Videos of Haitian immigrants illegally voting for the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, in Georgia. Images of votes burning in Pennsylvania. Attempts to break into the mobile phone of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. These are just some of the most recent examples of how foreign powers – Russia and Iran, but also China – and other countries, such as Cuba, are accelerating their attempts to interfere in the US elections this Tuesday to, at the very least, sow doubt about the cleanliness of its results, according to the intelligence services in Washington. In the worst case, to encourage citizens to vote for one candidate or another in a key election with implications on all international boards.
Last weekend, the Office of the National Directorate of Intelligence (ODNI) warned that the video of the alleged Haitian immigrants “has been created by agents of Russian interference” and is “part of Moscow’s efforts to raise doubts “without basis about the integrity of the American electoral process and encourage divisions among citizens.”
The warning is part of a series of alerts from the ODNI, the Federal Police (FBI) and other entities that consider that in recent weeks Moscow, Russia and Iran have intensified—as the election date approached—their efforts to intervene. in the process. In recent weeks, videos have circulated with false allegations of all kinds, from Harris running over a woman to images of supposed votes burning.
At times, such interference has been attempted in spectacular ways. The US government denounced this summer that Russia had tried to use influencers Americans to spread narratives with the Moscow theses. He has also accused employees of the Russian television network RT of hiring a production company in Tennessee for ten million dollars (just over nine million euros) to create and disseminate pro-Russian content on social networks. The American company, in turn, paid several influencers of conservative ideology, who have assured that they had no idea that the money they received came from Moscow.
According to a senior ODNI official who spoke to foreign journalists on condition of anonymity, “Russia prefers the former president [Trump] and Iran prefers the vice president [Harris]”. Thus, Tehran “continues to sow distrust in American political institutions and increase social discord. “It is also carrying out efforts to influence the presidential race through an operation to break into former President Trump’s cell phone and try to leak its contents.”
On the other hand, China does not seek to influence the outcome of the presidential elections, according to the analysis of that institution; It does try in other elections for seats in the US Congress, where laws can be passed that benefit or harm Beijing, or are contrary to Beijing’s interests in areas such as Taiwan, the self-governed island that China considers part of its territory and that constitutes the absolute priority for Xi Jinping’s government.
One of the great fears of the intelligence services is what may happen after the 5th, especially if the vote is as close as the polls predict. Countries such as Russia or Iran, they fear, could encourage violent protests, either by organizing them covertly or by encouraging participation in those planned by American groups. The objective would be to sow doubt about the results, increase divisions and polarization and complicate the presidential transition process.
“These foreign attempts to undermine American democracy are not going to stop on Tuesday,” said the senior ODNI official. The intelligence services anticipate that once the polls close, campaigns will be launched to try to cast doubt on the validity of the numbers. “Foreign agents, almost certainly, are considering the possibility of other elections with very close results both for the presidency and for control of the Senate and the House of Representatives,” they warn.
The first alarm came in 2016, when the intelligence services warned of Russian maneuvers to try to interfere in those elections to favor the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, and prevent the victory of Democrat Hillary Clinton. That case exposed with painful clarity how vulnerable the US system is to the malicious use of new technologies, including artificial intelligence.
Improved materials
But those attempts, US secret service agents point out, were quite crude, sometimes with basic grammatical or spelling errors that made them detectable. Since then, the materials have been perfected, but American systems, technology companies and private analysts have also put in place much more adequate defenses, they say.
“No matter who you vote for, you can be sure that your vote will be counted exactly as you have presented it,” the director of the US Agency for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security (CISA) stressed last week. Jen Easterly, at a press conference. “The voting infrastructure is more secure than ever.”
Those responsible for the voting machines have carried out all kinds of controls on their equipment to guarantee its reliability, he explained. These devices are not connected to the Internet, which makes it difficult for hackers to enter their programs. Furthermore, each State has a different infrastructure. A decentralized system that has been planned this way to make it more difficult for an agent trying to interfere to cause problems throughout the country.
“It is not possible for a malicious actor to hack voting machines to materially impact the outcome of the presidential election. Of course, not without being detected,” Easterly stressed. For added security, in 98% of cases electronic voting is supported by paper copies to the extent possible and in most systems, according to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice. “On Twitter you can say whatever you want, but if necessary you can go back and count the ballots by hand, in a process of absolute transparency,” promised the head of CISA.
