Top U.S. intelligence officials warned lawmakers in Washington, D.C., that foreign attempts to manipulate the November election are expected to go far beyond what was seen in 2016 or 2020.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday afternoon that China, Russia, and Iran pose the greatest concern for election security six months out from the big day.
“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,” Haines said.
“Specifically, Russia remains the most active foreign threat to our elections,” Haines said, adding that the Russian government’s influence operations tend to include “eroding trust in U.S. democratic institutions, exacerbating socio-political divisions in the United States, and degrading Western support to Ukraine.”
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly said her agency was the most prepared for anticipated attacks as campaign season on both the federal and state level peaks in the coming months.
“Election infrastructure is more secure than ever,” Easterly said, adding that the threats were “more complex than ever.”
Officials are particularly concerned about the use of artificial intelligence in content that can alter images, videos, and audio to use whatever voice or person’s picture they wish to craft a message.
AI will increasingly be used by foreign actors and nonstate entities in content, much of which is posted on social media, according to Haines.
“The kind of audio and video manipulation that even as recently as four years ago and … 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,” Haines testified.
Haines declared protecting the democratic process of elections in the United States was an “absolute priority” for the intelligence community and that it had “never been better prepared.”
However, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the committee’s top Republican member, said he had yet to see an easy, specific plan for how the government planned to alert the public of disinformation circulating online.
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Senate Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) said part of the problem was that more people have grown distrustful of the government, potentially setting up any government warning to look like political sabotage.
“We’ve witnessed increasingly large numbers of Americans, of all political stripes, who simply do not trust U.S. institutions, from federal agencies and local law enforcement to mainstream media institutions, coupled with an increased reliance on easily manipulated internet media platforms,” Warner said.
