When encountering potentially false information online, “don’t spread that information any more broadly and basically give foreign adversaries a chance to manipulate Americans,” Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said on CBS in late October.
Moscow and Beijing have denied such allegations, but President Joe Biden’s administration has made it a priority to prevent foreign election interference. Russia is suspected of having used a disinformation campaign intended to sway the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election.
Several suspected attempts to sow mistrust among voters have already come to light, cybersecurity and tech companies said.
American cybersecurity company Mandiant in October warned of an ongoing influence campaign that supports Chinese political interests. The alleged campaign, named Dragonbridge, is making “aggressive attempts to discredit the US democratic process, including attempts to discourage Americans from voting in the 2022 US midterm elections,” Mandiant said.
Earlier this fall, Facebook parent Meta Platforms said it shut down a network of fake accounts originating in China that posted on divisive issues like gun control and abortion rights posing as Americans. It is unusual for such operations to focus on domestic US politics instead of criticising the US to foreign audiences, according to Meta.
Meta also said it shut down a larger Russian campaign designed to spread pro-Kremlin information disguised as news.
A senior FBI official said China was using Russian tactics to divide American society, US media report.
One attack targeted a politician critical of China. The US justice department in March charged five people with purported ties to Chinese authorities on suspicion of disrupting the campaign of a military veteran running for Congress in the midterms. According to the Justice Department, the candidate was a leader of the pro-democracy demonstrations at the deadly 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and has strongly advocated for the democratisation of China.
“Transnational repression harms people in the United States and around the world and threatens the rule of law itself,” Matthew G. Olsen, an assistant attorney-general in the Justice Department’s national security division, said in a release.
The Biden administration is watching Moscow as well. The US government has warned states that Russia is working to undermine the legitimacy of the midterms, The Associated Press reported.
“What they attempt to do is create instability in our domestic environment and then show that back home – you know, ‘This is what democracy brings you: instability, riots, January 6th, race hatred,'” said Scott White, an associate professor at George Washington University with a specialty in cybersecurity.
The resulting rift is used “to show the evils of the West, and specifically of Western democracy,” said White, who called it a way for authoritarian leaders to justify their grip on power.
Marek Posard, a military sociologist at Rand Corp., warned that the US became more vulnerable to foreign influence campaigns after supporters of then-president Donald Trump broke into the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021. Trump is accused of inciting them.
“When the discourse gets to a point where it’s not based on facts and evidence, [and] it’s more based on opinions and speculation that are not necessarily grounded in reality, that creates an opportunity for adversaries to exploit,” Posard said.
Trump has not provided proof supporting his claims of fraud in the 2020 race. He has continued to tell supporters that the election was stolen from him.
“Your favourite president got screwed,” Trump told a rally in Iowa on Thursday.