At a briefing Wednesday, two U.S. intelligence officials said the spy community’s Foreign Malign Influence Center has been busier than ever this election cycle. They said Russia remains most active in targeting U.S. elections and that China and even Cuba are likely to try to influence American voters.
Iran, they said, is also interested in influencing this election cycle, as it has in the past, but it’s more focused on sowing chaos, and possibly even violence, than in promoting a particular candidate.
And foreign actors are likely to target “down ballot” local and state races in addition to a presidential race that likely will be a rematch between President Joe Biden and the presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, the two officials from Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.
Both officials from the spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations.
This summer, election security officials from throughout the U.S. intelligence community will be gaming out how to respond to threats at election time. Those include how to identify and respond to foreign interference in real time and how to determine whether to warn campaigns or other targets privately or issue a public warning to the entire electorate if authorities believe the influence campaign has the potential to actually sway the outcome of a race.
Other war games exercises will focus on how to rapidly determine if information potential voters are viewing is legitimate or if it is artificially altered or generated. Combatting deep fakes and other “synthetic media” created purely to confuse or influence voters is among the top priorities of U.S. election security efforts, the two officials said.
The Foreign Malign Influence Center focuses on election interference
The center the officials were discussing is tucked away on a tree-lined street in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Bethesda, Md. It is the U.S. intelligence community’s nerve center for trying to stop Russia, China, Iran, Israel or other foreign actors from meddling in U.S. elections. Known as the FMIC, it brings together officials from across the U.S. intelligence community to work on foreign election meddling threats.
