With less than a week to go until the US midterm elections, a key senior US official is raising concerns that disinformation, or influence operations by US adversaries, could ignite violence at the polls.
For weeks, top officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security have said they have found no trace of specific or credible threats to November 8 elections.
But a growing number of officials have expressed fears about the growing domestic political tensions that have gripped much of the country and how that could impact Election Day when mixed with false or misleading narratives, sometimes coming from adversary nations like Russia, China and Iran.
“It’s a major concern,” Jen Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said at a forum Tuesday in Washington.
“There is fake news and disinformation that can be used by foreign adversaries to sow discord among the American people to undermine confidence in the integrity of our elections and incite violence against election officials.”
Also, “you have these horrible physical security concerns at an unprecedented level, threats of intimidation, threats of violence, threats of harassment against election officials, polling places, voters,” he said.
The Cyber Security and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), which serves as the lead risk management agency for election security, is not alone in its concerns.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has repeatedly warned of the potential for violence during the midterm elections, saying as early as June that the election could serve as a rallying point for domestic extremists bent on violence.
And top US law enforcement officials have also warned that the number of threats against poll workers and election officials has grown dramatically, with more than 1,000 reports since June 2021.
Of those, nearly 60% come from seven states, all of which saw the results of the 2020 US presidential election questioned by skeptics or audited due to baseless accusations of fraud.
“It’s a very sad situation when poll workers are worried about their safety,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a conference in Virginia last week. “We have reports from multiple election officials expressing concern.”
State and local officials have also reported seeing more calls for violence on social media, including threats against poll workers and some calls for civil war.
Both DHS and CISA say they have responded by working closely with state and local officials who have ultimate responsibility for organizing the election, sharing the latest threat intelligence and helping to coordinate with law enforcement officials.
CISA has also been holding classes for poll workers on how to de-escalate potential confrontations, even posting an abridged version on YouTube.
In addition, CISA and state election officials and organizations have tried to push back against potential influence operations designed to spread false and misleading information by promoting websites such as CISA’s Rumor Control site, designed to debunk narratives intended to create confusion and doubt.
While senior US officials have yet to draw a direct link between specific disinformation and specific instances of election-related violence, they say there is no question that adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran have consistently pushed to escalate political tensions within the US. from United States.
“We know our foreign adversaries are doing this,” FBI Deputy Director for Counterterrorism Robert Wells said last week, pointing to Russia in particular.
“Russia likes to sit back and watch the United States tear us apart,” he said. “I think they like what they’re seeing, but they will definitely take action to fan the flames on social media.”
And officials worry about what will happen when those efforts are combined with growing anti-government and anti-authority sentiment.
“Countless conspiracy theories continue to proliferate, with various narratives associated with false claims about the election,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Samantha Vinograd, referring to the 2020 election, noting that such claims “have a historical basis to cement a clear and credible violence”.
“We’ve also seen the window between aspirational rhetoric online, or seemingly aspirational rhetoric online, and action narrow significantly,” he said, speaking alongside Wells of the FBI. “We’re certainly very focused on what we consider to be an incredibly high threat environment.”
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