reports, sources or methods.”
Simultaneously with the release of the ODNI’s report, a Joint Statement on the impact of foreign interference during the 2020 U.S. elections was released by the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
Together, the two documents provide an all-source assessment of the actions of foreign powers focused on the U.S. elections of 2020.
Election Influence vs. Election Interference
ODNI’s report made an important distinction between influence and interference, defining election influence as “overt and covert efforts by foreign governments or actors acting as agents of or on behalf of foreign governments intended to affect directly or indirectly a U.S. election.” It defines interference as “a subset of election influence activities targeted at the technical aspects of the election including voter registration, casting and counting ballots or reporting results.”
The distinctions are important, because the ODNI report seeks to emphasize that while foreign actors were at play in the 2020 election, their efforts to influence didn’t interfere with the infrastructure, voting process, or election results.
U.S. 2020 election was secure
The joint DoJ/DHS statement emphasized three points to support their confidence that while foreign governments were at work to influence the results of the 2020 election, election interference didn’t occur:
- Election infrastructure wasn’t owned, directed, or controlled by foreign governments.
- No election results were manipulated or otherwise compromised by foreign entities.
- Several incidents involving “Russian, Chinese, and Iranian government-affiliated actors materially impacted the security of networks associated with or pertaining to US political organizations, candidates, and campaigns during 2020 federal elections.” The assessment continued, “we did not see any such materials [collected] deployed, modified, or destroyed.”
In the weeks leading up to the election the FBI and CISA warned of attempts by Russia and Iran to sway public opinion via disinformation campaigns. The FBI had also previously stated that voter registration had been obtained by both Iran and Russia. ODNI’s report seems to follow-on that while those breaches occurred, the DNI does not have evidence that data was modified or destroyed.
The ODNI’s assessment includes information collected through the end of 2020 and is prepared pursuant to a 2018 EO which declared a state of emergency to deal with the threat of election security, and threatened sanctions to any foreign nation who sought to interfere in a U.S. election.
ODNI Foreign Threat Report
The five key judgements from the ODNI report are:
- We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 U.S. elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.
- We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the U.S. Unlike in 2016, we did not see persistent Russian cyber efforts to gain access to election infrastructure
- We assess that Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects, undermine public confidence in the electoral process and U.S. institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the U.S.
- We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the U.S Presidential election.
- We assess that a range of additional foreign actors— including Lebanese Hizballah, Cuba, and Venezuela took steps to attempt to influence the election.
Olga Lautman, noted researcher and analyst on Russia and Ukraine demonstrated a good bit of prescience in 2019 and again in mid-2020, when she commented how the Kremlin’s goals to influence the United States, and the 2020 election would include deflecting Russia perfidy and damaging bilateral relations with Ukraine.
Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian legislator and suspected agent of the Russian Federation, is called out by name in the ODNI report as having played a prominent role in Russian influence activities. In September 2020, the U.S. Treasury noted in their announcement of sanctions being levied against Derkach, “From at least late 2019 through mid-2020, Derkach waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 presidential election.”
While the report focused predominately on the extensive efforts of the Russian Federation, it is noteworthy that Iran took a significant stab at influencing the U.S. elections of 2020. Iranian influence operations centered on undermining the reelection of President Trump. Their activity had the approval at the highest level with the Iranian government and according to the assessment this activity continues post-election. Their efforts were predominately in the cyber realm and included attempts to “exploit vulnerabilities on U.S. states’ election websites, as well as news website content management systems.
The DoJ/DHS joint statement included four recommendations:
- Physical Security and Cyber Hygiene: Cyber attacks are a constant, all electronic polling include “redundancy measures like paper pollbooks backups, auditable ballots, and post-election audits. U.S. Government should continue to help election officials, campaigns and political organizations to adopt best practices.
- Third-Party Vendor Security and Supply Chain Risk management: Local government to lean on their federal partners for supply chain best practices, to include software bill of goods and breach notification requirements, as well as acquisition and contract management transparency.
- Engagement and Collaboration: S. Government focus on active engagement, collaboration, and coordination at the federal, state, local and private sector. In 2018, the DHS and FBI coordinated with all 50 states and 3,000 local jurisdictions.
- Public Messaging and Engagement: S. Government continue to increase the quantity and quality of public messaging and education re foreign interference to include baseless claims designed to undermine the public confidence in the election process.
The takeaway remains, foreign election influence and foreign election interference will continue and countering these efforts through education, technological investment and transparency will remain a requirement which needs addressing at the federal, state and local levels.
