[Senate Hearing 118-298]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 118-298
OPEN HEARING:
AN UPDATE ON FOREIGN THREATS TO THE
2024 ELECTIONS
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
OF THE
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 15, 2024
__________
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Intelligence
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
55-722 WASHINGTON : 2025
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
(Established by S. Res. 400, 94th Cong. 2d Sess.)
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia, Chairman
MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Vice Chairman
RON WYDEN, Oregon JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
ANGUS S. KING, Jr., Maine TOM COTTON, Arkansas
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado JOHN CORNYN, Texas
BOB CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania JERRY MORAN, Kansas
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
JON OSSOFF, Georgia MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
MARK KELLY, Arizona
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York, Ex Officio
MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky, Ex Officio
JACK REED, Rhode Island, Ex Officio
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi, Ex Officio
----------
William Wu, Staff Director
Brian Walsh, Minority Staff Director
Kelsey Stroud Bailey, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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MAY 15, 2024
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Mark R. Warner, U.S. Senator from Virginia....................... 1
Marco Rubio, U.S. Senator from Florida........................... 4
WITNESSES
The Honorable Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence.... 6
Prepared Statement for the Record............................ 9
The Honorable Jen Easterly, Director, Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure
Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security............... 12
Prepared Statement for the Record............................ 14
Larissa Knapp, Executive Assistant Director, National Security
Branch,
Federal Bureau of Investigation................................ 21
Prepared Statement for the Record............................ 44
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Questions for the Record......................................... 49
OPEN HEARING: AN UPDATE ON FOREIGN THREATS TO THE 2024 ELECTIONS
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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2024
U.S. Senate,
Select Committee on Intelligence,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:37 p.m., in
Room SH-216 in the Hart Senate Office Building, in open
session, the Honorable Mark R. Warner, Chairman of the
Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Warner (presiding), Rubio, Wyden, King,
Bennet, Casey, Gillibrand, Kelly, Risch, Cotton, Cornyn,
Lankford.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARK R. WARNER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
VIRGINIA
Chairman Warner. I want to call this hearing to order, and
I want to welcome today's witnesses. I want to warn them at the
outset, we are finishing up one vote. We'll have another one.
We're going to work through that process, but if people are
slipping in and out, I think you understand.
Our witnesses today are Avril Haines, the Director of
National Intelligence; Jen Easterly, Director of the
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA; and,
Larissa Knapp, Executive Assistant Director of the National
Security Branch at the FBI. Welcome to all of you.
Today's hearing builds on this Committee's bipartisan
efforts since 2016 to educate the public on the intentions of
foreign adversaries seeking to undermine the integrity of our
democratic systems; and to ensure that the U.S. government is
postured to protect our elections from those foreign threats. A
broad interagency task force is tasked with protecting from two
forms of election interference we've seen since 2016:
interference efforts, often cyber enabled, that target election
infrastructure; and separately influence efforts that seek to
affect elections through covert or other illegal tactics. Since
2016, we have held both open and closed hearings ahead of each
federal election, featuring testimony from U.S. officials,
social media executives, and open-source research executives.
This is the first open hearing of this campaign season, but
more will be coming.
Now, I want to start by recalling the fact that I fear, at
times, since particularly the 2016 cycle that was so long ago,
that the public perception of past foreign election meddling
has too often been treated as something that was trivial or not
of major league. But as this Committee's exhaustive bipartisan
investigation into Russia's meddling in 2016 election showed,
and as a declassified Intelligence Community assessment showed,
foreign influence efforts go well beyond simple online trolling
or traditional propaganda. Foreign election efforts in the last
eight years have, among other things, involved efforts to
infiltrate, both online and in person, a range of U.S.
organizations on both sides of the political spectrum, with the
goal of stoking political polarization in the United States and
promoting social and racial strife.
We've seen as well successful impersonations of U.S.
political and social organizations, with the Russian IRA
memorably back in 2016 having Twitter and Facebook accounts for
the Tennessee GOP and Black Lives Matter. Both of those
accounts were actually bigger than the real organizations.
We've seen harassment and sting operations against U.S.
candidates, particularly when we saw just last cycle the PRC
influence operatives try to set up a sting operation to bully
and humiliate a Congressional candidate of Chinese heritage.
We've seen successful efforts to actually organize real-world
political rallies back in 2016, again, with one almost coming
to real-life violence. Russian efforts orchestrated
simultaneous rallies in Houston, one with an anti-Muslim event
taking place at exactly the same time and place as a Muslim
cultural event. Luckily, law enforcement intervened.
We have also seen personalized emails sent in 2020 by
Iranian influence actors posing as Proud Boys, which the Trump
Administration leadership did a good job of pointing out.
Globally, we've seen many of the same foreign influence actors
aggressively meddling in the elections of our Democratic
allies. The PRC's influence actors aggressively sought to shape
the outcome of Taiwan's election earlier this year, including
promoting narratives that the election had been rigged as
Election Day neared. More recently, literally in the last few
weeks, Czech and Belgian officials have disclosed efforts of
Russian operatives to shape the outcome of June's E.U.
elections with the goal of undermining European support for
Ukraine. And a wide range of media, open source research, and
other sources have similarly pointed to Russian influence
operations in Slovakia, one of the cases that I think is
particularly interesting--a country that when Russia invaded,
75 percent-plus of Slovaks supported Ukraine. A few years later
due to Russian efforts, Slovakia now has a pro-Russian
president and literally 55 percent of the Slovaks are saying
they think the United States started the war in Ukraine.
We've seen recently as well that deepfakes of the Moldavian
president have been widely circulated. And fresh off the
presses just a couple hours--I'm not going to ask our witnesses
to testify about it--a new Russian effort geared at somehow
saying that Zelenskyy and the CIA are working on trying to
undermine again our elections in this year.
The barriers to entry for foreign malign influence have
unfortunately become incredibly small. Since 2016, we've seen
declassified intelligence assessments name a whole host of
influence actors who have engaged in, or at least contemplated,
election influence and interference activities, not only
Russia, not only Iran or PRC, but also Cuba, Venezuela,
terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, and a range of foreign
hacktivists and profit-motivated cybercriminals.
One of the things, and I think this hearing is so important
in many ways, our adversaries could be more sophisticated and
aggressive in both scale and scope in this election, even than
in prior years. Let me tell you why I think that's the case.
First, our adversaries are more incentivized than ever to
intervene in our elections because they can understand that it
could affect their particular national interest. In the case of
Russia, Putin clearly understands that influencing public
opinion and shaping elections in the United States is a cheap
way to erode American and Western support for Ukraine.
Similarly, we've seen that the conflict between Israel and
Hamas has been fertile ground for disinformation since October
7th.
Second, the scale and sophistication of these sorts of
attacks against our elections can now be accelerated by AI
tools. The truth is the kind of audio and video manipulation
that even as recently as four years ago and clearly eight years
ago was still a challenge now can happen at a speed and scale
due to AI tools that's unprecedented. And literally, there's
not a week or month that goes by that those AI video and audio
tools don't continue to improve. And I just on a personal note,
I fear that Congress's inability to pass any new guardrails in
the last 18 months for AI-enabled mischief really could pose a
huge problem. We've already seen fake video of President Trump
embracing Dr. Fauci. We've seen audios of President Biden
telling people to use a different voting day in New Hampshire.
The truth is these tools are out there and growing in their
danger.
Third, we've seen, unfortunately, increasingly large
numbers of Americans of all political stripes across the
political spectrum who simply don't trust U.S. institutions
from federal agencies and law enforcement to the mainstream
media, who increasingly rely on the wildest conspiracies
imaginable that pop-up on the web. The truth is these tools are
out there and growing in their danger.
And fourth, since 2022, we've seen a concerted litigation
campaign that has sought to undermine the federal government's
ability to share on any kind of voluntary basis vital threat
information with social media platforms. And unfortunately,
since 2022, we've seen from some of those same social media
platforms considerable disinvestment and, in certain cases,
utter disinterest in platform integrity by some of those social
media companies.
And an area where the Vice Chairman and I have worked very
closely together, we've seen the rise of a dominant social
media platform, TikTok, with ownership based in a country that
is clearly adversarial in terms of their intents on our
elections. It is these kinds of attempts by foreign actors and
adversaries to sow disinformation, undermine confidence in
elections, and seed discord that Americans can expect their
federal agencies, both law enforcement and intelligence, to
help detect and defeat. We've got to do a better job of making
sure Americans of all political stripes understand what is very
probably coming their way over the next less-than-six months.
I hope today's witnesses can provide a comprehensive
overview of these current threats and anything that may be
emerging and what we can do in a collaborative cooperative,
bipartisan way to make sure that the public is aware of this, I
think, dramatic threat to our democracy.
With that, I'll turn it to the Vice Chairman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
FLORIDA
Vice Chairman Rubio. Thank you. Thanks for calling this
hearing. And thank you all for being here on this important
topic. And by the way, it's one I think we're going to be
dealing with for the next quarter century, but it's hopefully
one we get to learn from experience on.
I always think it's important at the outset to sort of--
because I know this will be discussed--as threats to the
election is a broad topic. And it's always bifurcated into two
things. There's election interference, which is trying to hack
into the voter database or messing with the early reporting,
unofficial reporting system of a state--things of that nature.
That's more easily understood. And then there is this whole
topic of influence. And it's not just in elections; it's also
in our debates. We saw elements of that during COVID. We see it
during policy debates here on a range of topics. The propaganda
has always been a weapon of war. I think today you can do it at
scale faster, more convincingly, and in ways that spread very
quickly and are difficult to contain. And in particular, we've
seen this globally--I mean, we've seen increasing amount of
damage that's being done to the reputation of the United States
in parts of Africa by a very active effort to undermine, make
life very difficult, for our diplomats to serve in that region.
Or for our military personnel in some of these countries where
the Russians have moved in and gained greater influence. So,
all of that is happening at a global scale and the Chairman's
already talked about some of the countries that have faced
efforts to meddle in their elections and try to influence and
steer the outcome and in some cases, successfully.
But today, I think the focus is going to be on how this
could be used in an election and in policy debates, too. But
let's focus on elections for a moment. And the reason why I
want to really focus on that is I think we'll hear a lot about
the tools that are available, the capabilities that someone has
to put out an AI video to spread narratives that are difficult
to knock down, and so forth. The weaponization of this
information. What I think I hope to learn a little bit more
about is when this happens, if this happens, who's in charge of
responding to it? Have we thought through the process of what
do we do when one of these scenarios occurs? Because I don't
think I have a clear understanding of who's in charge and how
we would respond. Who would take the lead?
I know that if a hurricane is headed towards the United
States, the National Hurricane Center is going to put
meteorologists on the air who are going to describe to us: this
is the hurricane, this is what it looks like, this is how
strong it's going to be when it gets here. They're going to put
out forecasts. It's going to issue warnings. And people,
Republicans, Democrats--no matter who you're going to vote
for--are going to take the appropriate steps. If something like
that were headed towards our election, I don't know who's in
charge of putting it out there.
More importantly, I think no matter who puts it out there,
the candidate or issue on the other side of it, their followers
are going to question whether it's the government interfering
in the elections themselves, and it's not helpful. As an
example, and I use this as an example because it's a very
recent one, when the whole laptop situation happened, the
Hunter Biden laptop, a number of former intelligence
officials--I get it, they're formers, no longer in the employ
of any of these agencies, but that title carries weight--all
signed a letter saying this has all the hallmarks of a Russian
disinformation campaign. We know now that it was not a
disinformation campaign. I don't want to get into the
particulars of what was on it. I'm just saying we now know that
it was not a Russian disinformation campaign, but the result of
it was that social media companies would not allow anyone to
post the articles and there was a media blackout. It could not
be reported in any other-- except for one place. And so what
happens as a result of that, whether it had an influence on the
election or not, the result of it now is that we have some
segment of the country who repeatedly says things like the
Intelligence Community interfered--even these reformers--but
that title.
And so why that is relevant here is because no matter who
this disinformation campaign is geared after, the other side is
going to say the people issuing the warnings are people that
are interfering in the elections on behalf of the candidate
they favor. So we're in a real quandary here. But I do think we
have to begin by at least understanding if something were to
happen. If tomorrow there was a video, very convincing video of
a candidate. Let's not say president, let's say, U.S. Senate or
Congress and a video comes out with 72 hours to go before
election day, of that candidate saying some racist comment or
doing something horrifying, but it's fake. Who is in charge of
letting people know this thing is fake, this thing is not real?
So that we can have people who are going to go to the ballot
box believing something that's not real is real, that's
influencing our election, especially a close one. And I ask
myself, whoever is in charge of it, what are we doing to
protect the credibility of the entity that is--whoever it is in
charge of saying it--so that the other side does not come out
and say our own government is interfering in the election?
So, I think we're going to be struggling with this for a
very long time because the Russians are the best at it. They've
been doing it a long time and so they know, and they've
perfected it. But every election cycle, more and more cast of
characters are joining the parade here in terms of getting into
this business. And I think in the years to come, we're going to
see more and more nation-states and maybe non-state actors
begin to not just come after us and our elections and our
political process, but those of other countries, as well.
So this issue is not going away anytime soon. I think it's
only going to accelerate. It's going to get worse. And we
really need to begin to lay out some parameters about how we
are going to respond to these things in a coordinated way that
we know ahead of time, as opposed to the ad hoc basis in which
this has been handled in years past, in terms of responding to
the disinformation piece of it. It's a tough one to handle, but
it's one that I think we have to get a handle on.
Chairman Warner. I agree.
I think, Director Haynes, you're going to lead us off?
STATEMENT OF AVRIL HAINES, DIRECTOR OF
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Director Haines. Thank you very much, Chairman Warner,
Ranking Member Rubio, and Members of the Committee. I really
appreciate having the opportunity to brief you on the
Intelligence Community's election security work, alongside my
colleagues at CISA and FBI, who are leading efforts to take
actions to secure our elections alongside the extraordinary
state and local officials who are on the front lines of this
work.
The U.S. government's efforts to protect our elections have
improved significantly since the 2016 presidential election.
And even as the threat landscape is becoming increasingly
complicated, it is my view that the U.S. government has never
been better prepared to address the challenge. Protecting our
democratic processes from foreign influence or interference is
an absolute priority for the Intelligence Community.
Our efforts are effectively organized by the Foreign Malign
Influence Center, or FMIC, which houses the Election Threats
Executive. The Election Threats Executive leads, coordinates,
and integrates the IC's activities, initiatives and programs in
this realm. And fundamentally, we support the federal
government, particularly CISA and the FBI, as they work to
secure our elections, as well as state and local election
officials across the country who actually manage and secure the
election infrastructure on a day-to-day basis. We do so by
ensuring that our resources are aligned to promote collection
and analysis so that we're able to identify and mitigate
foreign threats to our elections and communicate our
assessments to our federal partners, to you in Congress, to
state and local officials, and to the American people. We also
facilitate a notification framework that ensures that when
relevant intelligence is collected concerning a foreign
influence operation aimed at our election, appropriate notice
is given to those who are being targeted so that they can take
action.
And while most of these notifications are nonpublic, there
are, as you both indicated, scenarios in which public
notifications are appropriate and if doing so would render the
foreign influence operation less effective, and that is part of
that mandate. Of course, exposing a foreign actor's efforts is
only one way in which we counter election threats. We support
the law enforcement community as they disrupt election
influence operations through legal action, including the
disruption of illicit financial networks. And we also support
CYBERCOM as it conducts a range of cyber operations to ensure
that foreign adversaries cannot use our digital infrastructure
to attack our elections.
Using every tool we have is critical as the challenge is
expanding. Over the last several years, we've seen really three
trends that make the threat landscape more diverse and more
complex.
First, there are an increasing number of foreign actors,
including non-state entities, who are looking to engage in
election influence activities.
Second, there are more commercial firms through which state
actors are able to conduct election influence activities, often
increasing the sophistication of such activities while making
it more challenging to track down the original instigator of
the foreign influence efforts.
And then third, perhaps most obviously, relevant emerging
technologies, particularly generative AI and big data
analytics, are increasing the threat by enabling the
proliferation of influence actors who can conduct targeted
campaigns, reducing the number of relatively sophisticated
influence operations and content, and further complicating
attribution. For example, innovations in AI have enabled
foreign influence actors to produce seemingly authentic and
tailored messaging more eficiently at greater scale and with
content adapted for different languages and cultures. In fact,
we've already seen generative AI being used in the context of
foreign elections. In September 2023, two days before the
parliamentary elections in Slovakia, which Chairman you noted,
a fake audio recording was released online in which one
candidate discussed how to rig the upcoming election with
journalists. The audio was quickly shown to be fake, with signs
of AI manipulation, but under Slovakia law, there is a
moratorium on campaigning and media commentary about the
election for 48 hours before polls open. And since the deepfake
was released in that window, news and government organizations
struggled to expose the manipulation and the victim of the
deepfake ended up losing in a very close election.
To position the IC to address generative-AI-enabled foreign
influence efforts, we have an IC group focused on multimedia
authentication that leverages DARPA's semantic forensics
technology among other tools and enables those in the IC who
are working on election security to rapidly access media
forensic experts to facilitate the authentication of foreign
suspect media related to the U.S. election. Members of this
group regularly engage technical experts inside and outside of
the government to ensure we are applying the latest techniques.
And if state and local officials have concerns, for example,
about media that is suspected to be synthetic or manipulated
and violates a law or is tied to a foreign actor, they can
request authentication assistance through the FBI. And of
course, the most significant foreign actors who engage in
foreign influence activity directed at the United States in
relation to our elections are Russia, the People's Republic of
China--or PRC, and Iran.
Specifically, Russia remains the most active foreign threat
to our elections. The Russian government's goals in such
influence operations tend to include eroding trust in U.S.
democratic institutions, exacerbating sociopolitical divisions
in the United States, and degrading Western support to Ukraine.
Russia relies on a vast multimedia influence apparatus, which
consists of its intelligence services, cyber actors, state
media proxies, and social media trolls. Moscow most likely
views such operations as a means to tear down the United States
as its perceived primary adversary, enabling Russia to promote
itself as a great power. Whereas Beijing seeks to promote
support for China's policy positions and perspectives,
including in the context of specific elections, portray the
U.S. democratic model as chaotic, ineffective unrepresentative;
and magnify U.S. societal divisions. And the PRC also has a
sophisticated influence apparatus through which they leverage
emerging technologies, including generative AI. And they are
growing increasingly confident in their ability to influence
elections globally but remain concerned about the possible
blowback in the event their efforts are disclosed. In fact, in
2020, we assessed that China did not deploy influence efforts
intended to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential
election, principally because of concerns regarding blowback if
caught. And thus far, we have no information to suggest that
the PRC will take a more active role in this presidential
election than it did in 2020, even as they continue to engage
in efforts to promote politicians at all levels who are taking
positions favorable to China on key issues. Needless to say, we
will continue to monitor their activities.
Finally, Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their
efforts seeking to stoke discord and undermine confidence in
our democratic institutions, as we've seen them do in prior
election cycles. They continue to adapt their cyber and
influence activities using social media platforms, issuing
threats, disseminating disinformation, and it is likely that
they will continue to rely on their intelligence services in
these efforts and Iran-based online influencers to promote
their narratives.
We've also observed other countries attempt to support or
undermine specific candidates, but these efforts tend to be on
a smaller scale. For instance, some other countries do things
like direct campaign contributions to candidates they believe
would promote their interest if elected and seek to obscure
their support.
In brief, the election threat landscape is increasingly
challenging, but our capacity to manage the threat has also
improved, as you will hear from colleagues. There is nothing
more important or fundamental to our democracy than protecting
our elections. And I can tell you that we are focused and ready
to do our part.
And I thank you for your time, and I look forward to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of the witness follows:]
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STATEMENT OF JEN EASTERLY, DIRECTOR, CYBERSECURITY AND
INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY
Director Easterly. Chairman, Vice Chairman, Members of the
Committee: thank you for the opportunity to discuss CISA's
efforts to protect and defend our Nation's election
infrastructure.
Since 2017 when election infrastructure was designated as
critical and the CISA was designated as the sector risk
management agency, CISA and our partners, including the
Intelligence Community and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
have made significant progress increasing the security and
resilience of the Nation's election infrastructure, working to
support state and local election officials who serve on the
front lines of our democracy administering, managing, and
securing our elections. Election infrastructure has never been
more secure, and the election stakeholder community has never
been stronger.
As a result, these election officials ran secure elections
in 2018 and 2020 and in 2022. As you know, there is no evidence
that malicious actors changed, deleted, or altered votes or had
any material impact on the outcome of any of these elections.
This, of course, has been validated time and again, including
in multiple court challenges. And in any race that was close in
2020, there were paper records that could be counted and
recounted and audited to ensure accuracy. In this job, I've had
the privilege to spend time with chief election officials
across the Nation of both parties, and I know how tirelessly
they work to ensure that their citizens' votes are counted as
cast. It's why I have confidence in the integrity of our
elections and why the American people should as well. However,
we cannot be complacent. While election infrastructure is more
secure than ever, as you just heard, the threat environment is
more complex than ever. We have seen, as the DNI noted, that
foreign adversaries remain a persistent threat to our election
infrastructure, aiming to undermine American confidence in
election integrity and our democratic institutions and to sow
partisan discord. These are efforts which will be exacerbated
by generative AI capabilities.
Perhaps more concerning are the continued physical threats
to election officials, which largely stem from unfounded claims
that the results of the 2020 election did not represent the
will of the American people. Such claims are corrosive to the
sacred foundations of our democracy, and they have led to
harassment and threats of violence against election officials
of both parties and their families. As a result, we've seen a
wave of resignations, with election officials taking
operational experience and institutional knowledge with them.
And some of those who remain are operating under difficult
conditions. We at CISA are very proud to stand shoulder to
shoulder with these election officials, these election heroes
who are on the front lines of our democracy.
In fact, CISA is providing more services in more
jurisdictions than ever before, with training and resources
featured on our ``Protect 2024'' website. Since the beginning
of 2023, we've provided over 340 cybersecurity assessments, 520
physical security assessments, 70 tabletop exercises, 220
training sessions that reached 9,000 election stakeholders.
Every week we provide reports to nearly a thousand election
entities with highlighting vulnerabilities so they can be
immediately remediated. We've provided and sponsored 230
security clearances for election officials and worked with the
Intelligence Community to provide classified briefings on
foreign adversary threats. And most recently, we hired ten
dedicated regional election security advisors who bring a
combined 210 years of election expertise and experience to work
on the front lines with election officials.
Finally, we remain laser focused on the threat of foreign
malign influence operations, providing guidance as recent as
last month on the tactics of disinformation used by our foreign
adversaries. We'll continue to use our Rumor vs. Reality
website to provide accurate information about election
infrastructure security. And perhaps most importantly, we will
amplify the voices of state and local election officials who
are the true authoritative subject matter experts when it comes
to elections. These election officials know that while
elections are political, election security is not; and we at
CISA are committed to keeping it that way and look for your
leadership and support in helping us do so.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of the witness follows:]
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Chairman Warner. And it's my understanding, Ms. Knapp,
you're not going to do opening, right?
Ms. Knapp. [Nonverbal affirmative response.]
Chairman Warner. Let me first of all thank the witnesses
for their testimony and particularly acknowledge what Jen
Easterly just said: our election officials are our election
heroes and many of them who served diligently opening and
closing polls for decades on end. The fact that they are under
a level of harassment at this point really is one of the most
serious efforts I think to undermine our democracy. Some of
that may be domestically generated, but some of that could also
be enhanced by foreign interests.
Let me direct my first question to Director Haines. And
again, I think there has been some rewriting post-2016 that
somehow some of the activities in Russia or even in 2020 with
Iran, that that was kind of harmless trolling.
Can you speak to the fact that literally the level of
violence that was incited in cases, or exacerbating racial
strife, religious strife? These foreign adversaries are trying
to pit us against each other at unprecedented levels, literally
leading to violence.
Director Haines. I think you did a very nice job in the
opening of highlighting a number of such incidents. I will say
that just starting with Iran, it is, as I noted in the opening
statement, increasingly aggressive in their efforts seeking to
stoke this kind of discord and promote chaos and undermine
confidence in the integrity of the process.
And they use social media platforms really to issue
threats, to disseminate disinformation. And we saw how they did
that in 2020. That's one of the incidents that you identified,
where they attempted to incite violence and threaten voters by
sending spoofed emails designed to intimidate the voters, to
incite social unrest. And distributing content, including a
video that implied that individuals could cast fraudulent
ballots even from overseas, all entirely false, called out by
my predecessor, Director Ratcliffe at the time in 2020, and
others in the Intelligence Community and law enforcement
community.
So I think that is a very good example. We've also seen
Russia engage in these types of tactics, particularly in their
global efforts to influence elections, trying to effectively
incite disorder in order to distract sometimes law enforcement
from being able to manage an election or do other things in
that respect as well.
I'll leave it at that.
Chairman Warner. And I would just say, I recall that
incident, and again it was a little bit of what Senator Rubio's
question about, who announces that? There was a real show of
force at that moment when we had the ODNI. We had the FBI
director, we had the head of CISA--I'm not sure whether General
Nakasone was involved. Because my fear is who makes that
message in a politicized environment? It needs to be people who
are going to be viewed, as much as possible, credibly by both
sides. And I think, again, in that case, the Trump
Administration did the right thing.
Lots and lots of talk about AI. There's not a week that
goes by that we don't see a new enhancement in terms of either
video or audio deepfake capabilities. I don't think, even
though we passed some bipartisan legislation out of the Rules
Committee today, that will get the national legislation on
deepfakes. I would point out there's about a dozen-plus states
that have taken this on their own, and they range from red
states to blue states and everything in between. And those of
us who have been pushing the tech companies to do more--there
were 20 tech companies that came together in what was called
the Munich Accord. And this includes all of the big--it's the
Facebooks, it's the Googles. It is also Twitter, TikTok,
Anthropic, OpenAI--promising that they would have a commonality
of watermarking, so you can indicate if something has been
altered, this AI in elections, a commitment to try to take that
content down and to educate voters. This was not just geared at
America. Half the world is going to an election this year.
Right now, India has got an election. The Europeans will have
their parliamentary election shortly in June. I worry that
after that much publicized announcement in February to use the
old political term--``where's the beef?''--I don't see that
common watermarking standard emerging. I don't see these 20
tech companies moving in the aggressive nature that I would
hope. I'd like to hear briefly from each of the witnesses on
how you think the state of the collaboration between tech
companies on making sure AI is not misused.
Director Easterly. Thanks for the question, Chairman. I saw
the letter that you sent out to those companies yesterday,
which I think will be very helpful in getting specific answers.
I will say, we've been working with the generative AI companies
specifically about threats to elections and ensuring that they
are putting procedures and technology in place. Many of them
are part of what's called CCPA, the Coalition for Content
Provenance and Authentication. In addition, one of the very
useful things that they're doing is if there are any questions
about elections, they're actually driving people who use that
technology to sources like canivote.org or ``Trusted Info
2024'', which is the National Association of Secretaries of
State website that provides verified information at the state
and local level. So it's really a validation that they are
pushing people to those trusted sources. All that said, what we
are doing is providing guidance to state and local election
officials on AI threats and ways that they can mitigate such
threats to their election infrastructure. We put out something
in January and again in April about foreign malign influence.
Director Haines. I'll just add to that by saying that
absolutely I support everything that Jen just indicated. In
addition, I think we're seeing both the opportunity for them to
continue to provide detection tools, building relationships
with some of the state and local partners. And that's been a
part of what I think is important to continue to encourage. I
think we're still in the process of watching them build out,
essentially, their capacity and efforts in this area. And so
things like your statement I think are helpful to channel that
energy and to begin to push forward on it.
I think another thing that we're obviously doing is we've
been engaging with them in order to make sure that we
understand the technologies they're bringing to bear, to make
sure that we're producing, basically, the state of the art
identification authentication services within the IC, and also
for state and local partners, if they so request appropriately,
as I indicated, through the FBI. And we're also promoting the
adoption of DARPA's suite of technologies, frankly, in this
area that really allows users to detect, to characterize
falsified media assets to defend in particular against large-
scale automated disinformation attacks to public authorities
and to third parties. So I think all of that is mutually
reinforcing in this area.
Chairman Warner. Ms. Knapp.
Ms. Knapp. Thank you, Sir, for the opportunity to respond.
Obviously, AI is definitely a concern to us, as well. Whenever
we get any sort of intelligence, we do provide it to the social
media companies for action. When we do get any sort of intel
indicating the hand of a foreign adversary, that information is
provided to social media companies, whether it is as simple as
an internet protocol address, an email address, or a phone
number for them to take what action deemed necessary.
Vice Chairman Rubio. All right. And I understand that the
talk about protecting the infrastructure, it's very important.
But I want to focus on, and I'm going to largely base the
scenario I'm about to outline, I'm going to base it on a CNN
February 9th exclusive about a tabletop exercise and it
basically describes the following tabletop exercise. China
creates a fake AI video showing a Senate candidate destroying
ballots and they're able to identify that it's AI, that it's
fake. So we have the ability to do that. And I think that's
what you've described, what the DNI's office is able to do
through that, through DARPA. I guess the effort, the semantic
forensics technology and all that.
Okay. So we know it's fake. What the article says and what
I want to know, maybe the article is wrong, and you can correct
me, is after that in this tabletop exercise, no one knew what
happened next. They struggled on what the response should be.
There was a struggle who would notify the public. According to
this article--and the number two at the FBI, number two at CIA,
number two at DHS was part of this tabletop--nobody raised
their hand and says, we will do it. We want to be the ones in
charge of notifying the public. There was real consternation if
in fact this was being promoted through a cutout, like maybe I
imagine like a blogger. Let's say there's a right wing blogger
or a left wing blogger and that person is the one that released
a video. Now, there was a certain fear that if we go out and
say that this video is fake and this person is spreading it,
people are going to say the government itself is interfering in
our elections, and then a real question about if so many
Americans already don't trust the federal government or the
intelligence agencies, how can we get them to trust us that
this is not a real video?
So here's what I want to ask.
If in fact a scenario like this plays out, video comes out,
I'm not on the ballot this year, so let's use me. Video comes
out and it's me and an audio recording, fake, saying, yeah, I'm
going to rig the election and I'm going to steal a bunch of
ballots. It's fake, you know it's fake, what happens at that
point? Because I'm now a week before the election, six days
before the election, does someone notify me? Am I able to say
that? Is someone going to come out and say this is not real? He
really didn't say that. What happens? Because this article says
it would be turned over to state and local officials. I don't
know what a state and local official is supposed to do. They're
going to turn around and say yes, the DNI's office or the FBI
or somebody told us this was fake. I don't understand what the
process that would happen at that point is. Do we have a
process that would kick in in a situation like that one that I
just described?
Director Haines. Absolutely. So first of all, I wasn't at
the tabletop exercise, so I don't know what happened in that
particular scenario. But I understand that's not actually an
accurate representation of what the discussion was.
I would say that in terms of what would happen, yes, there
would be a statement. So I think the model that I pointed to in
2020 is an appropriate model if there is basically a video or
some deepfake or disinformation that's being promoted. It could
be that we find out about it through intelligence. It could be
otherwise identified and it would go through, if it's
intelligence, through the notification framework. The
notification framework is an interagency group that basically
indicates: Okay, we think this is something that deserves a
public----
Vice Chairman Rubio. I apologize. I don't mean to interrupt
you. I just wanted to ask you this for clarification. So the
video is clearly fake, you may not be able to attribute it to a
foreign entity, but you'll at least be able to say this is not
real and we're working to see where it came from. Maybe it was
designed by some guy in a basement, but maybe it was designed
by a nation-state. But at a minimum, we have to be able to say
this thing is not real and it could be the work of a foreign
adversary. Would you be the one that would stand up? Is it the
DNI? Is it the FBI? Who would be the person that would stand
before the American people and say, we're not interfering in
the election. we just want you to know that video is not real.
Who would be in charge of that?
Director Haines. So, I could be the person that goes out
and makes that determination. And I'll just give you an
example, frankly, one of the ones that the Chairman just
mentioned from this morning. There's an article today about the
fact that there is a fake video that was basically promoted, we
think, by Storm 1516. It's a Russian affiliated group
basically. And that video purports to show a whistleblower and
a Ukrainian former employee of a made-up CIA-supported troll
farm tasked with interfering in the upcoming presidential
election. CIA immediately came out with a statement that
basically indicates, and is reflected in the article, that this
is fake. And I am here to say categorically that this claim is
patently false, that there is no such thing. It is
disinformation. And that is the kind of approach that we'll
continue to take across the board.
Vice Chairman Rubio. Okay. But is that established that
you--would you say you could be the one that--I mean, who is--I
guess my point is it really--I don't want there to be any gray
area like someone needs to be in charge of interfacing with the
American people. And ultimately saying we will be responsible
for notifying the American people.
Director Haines. Yes, the----
Vice Chairman Rubio. Has that been established?
Director Haines. The only hesitation that you hear from me
is based on the fact that there may be certain circumstances in
which, for example, a state or local official or other
basically public authority is in a better position to make the
public statement initially. And for the rest of us to come back
behind. So it's just a question of going through the process
and determining what exactly is the issue that's being raised?
What's the fake information that's being put forward? Who is
going to be the best essentially official to immediately come
out?
Vice Chairman Rubio. Who makes that decision about who the
best person is?
Director Haines. That's through, for example, the
notification framework.
Chairman Warner. I think it's a very valid question. I'll
remind colleagues that in open hearings, we go by seniority.
Senator Wyden.
Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And it's good to
have all three of you here. And I'd like to start by saying
I've long believed that you have to follow the money to
understand election interference in America. And today, I want
to start with influence buying, because I think one very
effective way for a foreign adversary to interfere in an
election is to compromise a candidate. The best way to do that
is with money. Now last year, Donald Trump argued to a court
that the value of his assets could not be inflated because he
could always find a Saudi buyer who would pay any price that he
would suggest. The judge was just taken aback. And he wrote in
his opinion that the statement of the former president
suggested, quote, influence buying.
So the question I'd like to ask you, Director Haines, is
let's set aside Donald Trump, okay, for purposes of this
question. Is a foreign country's influence buying of a
candidate, in your view, a counterintelligence concern and a
form of interference?
Director Haines. Absolutely, and it's a tactic that we've
seen, for example, the Chinese engage in quite regularly.
Senator Wyden. Good. Then let's go to data purchases,
something you and I have talked about, because one way for a
foreign adversary to tailor their influence is through the
purchase of large amounts of Americans' private data. The
Executive Order that President Biden signed on February 28th
and the data export bill included in the recent foreign
military and supplemental, those were welcome steps. And I
think you know I've indicated that. But unlike the bipartisan
bill I have with Vice Chairman Rubio, they only apply to a
handful of countries which, in my view means they just don't
really get the job done.
So the question here, Director Haines, is couldn't the
countries covered by the executive order and the recently
enacted data export legislation, like China and Russia,
couldn't they just get the data from countries that aren't
covered either by taking advantage of weak privacy laws or
setting up front companies?
Director Haines. I think it's sort of fact specific and
it's hard for me to make a very broad generalization. But
there's no question that both Russia and China, for example,
look to obtain critical information, including, for example,
polling data that ultimately allows them to determine the
targets of their influence campaigns, including with respect to
funding illicitly.
Senator Wyden. So would you work with the Vice Chairman,
Senator Rubio, and I to clean up these loopholes and pass
effective legislation? Because it just seems to me we can say
there's progress, no question about that. But you're just going
to have a lot of the people who are engaging in these corrupt
activities just make their way to countries that aren't
covered. Then they're going to look at weak privacy laws.
They're going to look at front companies. And bam, we're off to
the races again with more corruption of the election process.
So, I think we need to have the bill that the Vice Chair and I
put in to really close that loophole.
And I gather I ought to quit while I'm ahead, because you
said you'll work with us.
Director Haines. Absolutely, I'd work with you on really
any legislation you have to offer.
Senator Wyden. Very good.
Director Haines. Thank you.
Senator Wyden. So, with respect to this election worker
issue question for you, Ms. Knapp, we've got a lot of interest
in this strong statement that Director Wray put out. I wanted
to make sure we protect election workers from threats of
violence. This is something I hear from all of our county
officials in my state. This is an obvious and ongoing threat to
democracy.
Tell us if you would, Ms. Knapp, what you are involved with
in this area about the harassment of election workers, the
general incitement of violence. What are your priorities in
this area?
Ms. Knapp. Thank you for that question, Sir. Obviously, as
you had said, election workers are critical to our democratic
process, and they are the front line of democracy. In terms of
what we're seeing in this space is obviously election workers
are being harassed via robocalls, via white powder letters, as
well as swatting. And we take all of those incidents very
seriously. We work very closely with the Department of
Justice's Election Crimes Task Force. To date, since its
inception in 2021, there have been 17 successful convictions,
as well as 13 sentencings. We continuously work with state and
local authorities on these matters to hold any and all
individuals that have been identified accountable for those
actions.
Senator Wyden. My time is up. I'm going to ask you a
question for the record, Ms. Knapp, about this gentleman,
Alexander Smirnov. He was recently charged with lying to the
Bureau, as you know, when he passed on disinformation about the
Biden family. I'll ask you for the record. My time is up. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Warner. Senator Risch.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand. I
apologize. We were in a Foreign Relations Committee meeting,
but I apologize.
I think Senator Rubio made reference to the letter which he
and I sent to you, Director Haines, regarding the 51 former
Intelligence Community people who signed the letter regarding
Hunter Biden.
Does that ring a bell with you at all?
Director Haines. Yes, Sir. I don't remember every detail of
it, but I certainly remember the letter.
Senator Risch. I'm going to help you out here.
Director Haines. Good deal. Thank you, Sir.
Senator Risch. No, it isn't a good deal, but I'm going to
help you out. But we asked six questions and only one of those
six questions was answered. So I'm going to ask you here
publicly, and by the way, let me tell you how this fits in. I'm
as concerned with this sort of thing as I am with foreign
interference on the election process.
And this was deplorable, these 51 people saying this was
Russian activity when we all know now that it wasn't. I mean
these were 51 people that had very significant influence in
American society, and they sent this letter saying that this
was Russian influence. So, let me ask some questions here.
One of the questions we asked is how many of those 51
people currently hold a security clearance? And that was as of
May 31st of 2023. So let me ask it now, how many of those 51
people still hold a security clearance?
Director Haines. I believe we provided you with an answer
on that. I don't recall the----
Senator Risch. No.
Director Haines. I thought we did. All right. If we did
not, we will get that to you shortly. We have that information.
Senator Risch. All right. So how many of the Appendix A
individuals maintained business arrangements, contracts, or
other consulting arrangements with any element of the U.S.
Intelligence Community between October 1st, 2020 and October
31st of 2020. That question was not answered.
Director Haines. Yes, Sir. That question we're still trying
to get an answer to.
Senator Risch. You're still trying to get an answer to it?
Director Haines. Yes, Sir.
Senator Risch. That security clearance as of October of
2020, surely you got a list of these people? Whether or not
they had security clearance.
Director Haines. We have a list of the people that had
security clearances. As I said, that's an answer that I thought
we had provided. We will provide that to you.
On the contracts, that's a much more complicated question
and that's something that we're looking to give you.
Senator Risch. How many of the Appendix A individuals
currently maintain business arrangements, contracts, or other
consulting element of the U.S. Intelligence Community? And that
was as of May 31st, 2023, and move that forward to today. Both
of those last two questions. How many of those people of those
51 had the arrangements in October of 2020? And how many of
them have any contacts today?
Could you get that information for us?
Director Haines. I don't have that information now, but we
will look to provide it to you.
Senator Risch. Okay. So let's talk about this particular
problem. Senator Rubio was asking the question about who's
going to stand up and look in the camera and say this is
baloney, and that's going to be you. I think you've said that's
the high responsibility that you have. And that was in the
context of foreign interference in an election.
What about this sort of thing where it's domestic
interference, that's obviously false? Who's got the
responsibility for standing up and looking in the camera and
saying folks don't count on this, it's not true? Is that going
to be your responsibility?
Director Haines. Sir, I think my responsibility with
respect to formers that speak out and provide the wealth of
their experience and knowledge in such circumstances is not to
determine what they should or shouldn't say, but rather to
ensure that they're not disclosing classified information. That
we're protecting that and dealing with that. It's not----
Senator Risch. What if it's false? And they're using their
robes of their having knowledge of security matters and
intelligence matters. And you know it's false. Is that your
response or do you just say no, I'm not going to get involved
in that?
Director Haines. I don't understand, because I think, first
of all, I think they said that their experience makes them
deeply suspicious of that activity, right? And I wouldn't----
Senator Risch. They went a little farther than that, I
think, but I'll take your characterization of it.
Director Haines. Okay.
Senator Risch. And if you know that's false and you come
into the information that it's false, is it your obligation or
not your obligation to stand up look in the camera and say
folks when you're voting, no, don't take this into account.
Director Haines. Senator, I don't think I could even
frankly make sure that I've read everything that a former might
have said or that anybody else has on these issues. So, no. I
don't think that it's appropriate for me to be determining what
is truth and what is false in such circumstances.
Senator Risch. But what if you know? I mean you're sitting
here. You're the center of intelligence in America right there,
and this has come out and you know it's false. What's your
obligation or do you have any?
Director Haines. I think my obligation is to ensure that
the best intelligence is being provided to the President, to
the federal government, to the Congress, and where possible to
the American people through declassification.
Senator Risch. But not----
Director Haines [continuing]. Which we would do----
Senator Risch. But not calling out someone who stands up
and purports to have intelligence information that you know is
false.
Director Haines. Senator, first of all, I'm not sure I'm
the best arbiter of what is true and false. And secondly----
Senator Risch. Let's say in a particular instance, you've
seen the paper, you know, it's false. Let's take that instance.
What do you do?
Director Haines. I mean it depends on the situation. If
we're talking about a fake video that's been put forward----
Senator Risch. Somebody with intelligence credentials
stands up and says, I know this from an intelligence
standpoint, and you know as the Director of National
Intelligence that it's false.
Director Haines. No, I do not----
Senator Risch. What do you do?
Director Haines. I do not consider that to be part of my
responsibility. If there is disinformation that is put forward,
false information, right, then we have the capacity to
authenticate it or to identify it as false. We will do so
basically to our customers and there will be a process whereby
determinations are made, and it may not be to the public, but
it might be classified information. It might be anything else.
I don't know under the circumstances. It's too much of a
hypothetical.
Senator Risch. My time is up and I'm not making progress,
so I'm going to give it back to you.
Chairman Warner. We ought to continue to pursue this. I
mean, my sense that it would probably be the responsibility of
the FBI, if there was proven--. I'm not sure we want the
director of National Intelligence commenting about a domestic
statement made by an American.
But I understand your point, I mean I think that----
Senator Risch. Well, that's the purpose of this hearing is
to find out how American voters are going to be----
Chairman Warner. But although the purpose, our purview at
least, is focused on that foreign influence, but I understand
your point.
Senator King.
Senator King. Well, following up on this point, it seems to
me the tension here is I don't want the U.S. government to be
the truth police. If you start talking about what's true and
what's not true in political advertising, you know, you could
have a thousand people doing that full time, 24 hours a day.
That's not the job of the U.S. government.
It strikes me that the role you can play, however, is
disclosure of sources. That if you know through your
intelligence sources and your attribution that a particular
piece of information, true or not, is coming from a foreign
source, that's the role where it's important for you to notify
the public so they know the source, not whether it's true or
not, because I just think that's an impossible determination.
But at least people should know the source.
In a Maine town meeting when somebody stands up to talk,
you assess not only what they say, but who they are--and you're
not allowed to wear a bag over your head in a Maine town
meeting. And so that's where I think you have an important role
to play.
And the thing that bothers me and worries me? Use of the
word ``notification framework.'' I've seen that. It's a
bureaucratic nightmare, a notification that comes in February
after a November election ain't any good. And what I want to
urge is disclosure of sources when you're aware of it
immediately. Immediately. Mark Twain said it: bad news gets
around the world before good news gets its shoes tied.
So I hope that you go back and look at this process and not
make it bureaucratic. But if you have evidence that this is
coming from a foreign source, let the public know so they can
assess that. Is that something you can take back?
Director Haines. Yes, absolutely, and that is something
that we do is try to attribute where information is coming
from, essentially, and working through the methodologies on
that.
And I realize ``notification framework'' may sound quite
bureaucratic, but it really is a living thing. And for example,
they have worked through a process where they can expedite
their decision-making process through within 48 hours. They are
looking at even making that----
Senator King. That should be the standard. 48 hours should
be the----
Director Haines [continuing]. Across the board. Yes, it's
not much longer than that in terms of----
Senator King [continuing]. Having this information, that
it's foreign sourced, within the U.S. government doesn't do us
any good if the election is five days away and you don't get
that information.
Director Haines. Absolutely. Agree.
Senator King. Because what's going on here is our
adversaries are using our strength against us. It's a kind of
geopolitical jujitsu: the strength of our society, its
openness, the First Amendment, freedom of expression. They're
using that in order to manipulate our most fundamental sacred
right, which is the right of an election. And so we've got to
be alert to it.
And as I say, I disagree with my colleague. I don't think
you're in the truth or falsehood business. I think you're in
the disclosure of intelligence business. And I hope that that's
something you can continue.
Now at CISA, I'm worried that you may be overly concerned
with appearing partisan and that that will freeze you in terms
of taking the actions that are necessary. You gave a very
impressive list of all the meetings and things that you're
doing, but I'm hearing from some election officials that they
don't feel that CISA is out there with them. They're not
getting the support that they need. So I hope that you're being
very forward-leaning about the protection you can provide to
state and local election officials.
Director Easterly. Thank you, Senator. Actually, as I
mentioned, we are providing more services in more jurisdictions
than ever before. We've actually enhanced our field force of
cybersecurity advisors, physical security advisors, and then
election security advisors who are former secretaries of state
or state election directors who are working hand in hand with
secretaries of state and current state election directors. And
I am in touch with chief election officials across the country
to include Secretary of State Bellows and others to ensure that
they are getting everything that they need to run safe and
secure elections. And that's not been affected in any of a
partisan way.
Senator King. Please ramp it up. We've got about six
months, and we know that these adversaries are going to be
coming at us.
Final question, we know that in 2016, and I believe in
2018, the Russians got into something like 35 states' election
infrastructure. They didn't do anything with it. There was no
effort to manipulate voting lists. But they weren't doing it
for fun. I'm worried that they're still there and that the
potential for, for example, people walking into a polling place
in Miami and finding their name has disappeared off the list--
the potential for chaos is very high. So I hope all of you are
pursuing those--I call them sleeper cells--that may still be
there in state election infrastructure.
Director Easterly. I'll just comment that since we have
designated election infrastructure as critical, there's been
enormous progress in particular in raising the bar on
cybersecurity. So as you know, not all of voting equipment--
vote tabulation and vote casting is not connected to the
internet. Just vote registration and election night reporting.
So that, the fact that it's disconnected, it's not exposed to
the internet, that's a layer of security. But there are also
multiple layers. Election officials take a defense-in-depth
approach--technological layers, physical layers, procedural
controls--to ensure that that election infrastructure is secure
and resilient.
The other thing that's important to remember, Senator, is
that we have so much diversity across our election
infrastructure. If you've seen one state----
Senator King. It's a benefit.
Director Easterly. It's a benefit. If you've seen one
state's election, you've seen one state's election. And so the
virtue is there are procedures and controls under the chief
election officials that make that election equipment secure.
And having worked with folks like Secretary of State McGrane in
Idaho, I know that all election officials are focused laser-
like on this. And they don't see elections security as a
partisan political issue.
They see it as an issue of ensuring that they can enable
every one of their citizens' votes to be counted as cast.
Senator King. Final quick question. Director Haines, did
you hear about the three conspiracy theorists that walked into
a bar?
Director Haines. No.
Senator King. It wasn't a coincidence. [Laughter.]
Director Haines. That's great. Thank you.
Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Warner. Senator Cornyn.
Senator Cornyn. Well, thank you for the good news. Director
Haines, you said we've never been better prepared. Ms.
Easterly, you said our elections have never been more secure. I
think that's good news. All the campaigns I've been involved in
in my career and/or observed as a citizen have never been
exemplars of truth telling. They are contests, political
contests for the hearts and minds of the voters and hopefully
the ballot cast by that voter. And I frankly don't think it
makes a whole lot of difference if it's some message is
generated by some computer code or algorithm or artificial
intelligence or a human being that is not telling the truth or
some third party like these 51 intelligence officials who
basically shared in a lie attributing certain information in
election to Russian disinformation.
I actually found also, Ms. Easterly, I found this statement
in your statement to be reassuring. You said our election
infrastructure is diverse, managed locally by state and local
government offices to meet their unique jurisdictional
requirements, and involves in-depth layers of defense and
redundancies to ensure security and resilience. It is because
of these measures and the incredible efforts of election
workers across the country that the American people can have
confidence in the security of our elections process.
Again, more good news. As I read that though it seems to
suggest that the distributed nature of our election system is
actually a strength against attempts to disrupt our election
process.
Is that correct?
Director Easterly. Yes, Sir.
Senator Cornyn. So any attempt by federal officials here in
Washington, D.C., to centralize or concentrate that election
authority would seem to me to run counter to that distributed
structure, which is providing some defense against attempts to
disrupt or interfere with our elections. That's my observation,
not necessarily yours.
So I was very encouraged to see that the work you've done
with chief election officials in places like Texas and
elsewhere--the training, the assessments, the resources you
provided--have been successful and led you to believe that we
have never been more secure. Let me ask you maybe, Ms. Knapp. I
don't know who should take this question. But one of the
biggest challenges we've had when it comes to elections or
cyber-attacks basically have been attribution. How do we know
what the source of some of this information or cyber-attacks,
let's say. How do we know who it is?
Ms. Knapp. Thank you for that question, Sir. I can
certainly start and then I'm sure my colleagues would love to
jump in.
As you had mentioned, Sir, attribution is a difficult
thing, but it is not something that is impossible, and it takes
time. So for us from an FBI perspective, you know, that would
involve us tracing the origin. We would gather all available
intelligence, we would serve legal process, we would--it's an
iterative process.
Senator Cornyn. So that's not something you could do in
real time, let's say, against the deadline or backdrop of an
election date?
Ms. Knapp. Well, it would depend; it would depend on how
easy it is to, to have attribution. It would also depend on
what sort of available intelligence is out there driving us to
come to whatever conclusion. But I don't know if any of my
colleagues want to jump in on this.
Senator Cornyn. Director Haines, does the U.S. government
do anything to impose costs against those who engage in this
misconduct?
Director Haines. Obviously that's a policy question, but
yes, obviously there have been actions that have been taken.
Sanctions.
Senator Cornyn. It may be a policy question, but you would
know.
Director Haines. Yeah, fair enough. No, no, no. I mean
sanctions are an example of the kinds of actions that have been
taken, PNG and other actions, depending on the particular
scenario. And we've also seen as we've been helping, for
example, Europe look at Russian efforts to influence the
European Parliament elections. They've been taking certain
actions in response to some of those influence operations. So I
do think there are in fact tools that can be used. And others
may wish to join me.
Senator Cornyn. I just have 17 seconds left. Let me change
the subject a little bit. We've talked about virtual threats to
election integrity, but not physical threats from terrorist
groups. Director Haines, you said in your annual threat
assessment, you're willing to acknowledge that perceptions of
immigration policies are driving record numbers of illegal
immigrants across our borders. Director Haines also talked
about the ISIS-affiliated individuals who are facilitating the
passage of migrants to the U.S.-Mexican border and into the
United States. Can you tell us in open session how many illegal
immigrants have ties to ISIS operatives? And does the IC assess
that individuals with those connections have entered the United
States through the southern border as Director Wray has
testified?
Director Haines. I can support what Director Wray has
testified to publicly, but I can't answer your specific
questions in open session. But we can obviously have further
discussions.
Senator Cornyn. You can't tell us what he told us, which is
ISIS facilitators have managed to deliver people to the
southern border and they have likely been released into the
United States?
Director Haines. There is a facilitation network that we
have been monitoring, obviously, that has some links to ISIS.
And that is something that we have been managing. But I can't
go further into detail on that without being in closed session,
Sir.
Senator Cornyn. Well, I think we are looking at a matter of
when, if not if, we're going to have to live with the
consequences of that.
Chairman Warner. Two quick comments before we go to Senator
Bennet.
One, you know, I do think as policymakers, and I think
there have been times in the past when we have punched back
against some of those who try to interfere. And I think we
ought to do more of that and try to urge, as policymakers, that
action. And I would also say I want to commend, I mean, some of
this point you made with Jen about the decentralized nature. I
want to applaud Texas, which in an overwhelming way, I think
almost unanimous in your state house and 75 percent, I think in
your state senate approved legislation that the Governor Abbott
signed prohibiting deepfakes of political candidates. And I
think that makes a lot of sense.
Senator Bennet.
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for holding
this hearing.
It's a tough set of issues because we live in a free
society. One way or another I think we're all trying to help
strengthen this democracy and help strengthen the values that
we all share. And we're under assault, you know, in a way that
we've never been before from our adversaries. And we've got
competing values at stake here. You know, the First Amendment
on the one hand. Protecting our national security.
On the other hand, I was reading, Director Haines, the
piece in the WIRe last week about the Russian disinformation
campaign, the Doppelganger Operation, the Kremlin-backed
operation that promoted a fake Washington Post article that
said that billionaire Soros was hiring people at $30 for anti-
Semitism. And this site looked just like the Washington Post,
you know, and the people in this country that were having
protests in the United States were basically being attacked in
a sense by this propaganda, by this effort to divide us. And
these guys were working, I think, with the Russians. Have
fabricated articles from Le Monde and Fox News as well.
And I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about the
speed. And that's not an election issue, that's a democracy
issue. This is a debate that's going on in the streets of this
country and the streets of free countries all over the world,
that our totalitarian adversaries are using to try to incite
divisions and incite discord to take the temperature up based
on information that isn't true. And somehow, we have to find a
way as a free society to respond to that.
And it seems to me that the first part of that is to help
notify people in real time when this kind of thing is
happening. When the country as a whole is subject to this sort
of intentional misinformation that we're seeing, frankly,
throughout Europe. We've seen it in the most devastating way in
Myanmar, where people were killed as a result of the content
that was being purposely disseminated over social media
platforms there. And I think we would be naive to think that
that level of political violence couldn't also occur here as
well.
So, I guess the first question I would ask is, what are we
going to do about it?
Director Haines. Well, I do think that one aspect of what
you do about it is basically expose what the tactics are and
what we're seeing, and then address specific issues as they
come up just as you've been saying. And we have been looking at
increasingly working with partners and allies, frankly, around
the world to do exactly that, because it is better to do it in
numbers, in effect, and to really get the message out in ways
that people find increasingly credible in targeting that
disinformation.
There's also going after--and this is part of, I think,
what you were describing--there's going after the platforms
that get used in this context. So, Russia has been pretty
extraordinary in terms of the platform that they've built for
their work. They essentially have a state-run propaganda
machine that is comprised of domestic media apparatus outlets
targeting global audiences such as RT and Sputnik, and a
network of kind of quasi-government trolls that are used. And
over the years, the apparatus has grown. It's broadening the
array of influence actors, the tactics that they use for covert
and deniable operations. And they're trying, as you indicated,
to shape U.S. political discourse, European political
discourse, to reduce support for Ukraine, other things. And
part of what we're seeing is their capacity to use some of the
platforms that they've chosen are getting harder as we're
getting better at disclosing how those platforms are being used
and how countries are taking action to pull broadcasting
licenses. Other things along those lines in order to actually
make it more challenging.
They obviously look for other opportunities and can get
around these things, but that is among some of the sort of
opportunities for battling it.
Director Easterly. I might just add something to your
question insofar as it relates directly to elections. And we
have a great relationship with Secretary of State Griswold and
Judd Choate, your election director, who are very, very focused
on this issue. But if you look at two very powerful examples,
again at the state level where this may actually happen, one
focused on being prepared, the other focused on a very
effective response. So in Arizona, Secretary of State Adrian
Fontes has been working with his local election officials to do
a series of tabletop exercises with deepfakes of him in the day
before the election to prepare them to be able to respond and
to be able to communicate. And he's brought in local media and
the community to help them understand these kinds of threats
and, again, to lay the ground to inoculate them from being
influenced, because of course those could be amplified by
foreign malign influence actors.
The other very good example, I think, was the robocall that
happened in New Hampshire two days before the primary election.
When that happened, the attorney general, John Formella, came
out with a very clear statement saying that it is likely
criminal behavior, saying that it's being investigated, and
that it should be ignored as an example of repression of the
vote. And then the secretary of state, David Scanlan, came out,
he amplified that on a whole bunch of media platforms to get
that message out to all of the constituents. And then said at
the end of the day, the turnout was actually higher than he
expected.
So, election officials who are the ones running and
securing these elections are out there ensuring that they can
prepare. And I think we have good examples of how they're
actually able to react to it, Sir.
Senator Bennet. Thank you very much and thank you both for
your testimony. I know I'm out of time, Mr. Chairman, but if I
could just finish with one thought. Those are two great
examples in Arizona and New Hampshire, where local elected
officials who have sworn an oath to the Constitution are
fulfilling that oath.
Director Haines had good examples of what we're trying to
do with foreign actors that are associated with the Kremlin.
That's good, too, Mr. Chairman. We still have the problem of
our own platforms, these platforms in the United States of
America, who have not taken the kind of responsibility they
need to be able to deal with these challenges as well, who have
not kept on the people that they in theory hired to do the
content moderation work that they were going to do, who have
not been willing to think about slowing down the degree to
which information is shared across the planet Earth that goes
through their network. So, I just think we've got a
responsibility of our own here in terms of oversight to make
sure we're going to have what's required as well.
Chairman Warner. We're going to have that kind of hearing
with the social media companies.
And to the ever-patient and with seven minutes of time,
Senator Lankford.
Senator Lankford. I'll take that. Thank you. Thank you all
for your testimony.
You were just speaking to Senator Bennet about Russia and
some of the influence that they have targeted and the ways that
they're doing it. Can we switch sides and actually talk about
China? What is China doing currently to try to influence the
United States public opinion?
Director Haines. I'll mention what they're doing here, but
also what they're doing abroad because we're seeing it on a
broad range of things. I think they're growing, we assess,
really increasingly confident in their ability to influence
elections, but remain concerned about the possibility of
blowback should they be discovered. And the PRC has made
improvements to its influence operation tools using artificial
intelligence, big data analytics. Their tactics globally
include bankrolling candidates they prefer, using deepfake
technologies to generate content, collecting polling data to
determine targets for them, conducting social media influence
operations. For example, the PLA will take over and operate
social media accounts on a number of different platforms. We
look to disclose that and tell companies about that when it
happens to promote disinformation across the board. And they
also target their diasporas. And we've seen them obviously seek
to influence elections not only in the United States in the
context of Congressional candidates, generally--this has been
one of the things in a different levels and spaces--but also
elections in Taiwan, in Australia, and in Canada. So a pretty
significant portion.
Senator Lankford. How do we expose that? How do we put the
word out? Attribution is the challenge here as we've already
talked about. Once it starts to get out there on social media
and other places, how is that exposed most effectively if it's
discovered on the federal side?
Director Haines. I'll start, but I think my colleagues may
wish to amplify certain aspects of this. I mean, we obviously
put in our annual threat assessment some of the things that
we're seeing the PRC engage in, in terms of influence
operations, including in these spaces. And when we get
intelligence that indicates that the PRC is, for example,
taking on social media accounts or things like that in a
platform, we then pass that information through. The FBI is
able to provide that to the companies to take action.
Senator Lankford. A general statement if they're going to
do it is different than an example to say here's an example of
a post that we know was created by or was amplified by China,
Russia, Iran, North Korea--whatever it may be. In 2016 and
2017, we were able to pull exact examples and to be able to
list them, post them, and say this was Russian created. Here's
where it started. Here's where it came from and to be able to
expose it. How do we do that now as we're approaching this
election, and foreign actors are trying to influence?
Director Haines. We will do just that. So essentially the
same playbook in that sense that we are identifying specific,
credible intelligence. We are passing that to the companies or
exposing it publicly, as the case may determine.
Senator Lankford. Okay. Let me keep going, because I'll be
limited in time, though I have mercifully seven minutes to be
able to walk through this, but I'll still run out of time on
this.
Since we passed the Help America Vote Act, HAVA, as it's
called at this point, there's been perpetual funding that's
been sent out to multiple states to be able to improve their
systems. It's been interesting. I pulled new numbers, because
every state says: we can't improve our election systems, we
don't have enough money on it. So, we pulled the recent
spending and what people have and what they haven't spent
already.
Colorado--my colleague, Senator Bennet, just left--has
received $15 million; has only spent 27 percent of that money.
Hawaii has received 8 million; has spent 26 percent of it.
Louisiana has received $14.5 million and has spent zero of
that.
So far, Maryland, $17 million; has spent 37 percent.
Minnesota, $16 million; has spent 41 percent.
Not to leave my own state out, Oklahoma has received 11
million; we've spent 23 percent of that.
Now, other states have spent more on it, but this money has
been sitting there for years. This is not money that was
allocated to them three months ago. Quite a bit of this funding
was allocated to them years ago and they have not actually
spent it.
So my question is, Ms. Easterly, on this, how do we
encourage states to be able to up their game on a couple of
areas? One is learning the lesson of the unofficial results in
their own websites and how to be able to protect those systems.
That's an obvious area of creating distrust on election night
if those are actually interfered with. The second one is old
school paper ballot backups, so if there's a problem with the
machine, everybody can verify it with a piece of paper.
When we have states that have literally millions of dollars
sitting there saying we don't have enough to be able to do
this, when most of them do, how do we advance this?
Director Easterly. Thanks for the question, Senator. So I
can't speak to those statistics, and I'm happy to follow up on
that. But I will say what we provide is the Sector Risk
Management Agency, our no cost services and no cost training.
So many of the states, in fact, thousands of jurisdictions,
take advantage of the cybersecurity assessments, the free cyber
hygiene scanning we provide, the endpoint detection and
response that we have, the malicious domain blocking. So, all
of that is in place across the country, so I know they're
taking advantage of that. And that has significantly raised the
bar from a cybersecurity perspective.
I think your points about election night reporting are very
good ones. One of the things that I think it's really important
for everyone to remember is that those are all unofficial
results, right? And they need to be canvased--they need to be
certified--which takes days to weeks.
Senator Lankford. But if it's announced on election night
who won and then a week later, the state announces, oops! No, a
different person won, that sows incredible distrust----
Director Easterly. I agree.
Senator Lankford [continuing]. Where now no one trusts the
election results anymore. And while the election results were
unofficial, if those are interfered with, that's a real
vulnerability to building trust among the American people.
Director Easterly. I agree with that, Sir. As I said in my
opening statement, these systems are more secure than ever
before. And election officials--to include Paul Ziriax who's
your state election director--are terrific, are working
incredibly hard to make sure that every one of their citizens
votes are counted as cast. And I think it's really important
that we focus on them because they're the true election experts
and we listen to their voices and what they say. And so I would
hope that anybody who is providing unofficial results would
make sure that that state election director gets a voice in
that--to say it's not canvased, it's not certified yet. So
let's wait until it's certified.
Senator Lankford. Okay, thank you. Mr. Chairman, I'm just
going to ask a follow-up question on this and I'm going to have
it done.
Ms. Knapp, as far as the FBI and U.S. Attorneys offices
following up on a criminal offense of voting, if you're not
legally present in the country and you're voting in a federal
election, that is a federal crime. What I'd love to be able to
know, and I've not been able to get the statistics on, is how
many prosecutions do we have across the country for a federal
election crime? Is that actually being followed up on? Do we
have a good number of both charges being filed and actual
prosecutions on that for a federal election crime?
I know in my state, we talked about Paul Ziriax in my state
and what our district attorneys are doing in the state. If
someone votes twice or whatever may be, the prosecution's there
and they have a good history on that. I don't know on the
federal side. Can you all provide that to me?
Ms. Knapp. Sir, thank you very much for the question. What
I do have in front of me right now is how many cases have been
charged through the Department of Justice Task Force on
Election Security. What I don't have is that second part, but I
can at least give you a general number right now. So right now,
the task force has charged 17 cases with a resulting 13
convictions. But with respect to your subset question, I'm
happy to take that back to my team and get you a more complete
answer.
Senator Lankford. Thank you.
Chairman Warner. I think those HAVA numbers are pretty
remarkable. I'm glad you shared those.
Senator Lankford. Some states have spent 70, 80 percent of
them; quite a few of our states spent 50 percent or less on
HAVA numbers, and these are the most recent from just a couple
of months ago.
Chairman Warner. That's a very fair question. And on your
question about how many federal violations, I thought there
was, I mean, something in that range. I thought after the 2000
election, I thought there was a canvass of--that had a
relatively small, small number. But I think that might have
been both state and federal.
Let me move to a slightly different topic that is related
to this. As I think you know, we're talking about AI being all
the buzz at this point, but I think the nefarious nature of
some of our adversaries of using a series of technology
platforms. You know, the independent entities, Mandiant and
Graphika, both companies that the Committee's very familiar
with and that we've used, have reported that there are some of
these gig employment companies, Freelancer and Fiverr are two
that I think their reports indicated, where foreign governments
are actually hiring, unwittingly, citizens in those countries--
targeted countries--and then in effect paying them to be
influence operators. And even more specifically, Cameo, which I
think goes after celebrities, depending--I'm not sure whether
they're A, B, or C list--but has gone out and appeared to have,
again, unwittingly enlisted celebrities to help on anti-Ukraine
messaging.
How are we thinking as we think about malicious use by
foreign actors? You know, a couple of years ago, we would not
have thought that a gig platform would be a tool for that kind
of foreign influence. Anybody on the panel want to take that
one?
Director Haines. I'll start, and we'll play in. But I
think, first of all, you're absolutely right. I think one of
the key trends that I identified with the use of commercial
firms--and some of them are witting and some of them are
unwitting in this space--it's marketing firms, it's public
relations firms, it's reputation management firms, it's gig
firms. It's across the board and they're increasingly being
relied on of launder covertly-directed narratives through media
sources and social media platforms. And this complicates,
obviously, attribution. And this is something that we're trying
to get better at in a faster way.
But part of the reason that they're doing this, right, is
because these firms tend to be more nimble than their own
intelligence services and government apparatus basically for
taking action. They're also frequently more sophisticated in
their capacity to actually promote influence campaigns. And so
this is one of the things that we're watching. And in 2020,
just to give you a sense of the scale of this, these types of
firms we judge were involved in information manipulation in at
least 48 countries by our count. So it is really becoming
increasingly widespread, and it's one of the challenges that
we're trying to manage in all----
Director Easterly. I would only add that just last month we
actually worked with FBI and DNI to put out an advisory that
very specifically highlights these tactics, to include using
proxy media, laundering it through PR, whether witting or
unwitting, how to recognize it, and then mitigations around how
to actually deal with these types of things. And we're doing
separate training on it as well. So part of this is the
awareness of it at the election official level and then what
they need to do to mitigate it. Separately, though, the
platform is an issue, obviously, that needs to be addressed
directly.
Ms. Knapp. Sir, thank you for the opportunity. We are
obviously, like my colleagues, absolutely concerned with any
sort of technology that our adversary uses. What I can say in
this setting is when we have specific information on a
particular company, we will directly engage with them. However,
in absence of that, partnering with key partners like CISA and
putting out the general awareness piece that allows companies
to be more aware and more informed so they can mitigate that
and spot it within their own systems.
Chairman Warner. Well, one of the things I would suggest
and that this Committee and Senator Rubio and I, I think, have
done fairly effectively, was doing a series of classified
briefs by industry sector around the challenges of the PRC.
This is more specific, but I would hope that the FBI or DOJ
might update their FARA, the foreign agent entities, that makes
all of this activity illegal. That guidance ought to be
updated. And I would strongly encourage some level of convening
of these kind of platforms. Again, where do you draw the line?
But if we have in open-source documentation from Graphika and
Mandiant the fact that these platforms are being used, and its
citizens are being unwittingly used now whether the platforms
are unwitting or not, is maybe an open question. But if they
realize that if they were wittingly helping foreign agents
interfere, that would be a violation of the law, I think that
would be a helpful process.
Thoughts on that?
Director Easterly. My main thought is one of the really
great things since 2020 that's different now, Chairman, is we
have the FMIC, which we didn't have before, which allows for
those classified briefings. And I'll defer to Avril, but I
think that is very much added value.
Director Haines. I'll just say that I very much support the
idea of getting the sector together and seeing whether or not
we can enhance our capacity to get out to everybody,
essentially, on these issues. So, absolutely.
Chairman Warner. One thing I am concerned about, because I
appreciate all of the comments and the outreach that CISA has
done, but, you know, how do we in an appropriately nonpartisan
way--? I've heard some reports that there are, not many, but a
certain number of counties that are actually opting out of some
of the voluntary tools that CISA has used in the past, like the
Albert system, where I thought for a long time we had literally
a level of cyber protection down to the county levels. But for
whatever reason, certain counties are now opting out of that. I
heard in Washington state. Is that kind of a one-off? Or I
would just hate, as we get closer to the election, if the
distrust of the federal government becomes such that people are
literally turning away voluntary cyber and other educational
protections.
Director Easterly. The good news, Chairman, is that that's
not accurate. The trend is actually states and local
jurisdictions continue to take advantage of the no-cost
voluntary services. With respect to the Albert sensors in
particular, there's 1,083 sensors across the country. I think
less than a handful--less than five--have not renewed their
contract and that's for a variety of reasons, to include opting
to use different technology for intrusion detection.
So this is something we look at very closely, and I have no
concerns. At the end of the day, as you know, Chairman, CISA is
a nonpartisan, nonpolitical agency. And we cannot be effective
unless we can work with election officials at the state and
local level of both parties. So I'm very attuned to that, and I
have not seen any significant changes in our ability to provide
no cost services, information, and no cost voluntary training
to election jurisdictions across the nation.
Chairman Warner. I again turn to Senator Rubio for his
closing comments, then I'll make one or two quick comments. You
know, I think we--the whole system was shocked by 2016. And
again, I think a lot of good work by this Committee to point
out the level of Russian interference. And I still remember at
first some of the tech companies refusing even to believe it. I
think we then took action in 2018. I think, and again, I have
repeatedly said, I think under the Trump Administration, we
were very well prepared in 2020 because there was effective
communication and a team that was working well together.
I worry at times that in 2024, because of increasing
distrust of any governmental entity, I worry in terms of social
media platforms that don't seem to even try to have their users
adhere to their own standards--these are not government
standards--to their own standards. I worry in terms of some of
these new AI tools that can operate at speed and scale that's
unprecedented. And the fact that we've kind of all become a
little bit almost immune to misstatements, mistruths,
falsehoods.
I share some of the concerns raised by a number of the
Members, Director Haines, that we do need a kind of pre-
assigned process, especially if we're getting into those last
30 days, or last week or so, before the election of who would
report. I think this effort today that made the press, it
probably is appropriate that the CIA itself responded. But as
we get into those final days and weeks, having an approach--and
again citing the 2020 example where in effect everyone across
the board came out and called out the Iranians for their
action. We need to not be game-time thinking that through with
all of the potential forces that are coming to bear potentially
on this election.
Senator Rubio.
Vice Chairman Rubio. Just to wrap this all up. First of
all, I haven't focused as much on the CISA role because to me
the technical aspects--it's not that it's easier technically,
you know, protecting elections from people that are
professional hackers that are constantly trying to get into
everything from water systems to election systems to hospital
systems. I mean, these people--this is what they do all day. So
I'm not in any way diminishing the importance and the
difficulty of it. I am pointing out, though, that it's
technical, right? It's a red state, it's a blue state--they're
both going to be equally impacted. They both are fertile
ground, especially when you get down at the Congressional level
and even in local elections.
So the reason why I focused so much on election
interference, on an election influence, and in particular
foreign malign influence, is because that's a lot trickier. And
just the threats, I don't know what this comes from. I think
it's the one of the--yes, the assessment for foreign threats to
'22. If you just go through this, you start to see one of the
first things that it points out, which I think you see to this
day, is that part of their effort is some of these operators
are largely focused on amplifying what are already authentic
beliefs in American politics, right? So these are people who
already believe these things. And one of the things they do is
they just simply amplify things that people are already saying.
So what's the risk there? If you say that the Iranians or the
Russians or the Chinese are amplifying a message, some people
take that to mean if I believe in something that I've stood for
for a long time, all of a sudden now I'm a Chinese agent or now
I'm a Russian agent because I'm actually saying things on the
campaign trail?
And so you see, it for example, and it's also, you know,
Iran proposed helping nationalist groups inside the U.S. And
Iranian officials have advocated using covert social media to
pit the extremist groups against each other, though more likely
for use in 2024. This was written in '22. So obviously we're
now in '24 and you see that. So that's just an effort to get
Americans to fight and make us look weak internally.
Then the other thing is that in October of '22, Twitter
exposed three separate Iranian-based influence networks
operating on the platform, generally supporting left-leaning
U.S. politicians, including a range of House and Senate
candidates. And according to industry reports, many exposed
accounts espoused pro-Palestinian sentiments. At the same time,
they expressed positive sentiments towards progressive
candidates.
Now you flip to the Russians. The Russians tried to
denigrate the Democratic Party before the midterm and undermine
confidence in the election, most likely to weaken U.S. support
for Ukraine. So they denigrated the Democratic Party. They
wanted--in particular, they amplified questions about whether
U.S. aid to Ukraine would continue if the balance of power in
Congress shifted. Their intent there is not that they're
Republicans, but their intent there was to denigrate the
Democratic Party because it furthered their aim, and in the
process, also begin to influence our willingness to continue to
be committed to helping Ukraine. You move on to others. So
another one--that the Russians are blaming multiculturalism and
leftist ideals for ostensibly driving the U.S. into a crisis.
There are a lot of people that actually hold that view,
irrespective of what the Russians believe. They're just
amplifying what somebody has probably been saying for 15 years.
That doesn't make that person a Russian agent. It just makes it
more difficult on this.
And then you have these unique cases--and this one in
particular strikes home--because I think I know who they're
talking about. We assessed the Cuba attempted to undermine the
electoral process of specific U.S. Congressional politicians in
2022 that they perceive as hostile. They focused their
operations aimed at denigrating specific U.S. candidates in
Florida, although in an attempt to shape the impression of
other politicians as well, because they view Cuban-Americans in
Miami as having an outsized influence on U.S. policy with
regards to Cuba. And they also cultivated members of the U.S.
media who held critical views of that Member of Congress. So I
probably know who they're talking about. But the point--and
obviously it was in '22, where I happened to be on the ballot,
among others. But the point being is that that's a very
specific aim.
My whole point in all of this is you have the example that
I've used about the fake AI video. Okay? And that's almost, I
don't say it's an easy question, but that's a more obvious one.
It's clearly a fake video. And I think what we want to know is:
do we have a formalized process to act very quickly to say this
thing is fake, even if we can't attribute it? You don't need to
attribute it to be able in the last days of a campaign to at
least protect the American people. And it has to be done in a
way where the other side, who maybe hopes it's real, doesn't
feel like you're tipping the scales in favor of your preferred
candidate, right? To be blunt, let's say a video comes out
that's fake about Trump, and the DNI comes out and says this
video it's not a fake. Or let me do the reverse. A video that
comes out about Biden and the DNI, yourself or whoever's in
charge of coming out with this, says this video is a fake. I
can see where people on the Trump side would say, well, that's
just because you're trying to help Biden. It's probably a real
video and the reverse would be true in a different scenario.
So it's a hard thing to do, but someone has to be in charge
of coming forward and at least saying it's fake, even if we
can't attribute it. That's the obvious question. This one, the
one I've just described about amplifying voices that are
already out there in narratives, that's a lot tougher. I think
the most we can say in that regard is, look, we know that these
countries are doing this. They're not doing it because they're
Democrats or Republicans. It serves some purpose--influencing
Cuba policy, influencing Ukraine policy, making America look
chaotic, getting groups to fight against each other. But this
is what they're doing and let people make judgments as to how
they take these narratives. It's tough.
I don't have an easy answer for how we fix it or what the
process should look like in terms of notifying people. I just
know that this is going to get far more complex, and I predict
it won't just be about elections. It will actually become in
real time--it already is--on policy debates that we're having
here. Should we have tariffs? Should we ban TikTok? Should we
you-name-it? On a weekly basis, whatever the issue is here, I
can see this becoming part of an influence even in our daily
political debates.
So we really need to get a handle on it. It's a tough one,
but we really need to, because it's going to get far worse, far
more sophisticated with many more players. And, I think, pose a
grave danger at some point of turning into something that we
haven't fully anticipated. And so I hope we can continue to
work on finding a way forward, because I'm sure they'll be
talking about it at this dais after we're both gone. This will
still be a factor.
Thank you.
Chairman Warner. I agree with Senator Rubio. I think these
are challenging times. But I think the only thing that I would
hope we both agree on is that Americans have got plenty of
differences between them. But if that amplification can
literally be traced back to the Cuban spy services, and it
appears that millions of Floridians are saying something that
they're not really saying, I think the Floridians ought to know
that that is not the case, that we can trace it back to the
Cuban services or we can trace it back that these individuals
who are posting things anti-Ukraine are actually being paid by
Russia. If that proof is there, some of these things would
violate--. Why I think the upgrading of the FARA bill--. There
are restrictions against foreign agents taking these kind of
actions. So it is a challenge. Technology is going to make it
much, much harder. This will not be the last time that we deal
with this.
And please, for all of the folks who are in the row
supporting you and more importantly, back at your respective
agencies, we're going to count on you. This truly is, we always
say, and politicians always say, particularly when they're up,
this is the most important election ever. Even though neither
one of us is up this time, this is the most important election
ever.
We're adjourned.
(Whereupon the hearing was adjourned at 4:20 p.m.)
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