Prepare for the Worst and Fight for the Best: A Citizen's Guide to 2020 Electoral Interference

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.justsecurity.org/72491/prepare-for-the-worst-and-fight-for-the-best-a-citizens-guide-to-2020-electoral-interference/

At this very moment, according to the U.S. intelligence community, Russia is interfering in the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump. However, the Trump administration has obscured from the public and even from lawmakers the specific forms of interference Russia is executing, or intends to execute, as we approach Election Day. Our goal in this article is to assess—based on publicly available intelligence on Russia’s 2016 election interference, as well as on-the-record interviews of Obama administration officials who were serving in government in 2016, conducted by David Shimer and detailed in his book, Rigged: America, Russia, and 100 Years of Covert Electoral Interference—the cost-benefit analysis that Russia will undertake in deciding how far to push in attempting to disrupt and direct the 2020 election. Keeping in mind that one of the most effective ways to neutralize covert activity is to expose it, we hope that assessing Russia’s potential next moves will empower the electorate, lawmakers, and the media to prepare for a range of possible scenarios—and, in the process, to help maintain the integrity of our electoral process.

A preliminary point to underscore is that, based on the history of Soviet, Russian, and American intelligence, election interference takes one of two broad forms. The first is to affect “hearts and minds.” This involves perception management operations to shape the attitudes and opinions of voters, with the intention of encouraging them to vote for a specific candidate or to refrain from voting at all for another, while also sowing discord within the targeted democracy. This form of interference is more indirect and generally lends the foreign actor a degree of plausible deniability, and its effects on the election are more difficult to measure. The second form of election interference involves directly affecting the actual votes cast, and their tabulation. This form of interference is more direct, generally has less plausible deniability (i.e., can be easier to attribute), and, if detected, can be assessed in terms of its precise impact on the electoral outcome, even if its effect on the public’s trust in the outcome remains difficult to ascertain.

We know that, as in 2016, Russia is engaging in perception management operations this cycle. Earlier this month, for example, Facebook and Twitter took down a covert network of Russian accounts, while Microsoft announced that Russian military intelligence is working to steal (and potentially release) the emails of prominent American political figures. Russia has also been found to be the source of deceptively edited videos relating to the Black Lives Matter protest movement, geared toward polarizing the electorate on a key campaign issue. These lines of attack, which Russia has deployed before, are meant to influence the minds of U.S. voters and must be defended against vigorously.

While Russia’s perception management operations have been extensively documented by the media, the Special Counsel Report, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Russia’s ability and willingness to engage in direct vote tampering and voter suppression have been less well understood and analyzed in declassified forums. Nonetheless, the threat of such interference persists. On this front, we call attention to the U.S. intelligence community’s August 7, 2020 warning, which states that foreign countries may “seek to compromise our election infrastructure for a range of possible purposes, such as interfering with the voting process, stealing sensitive data, or calling into question the validity of the election results.” In simpler terms, Russia could attempt to manipulate not just public opinion, but the actual voter data and vote tallies of U.S. citizens.

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[Hugin]

1. K&R

Tip of the interference ice berg.

This aughta be pinned.

[2naSalit]

2. K&R

[Nevilledog]

3. Kick cuz it's important