Washington — Just hours before tens of millions of U.S. voters headed to the polls for the country’s presidential election, U.S. intelligence agencies issued a dire warning about ramped up influence operations – some apparently aimed at convincing Americans to turn on each other.
The statement late Monday cautioned voters to beware of a new wave of influence operations aimed at undermining trust and confidence in the U.S. election process, adding that a flood of fake videos and articles meant to spark outrage and inflame tensions is likely to only accelerate, especially in swing states that could determine the outcome of the presidential race.
“Russia is the most active threat,” according to the warning issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency, or CISA.
“Influence actors linked to Russia in particular are manufacturing videos and creating fake articles to undermine the legitimacy of the election, instill fear in voters regarding the election process, and suggest Americans are using violence against each other due to political preferences,” they said.
“We anticipate Russian actors will release additional manufactured content with these themes through election day and in the days and weeks after polls close,” the statement added. “These efforts risk inciting violence, including against election officials.”
The last-minute warning follows a series of declassified assessments that U.S. intelligence officials have issued in the weeks and months leading up to Tuesday’s election.
Yet while most votes have been cast without issue, organizations representing state election officials cautioned there are likely to be some disruptions.
“As with any Election Day, it is important to note operational issues may arise,” according to the National Association of State Election Directors and the National Association of Secretaries of State.
“Voting locations could open late, there could be lines during busy periods, or an area could lose power,” they said in a statement. “These are inevitable challenges that will arise on Election Day.”
There have also been other efforts to try to derail the election.
CISA said it has observed “small scale incidents,” including efforts to take down official election websites with distributed denial of service attacks, as well as several attempts to blow up or set fire to ballot drop boxes.
The most recent declassified assessment, issued just two weeks ago, warned Russia, Iran and China “remain intent on fanning divisive narratives to divide Americans and undermine Americans’ confidence in the U.S. democratic system consistent with what they perceive to be in their interests.”
It further warned that intelligence obtained by U.S. intelligence agencies made them “increasingly confident” that Russia was starting to engage in plans “aimed at inciting violence,” and that Iran might follow Moscow’s lead.
The information shared in the new warning builds on that assessment, pointing to a flurry of new activity linked to Russia.
Specifically, the new statement blames Kremlin-linked actors for posting and amplifying an article falsely claiming that U.S. officials in key states are orchestrating a plan to rig the election by using tactics such as ballot stuffing and cyberattacks.
It also links Russian actors to a video of a fake interview of an individual claiming a scheme in the Southwestern state of Arizona sought to tip the vote in favor of Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris with fake overseas ballots and doctored voter rolls.
U.S. intelligence agencies had already attributed responsibility for other social media videos to Russian influence actors — including two last week claiming to show Haitian immigrants voting multiple times and purporting to show ballots in Pennsylvania being ripped up.
The latest statement also warned that Iran “remains a significant foreign influence threat to U.S. elections,” citing, in part, previously Iranian efforts to hack the campaign of Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump.
VOA has reached out to the Russian Embassy in Washington and the Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York for a response to the new U.S. allegations.
Russia, Iran and China have repeatedly rejected previous U.S. assessments of their influence operations.
The Russian Embassy in Washington late Monday in an email to VOA dismissed the newest U.S. intelligence warning as “baseless.”
“The Embassy has not received either any proof for these claims during its communications with U.S. officials, or any inquiries regarding the narrative being promoted by the press,” the embassy said, further describing Washington’s accusations of Russian disinformation campaigns “an unfortunate tradition” for U.S. elections.
The Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York has yet to respond to VOA’s request for comment.
Despite concerns about the potential of Russian and Iranian influence operations, the U.S. expressed confidence earlier Monday that other foreign efforts to hack into the country’s election infrastructure in order to alter the vote tally would come up short.
In a briefing with reporters, CISA officials said there is no evidence to suggest foreign adversaries like Russia, Iran and China have the wherewithal to infiltrate and manipulate the country’s election infrastructure.
“I can say with great confidence that I do not believe that a technical hack of our elections in the way that it would materially impact the presidential election is possible,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly.
“Given the multiple layers of safeguards, the cybersecurity protections, the physical access controls, the preelection testing of equipment for accuracy, the postelection audits, it would not be possible for a bad actor to tamper with or manipulate our voting systems in such a way that it would have a material impact on the outcome of the presidential election, certainly not without being detected,” Easterly told reporters.
Some of the confidence stems from the decentralized way U.S. elections are run — with each state using its own, individual system to record and tally ballots. But it also follows years of preparation by CISA, working with state and local election officials across the United States.
Those efforts have included more than 700 cybersecurity assessments, and hundreds of election exercises and training sessions since the start of 2023.
Additionally, none of the state voting systems are connected to the internet, and an estimated 97% of U.S. voters will be casting ballots in jurisdictions that produce paper records as a backup.
“Our election infrastructure has never been more secure,” Easterly said. “The election community has never been better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free and fair elections.”
As of late Monday, CISA estimated that more than 77 million Americans had already cast ballots during the early voting period, with tens of millions more expected to vote in person on Election Day.
That confidence, however, has been tempered by concerns that foreign actors could play on mundane disruptions, like power outages, or cyberattacks on other U.S infrastructure to spark fears across the U.S.
“As with any Election Day, it is important to note operational issues may arise,” according to the National Association of State Election Directors and the National Association of Secretaries of State.
“Voting locations could open late, there could be lines during busy periods, or an area could lose power,” they said in a statement. “These are inevitable challenges that will arise on Election Day.”
Already, there have also been other efforts to try to derail the election.
CISA said it has observed “small scale incidents,” including efforts to take down official election websites with distributed denial of service attacks, as well as several attempts to blow up or set fire to ballot drop boxes.
“We expect that these types of incidents and other forms of disruptions will continue on Election Day [and] in the days that follow,” Easterly told reporters, adding despite cause for concern there have been “no significant impacts to election infrastructure.”
Still, CISA and its state and local partners are wary that even though the U.S. is on track, foreign influence campaigns could alter the perception among voters due to what U.S. officials have described as “a firehose of disinformation.”
Some of the efforts, like those attributed to Russia and Iran, have gained widespread attention.
Others, like Chinese efforts against Republican lawmakers and candidates seen as critical to Beijing, appear to be more targeted.
And gauging the effectiveness of these efforts, especially the recent videos attributed to Russia, is difficult to determine.
“The successfulness, I would say, is quite small,” said Brian Liston, a senior threat intelligence analyst with Recorded Future’s Insikt Group.
“We have not really seen these videos, or this content break out beyond social media or on Telegram,” Liston told VOA.
But there are concerns, however, that some of these narratives could gain traction on more mainstream social media platforms.
“Since Elon Musk took over Twitter and gutted content moderation and really changed the purpose of X, we’ve seen it become just a hotbed of mis and disinformation,” said Audrey McCabe, an information accountability analyst at Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog and advocacy organization.
McCabe told reporters Monday that the changes to X have rippled across the social media space.
“[It] has allowed other platforms to lower their standards for content moderation and what they’re doing to protect users,” she said. “And so, we’re seeing an increase of this stuff everywhere, including on Meta, and other platforms as well.”
And if some of the foreign influence efforts spread far enough, it could help exacerbate exiting tensions.
“They are deliberately finding narratives to try to stoke partisan discord and inflame domestic tension and pit Americans against one another, and we cannot let them succeed,” a senior CISA official said, who briefed reporters last Friday on the condition of anonymity.
“We’ve seen how these disinformation campaigns have led to very real threats of violence targeting these public servants, and that should be unacceptable,” the official added, citing repeated threats against election officials across the country.
CISA officials on Monday said that state and local election officials have been in close contact with law enforcement agencies, and that precautions have been put in place to better protect election workers, election officials and even the ballots themselves.
They also emphasized that so far, there have been no credible or specific threats to polling locations.
“We’ve not seen specific reporting about violence at polling places,” Easterly said Monday in response to a question from VOA. “I certainly don’t want voters to feel at all intimidated about going to voting locations.”
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