The U.S. presidential election is but two months away, and all media outlets are overflowing with paid advertisements. Individual inboxes and messages on devices are blowing up with inbound information. The various social networks are flooded with information, misinformation, disinformation, deep fakes, and not-so-deep fakes. What does all this have in common? These efforts, the legit and illegitimate are designed to sway the voter’s opinion in the upcoming election and cause them to take action. The goals of the legitimate are straightforward – vote, campaign, door knock, fund raise, and support your candidate(s) of choice. The illegitimate are designed to cause chaos, create friction, support a candidate’s candidacy believing it is in that nation’s interests.
In 2020, NCSC Director William Evanina warned of the efforts of Russia, China and Iran. Fast forward to 2024, and the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines echoed that message last week at the Intelligence and National Security Summit in her fireside chat.
ODNI Avril Haines
She highlighted how there has been an expansion of actors and their sophistication, to include the use of legitimate commercial entities which oftentimes makes attribution difficult. The rise of Generative AI is another area where 2024 is different than prior years, as the technology affords the ability to focus on specific audiences and adversaries with finely tuned messaging. The Intelligence Community has their work cut out for them to identify opportunity to thwart the nation state efforts. The rise of “synthetic media” was identified by the DNI as an area she fears where AI will see greater use.
These parallel her comments made in May 2024 in a hearing on “Foreign Threats to the 2024 Elections” before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence where she noted the efforts of the “Foreign Malign Influence Center and the Election Threats Executive, who leads, coordinates and integrates the IC’s activities, initiatives, and programs.” She also reiterated that Evanina’ s warning, that Russia, China, and Iran are three of the nations actively engaged in foreign influence activity.
While sharing that the IC is on the job, is engaged and is working diligently, she also emphasized the need for the IC to communicate effectively with the American people when the IC provides information on election security. She continued how it is both critical and challenging. She shared the importance of sharing information “simply through a national security perspective.”
Former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency commented in a separate session, spoke on the need for accuracy, “We have an obligation as a community to educate the public and as events arise, I am sure they will be if necessary additional information that gets put out (referencing the Iranian efforts), but accuracy has to to be the top priority.”
Nation States are in the ring
Let there be no doubt about it, nations which have animus towards the United States are investing their national resources to influence the domestic election outcome.
We have written many times in Clearance Jobs about the Russian efforts, dating back to the breaching the Democratic National Committee in 2016 email servers. We wrote then “The uniqueness of the 2016 election was the availability of information online, and the poor cyber hygiene on the part of individuals and organizations. A combination which made the online attacks by the GRU both possible and bountiful.” The tool used to good effect? Spear phishing, where individuals who had been cased and assessed were fed opportunities to take an action which would compromise their device and by extension the information within.
The ODNI, together with the FBI and CISA shared the status of current Iranian efforts to influence the elections in a joint statement, mid-August. To that end, the recent indictment of former U.S. Marine John Dougan, who is the front man for a major false news effort which includes multiple bogus news sites in the United States which are populated with misinformation and disinformation designed to influence the American reader.
At the same INSA session, Deputy Director FBI, Paul Abbate commented on the likelihood of foreign election interference, “We are anticipating that behavior (foreign interference) and we are well prepared for it. This is something that has been going on for a long time. It has evolved in recent years in the online, in the cyberspace.” He continued, with respect to the readiness of 2024, compared to 2016, “We have really come together collaboratively and we have made great progress and positioned the enterprise to stay ahead of the threat and that is reflected in the fact that is is being identified and called out and accountability is being brough to bear in that regard in a number of different ways (NFI).”
China’s efforts to influence politics in the United States was highlighted with the indictment of Linda Sun on September 3. Sun was the Deputy Chief of Staff within the New York Governor’s office, she together with her husband were charged under Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The Department of Justice statement highlights Sun’s actions, “As alleged in the indictment, while working for the New York State government – including in high-ranking posts in the Executive Chamber of the New York State government and in multiple state agencies – Sun also acted as an undisclosed agent of the PRC and the CCP. Acting at the request of PRC government officials and the CCP representatives, Sun engaged in numerous political activities in the interests of the PRC and the CCP, including blocking representatives of the Taiwanese government from having access to high-level New York State officers; changing high-level New York State officers’ messaging regarding issues of importance to the PRC and the CCP; obtaining official New York State proclamations for PRC government representatives without proper authorization; attempting to facilitate a trip to the PRC by a high-level New York State politician; and arranging meetings for visiting delegations from the PRC government with New York State government officials.”
A Word to FSOs
What is particularly important for FSOs and their staff is that the Iranian effort to compromise former President Trump’s campaign was enabled via social engineering. The advisory highlights that this is NOT new, and has been seen by other nations. Furthermore, the techniques are used by others, including Russia. The Chinese efforts involved U.S. citizens who were secretly acting as agents of a foreign power. There are many arrows in the quiver of the nation’s adversaries, DNI Haines highlights one of the newest, the expected use of synthetic media designed to disrupt the U.S. elections and influence the mindset of voters.
Sensitizing the FSO’s constituency to the ODNI/CISA/FBI points of emphasis is prudent.
