Transcripts For CSPAN2 Hearing 20240703

Cspan, howard my cable. Up next, intelligence and cybersecurity leaders testify on foreign threats to the 2024 elections. The most significant foreign actors targeting u. S. Elections include china and most notably russia. Remaining the most active threat the hearing is one hour and 45 minutes. I want to call this hearing to order and i want to welcome todays witnesses. I want to warn them we are finishing up one vote. We will have another one. We will work through that process. People slipping in and out, i think you understand. The director of National Intelligence, director of cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and lisa knapp executive assistant director of the National Security branch at the fbi. Welcome to all of you. Todays hearing builds on the bipartisan effort and 2016. To educate the public on the intentions of adversaries seeking to undermine the integrity of our systems. And to ensure that u. S. Government is postured to protect our elections from those foreign threats. An Interagency Task forces tasked with protecting two forms of election interference. We have seen this 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. The head of each federal election. Between testimony of open source resource executives. This is the first open hearing of this Campaign Season but more will be coming. I want to start by recalling the fact that i fear times the 2016 cycle so long ago that the Public Perception of past foreign election meddling has too often been treated as something trivial or not of major league. As this committee exhausted bipartisan investigation into russias meddling into 2016 and as declassified Intelligence Committee showed, foreign influence efforts go well beyond simple online trolling or traditional propaganda. For election efforts in the last eight years, among other things involved, efforts to infiltrate both online and in person u. S. Organizations on both sides of political spectrum with the goal of stroking Political Polarization in the United States and promoting social strife. We have seen as well successful impersonations of u. S. Political and social with the russian ira back in 2016 having twitter and Facebook Accounts for the tennessee gop and black lives matter. Both of those were actually bigger than the real organizations. We have seen harassment and sting operations against u. S. Candidates. Particularly when we saw just the last cycle. The prc influence operatives tried to set up a sting operation to bully and humiliate a congressional candidate of chinese heritage. We have seen successful efforts to organize real world political rallies. Back in 2016 again, one almost coming to real life violence. Russian efforts orchestrated simultaneous rallies in houston. One with an antimuslim event taking place at exactly the same time and place as a muslim cultural event. Luckily, Law Enforcement intervenes. We have also seen personalized email set in 2020 by iranian influence actors. They did a good job winning that out. Globally, we have seen many of the same influence actors aggressively. The prcs influence actors aggressively shaping the outcome of the outcome earlier this year promoting narratives as election day neared. More recently literally in the last few weeks, officials have disclosed efforts of russian operatives to shape the outcome of the eu elections with the goal of undermining european support for ukraine. A wide range of media open Source Research and other sources similarly pointed to russian influence operations. They invaded 75 . A few years later due to russian efforts. They think the United States started the war in ukraine. Fresh off the presses a couple of hours. Testifying a new russian effort geared at somehow saying zelensky and the cia are working on trying to undermine again our elections. The barriers to entry have unfortunately become small. Since 2016 we have seen declassified intelligence assessments who have engaged and or at least contemplated election influence and interference activities. Not only russian, not only iran or prc but also cuba, venezuela, terrorist organizations like hezbollah. Profit motivated cyber criminals why think this hearing is so important, in many ways, our adversaries could be more sophisticated and aggressive in both scale and scope. Let me tell you why i think that is the case. It is more incentivized than ever to intervene in our elections. They can understand that it can 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, weve seen the conflict between israel and hamas as Fertile Ground for disinformation since october 7. The scale and sophistication of these sorts of attacks against our elections can now be accelerated by ai tools. The truth is the manipulation and clearly eight years ago still a challenge. Due to ai tools unprecedented. Literally not a week or month that went by where the tools do not continue to improve. On a personal note i fear that congress inability to pass any new guardrails in the last 18 months for ai enabled mischief. President trump embracing doctor fauci, we have seen audios of President Biden telling people in New Hampshire higher. The truth is, these tools are out there going in their danger. Third, we have seen increasingly large numbers of americans of all political stripes across the political spectrum that simply do not trust u. S. Institutions from Law Enforcement to Mainstream Media who increasingly rely on the wildest conspiracy theories that pop up on the web. We have seen a concerted Litigation Campaign the ability. The vital threat information with platforms. We have seen from some of the same social media platforms considerable disinvestment and in certain cases other this interest in platform integrity by some of those social Media Companies. An area where the vice chairman and i work very closely together , we have seen the rise of a dominant social media platform tiktok with ownership based in a country that is clearly adversarial in terms of the intent on our elections. It is these kinds of attempts by foreign actors and adversaries to so disinformation undermined elections and see discord that americans can expect their federal agencies both Law Enforcement and intelligence to help detect and defeat. Thats more easily understood and then there is this whole topic. Its not just in elections it was also during covid and we see it here on a range of topics. The propaganda has always been a weapon of war. I think they do it at scale faster and more convincing and in ways that spread quickly and are difficult to contain in particular. We have seen increasing amounts of damage thats being done to the reputation of the United States and parts of by a very active effort to undermine and make life difficult for our diplomats. Our military personnel in so many countries where the recent have gained greater influence. All of that is happening at a global scale and the chairman is talked about some of the countries that have faced efforts to meddle in their elections and try to influence the outcome and sometimes being successful. Today the focus is how its used in an election in policy debates do lets focus in on focus on elections for a moment. We hear a lot about the tools that are available capabilities that someone have to put in ai out to spread narratives that are difficult to knock down and so forth. The weaponization of this information. I hope to learn more about when this happened, did this happen, whos in charge of her sponsoring and happily thought through the process of what do we do when the scenarios occur . I dont think i have a clear understanding of whos in charge and how we would respond who would take the lead. I know for hurricane is headed towards United States the National Hurricane center will put meteorologist on the air who will describe to us this is a hurricane and this is what it looks like and this is how strong its going to be when he gets here and put up a forecast issue warnings and republicans and democrats will take the appropriate steps. If Something Like that were headed towards our election i dont know whos in charge of putting it out there. More importantly i think no matter who puts it out there to candidate or issue on the other side of it their followers are going to question whether its the government interfering in the elections themselves and its not helpful. I use this as an example and the recent one when the whole laptop situation happened under bidens laptop. A number of former intelligence officials. That title carries weight alternative letter saying this has all the hallmarks of russian Disinformation Campaign. We know now that is not a Disinformation Campaign. We now know it was not a Russian Misinformation Campaign but the result of that was social Media Companies would not allow anyone to post articles and it could not be reported except for one place. What happens as a result of weather had an influence on the election are not the result of it is we have a part of the segment of the country is said repeatedly says the Intelligence Community interfered so wide that is relevant here is because no matter who this Disinformation Campaign is geared toward the other side is going to say people issuing a warning or the people who are interfering in the elections on behalf have the candidate they favor or they think we have to begin by understanding if something were to happen if tomorrow there was a video of very convincing video for candidates and lets not say presentday u. S. Senate or congress and the video comes out with 72 hours to go before election day of that candidate saying some or doing something. But its fake. Who is in charge of letting people know this is fake, this thing is not real. So that we can have people coming to the ballot box believing that something is not real is real and influence our election. I asked myself whoever is in charge of this what are we doing to protect the credibility of the entity that whoevers whoever is in charge of saying it so the other side does not come out and say our own government is interfering in the election. I think we will be struggling with this for very long time because the rations are the best at doing it and have been doing it a long time so they perfected it every election cycle more and more cast of characters are joining the parade here in terms of getting into the business and i think in the years to come we will see more and more nationstates and maybe nonstate actors begin to not just come after us in our elections and political process that those of other countries as well. This issue is not going away anytime soon and i think it will accelerate and its going to get worse and we need to rail out some lay out some parameters about how we will respond to these things in a coordinated way so we know ahead of time and opposed to the out hot races in which its been handled in years past in terms of responding to the misinformation piece of it. Its a tough one to handle but its one we have to get a handle on. I think dr. Haines are you going to lead us off . Sounds good. Thank you very much. I really appreciate having the opportunity to brief you on the Intelligence Committee Election Security work alongside my colleague says the fbi career leading efforts to take action to secure our elections and local state and local officials were on the frontline of this work. U. S. Government efforts to protect our elections have improved significantly since the 2016 president ial election and even as the Threat Landscape is becoming increasingly complicated its my view 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 organize at the foreign malign influence under our fmi see which houses the election threats executive and the election threats executive lead to coordinate in emigres the activities initiatives and programs in this realm and fundamentally we support the federal government particularly david leslie genereux and fbi as they worked to secure elections as well a as state and local Election Officials across the country to manage and secure the election infrastructure and a daytoday basis. We do by ensuring our resources are aligned in the election and also so we are able to identify and mitigate foreign threats to our election and communicator assessment to our federal partners to you in congress to state and local officials and to the American People. We facilitate a framework that ensures when relevant information is collected concerning foreign influence and at our election they can take action while most of the identifications are not public here are few and to get few and to get its merits in which public notifications are appropriate and doing so would render the foreign aid operation if its part of that mandate. A course exposing a foreign actors efforts is only one way in which we counter election threats. We support the Law Enforcement reaches the disrupt operations through legal action including the disruption of Financial Networks and we also support cybercalm with a range of Cyber Operations to ensure foreign adversaries cannot use their Digital Infrastructure to attack our elections. Using every tool we have is critical as the challenge is expanding for the last several years we have seen three trends that make the Threat Landscape more diverse and more complex. First they are an increasing number of foreign actors and nonstate entities who are looking to engage in election influence activities. Second they are more commercial firms through red 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 indicator of the foreign influence effort in third perhaps most obviously relevant emerging Technology Particularly genitive ai and Data Analytics are increasing the threat by enabling influence actors who conduct targeted campaigns reducing the number of relatively sophisticated influence operations and content and further complicating attribution. Ford sample innovation and ai has enabled foreign influence actors to produce seemingly authentic and tailored messaging more efficiently at greater scale and with content adapted for different languages and cultures. In fact we party seemed genitive ai being used in the context of foreign elections. In september 20232 days before the parliamentary elections in slovakia estate audio recording was released on line in which one can discuss how to rig the upcoming election with a journalist for the audience quickly was shown to be fake signs of ai manipulation that under soapbox slovakian loggers a commentary about the election 48 hours before the polls open and since it beats deep stay was released news and government organizations struggle to stop them in a position of the victim of the deep state ended up losing in a close election. To position enabled foreign efforts we have the i. T. Group focused on multimedia that leverages semantic Forensics Technology among other tools and enables those in the iec 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 engaged technical experts inside and outside the government to ensure we are applying the latest techniques and state and local officials have concerns about media that is suspected to be synthetic or manipulated to violate the law or is tied to foreign actor they can request authentication to the fbi. 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 peoples republic of china and iran. Specifically russia remains the most active foreign threat to our elections. The russian Government Operations tend to include eroding trust in Democratic Institutions exacerbating sociopolitical divisions divisions in United States integrating western support to ukraine. Russia relies on the vast influence apparatus which consists of its Intelligence Services cyber actors proxies and social media. Moscow most likely view such operations as a means to tear down the United States and its perceived primary adversary enabling russia to promote itself as a great power whereas beijing seeks to promote support for chinas policy positions including in the context of specific elections portray the u. S. Democratic model is chaotic and effective unrepresentative and magnifying divisions. It has a sophisticated influence apparatus for which they leverage emerging technologies including generative ai and they are growing increasingly confident in their ability to influence elections globally remain concerned about the possible blowback in the event that their efforts in 2020 china did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the west president ial election principally because the concerns regarding blowback in cost and thus far we have no information to suggest the piers he will take a more active role in this president ial election than it did in 2020 even if they continue to engage in efforts to promote politicians at all levels who were taking positions favorable to china on key issues. Needless to say we will continue to monitor their activities. Finally iran is becoming increasingly progressive aggressive in their efforts seeking to strike discord entered Democratic Institutions as weve seen them do entire election cycles but they continue to use social media platforms issuing threats disseminating disinformation and it is likely they will continue to rely on their Intelligence Services efforts and irans stage on line influencers to promote their narrative. We have also observed other countries to undermine his specific candidates on a smaller scale reference and some other countries do things like direct Campaign Contributions to candidates they believe would promote their interest if elected to secure their support. The Threat Landscape is increasingly challenging but our capacity to manage it has improved as you will hear. There is nothing more important for or fundamental part or democracy to protect mere election i can tell you we are focused and ready to do our part and i look forward to your questions. Chairman and vice chairman and members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to discuss this effort to protect and defend our nations election infrastructure. Since 2017 when the election infrastructure was dismayed is critical and cisa was the agency cisa of partners including the Intelligence Committee and the federal Group Investigation and of made significant progress in increasing the security and resilience of the nations election infrastructure. Working to support state and local Election Officials who serve on the front lines administering managing and securing our elections. Election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election Stakeholder Community has never been stronger. In 2020 2022 as you know theres no evidence factors altered votes or have any Material Impact on the outcome of any of these elections and this has been validated time again in court including multiple court challenges. There were paper records that could be counted and recounted and audited to ensure accuracy. This job ive 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 but its why i have confidence in the integrity of our election 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 dmi noted foreign adversaries remained a persistent threat to our election infrastructure aiming to undermine american confidence in the Election Integrity and their Democratic Institutions can be so partisan discrepancies or efforts will be exasperated by genitive ai capabilities port 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 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 have seen a wave of resignations with Election Officials taking operational experience and Institutional Knowledge with them in some of those who remained are operating under difficult conditions. We at cisa are proud to stand shouldertoshoulder with these Election Officials, these election heroes are on the frontlines of our democracy. In fact cisa is providing more services in more jurisdictions than ever before with training and resources on or protect 2024 web site. Since the beginning of 2020. Provided over 340 cybersecurity assessments, 520 physical security assessments, 70 tabletop exercises, two and 20 training sessions that reached 9000 election stakeholders every week. We provide reports to nearly 1000 election entities with highlighting vulnerabilities that they can be immediately remediated. We have provided and sponsored 230 security clearances for Election Officials and worked with the Intelligence Community to provide classified briefings both foreign adversary threats and most recently retired 10 dedicated regional Election Security advisers to bring a combined 210 years of election expertise and experience to work on the frontlines with Election Officials. Finally we remain laser focused on the threat of war and maligned influence operations providing guidance on the tactics of disinformation used by our foreign adversaries that continue to use our reality web site to provide Accurate Information about election infrastructure security and perhaps most importantly we will amplify the voice of the state and local Election Officials who are the true authoritative subject Matter Experts when it comes to elections. These Election Officials no 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. I think the witnesses further testimony in particular acknowledged that 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 is one of the most serious advertising to undermine our democracy. Some of that maybe domestically generated that some of that could be enhanced by four niches let me direct my first question to director haines. I think there has been some rewriting post 2016. Some of the activities of russia or even in 2020 with iran was harmless. Can you speak to the fact that literally the level of violence that was decided in cases or exacerbating racial strife religious strife these adversaries commit these foreign adversaries are trying to. Us against each other at unprecedented levels. I think you did a nice job of highlighting the numbers. Starting with iran its an increasingly aggressive in their efforts seeking to stoke discord and promote chaos and undermined continuity in the process and they use social media platforms really to issue threats to disseminate disinformation and we saw how they did that in 2020 and one of the entity identified where they intended to incite violence and threaten voters by sending spoofed emails designed to intimidate the voters to incite social unrest and distributing content basically including a video that imply 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. I think that is a very good example. If also seen russia engage in these type of tactic particularly global efforts trying to effectively incite disorder in order to scratch Law Enforcement from being able to manage an election. I would just say recall that incident and get to ask senator rubios question about who announces it. There was a real show of force at that moment when we had odni and the fbi director and the head of sza. Our fear is who makes that message in a politicized environment. Needs to be people who are going to be viewed as much as possibly by the both sides credibly. Lots and lots of talk about ai. Its not a week that goes by when i dont see new enhancements in terms of either video or audio or deepfake capabilities. I dont think even though he passed a Bipartisan Legislation on the rules committee today that will get the National Legislation on deepfakes and i will point out theres a dozen states that have taken this on on their own to red states and blue states and everything in between. Those of us who have been questioning companies to do more there were 20 Tech Companies that came together in what was called the unix accorded this include the phase books the googles and its also twitter tik tok open ai promising they would have a commonality of watermarks he could indicate if something has been altered in ai and elections. To try to take that content and educate voters. Half the world is going to elections this year and right now the europeans will have their parliamentary election shortly in june. I worry that after thats muchpublicized announcement in february to use the old political term wheres the beef i dont see that, and watermarking standard emerging and i dont see these 20 Tech Companies moving in the aggressive nature that i would hope. Ive lived here briefly from each of the witnesses on how you think the collaboration between Tech Companies in making sure ai is not misused. Thank you for the quest question chairman to the letter you sent out to companies yesterday which i think will be very hopeful and giving specific answers we have been working with generative ai company specifically about threats to elections and ensuring that they are putting procedures and technology in place. Many of them are part of whats called ccp at the coalition for content providence and authentication. Edition one of the useful things they are doing is if there are any questions about elections they are driving people to use that technology to sources like can i vote. Org for trusted info 2024 which is the National Association of secretary of state, information that provides verified information at the state and local level so its really a validation that they are pushing people to those trusted sources. All that said we are providing guidance on ai threats and ways they can mitigate such threats to their election infrastructure. We put out something in january and april about foreign maligned influence. I will add to that by saying that squares everything that was indicated. We have seen the opportunity for them to provide detection tools building relationships with state and local partners and thats part of whats important to encourage. We are in the process of watching them build out essentially their capacity and efforts in this area. Things like your statement are helpful to channel that energy and to push forward on it. Another thing we are we are obviously doing his we have been engaging with them in order to make sure that we understand the technology to make sure we are producing stateoftheart identification and Authentication Services within the i. T. And state and local partners. We are also promoting a suite of technologies frankly in this area that really allows to characterize assets to defend a particular largescale automated disinformation tax to public authorities. All of that is used in enforcing it. Thank you for the opportunity to respond. Up as they ai when we get any kind of intelligence we look at social Media Companies for action. When we do any sort of until indicating a foreign adversary that information is provided to a political address and in no address or phone number for them to take action necessary. I understand talking about protecting the infrastructure is very important but i want to focus on and largely based the scenario on a cnn february 9 exclusive about it tabletop. It describes the following table top exercise. China creates a fake ad video showing an authentic candidate destroying ballots and they are able to identify that its ai and that it is fake. We have the ability to do that and you have described the dni office is able to do that and darpa i guess and the semantic forensic technology. We know its fake. What the article says and what i want to know what they be the article is wrong and you can correct me after that in the tabletop exercise no one knew what happened next. They struggled on what their response should be. They would struggle who would notify the public. According to the article number two of the fbi and number two at dhs nobody raised their hand and said we will do it. We want to be the ones in charge of notifying the public. There was real consternation the fact is being promoted as a cutout. People are going to say the government was in fear interfering in our elections and the row question about so Many Americans even trust the federal government and how can we get them to trust us and not the real video. Heres what i want to ask given the fact that the sinner plays out video comes out and im not on the bauslich sees me. Its me an audio recording that stake thing im going to rig the election and steal a bunch of ballots. Its fake and you know its fake. What happens point . Its now week before the election someone notifies me and is someone going to say this is not real. They really didnt say that and what happens because this article will be turn it over to state and local officials. I dont know what his state and local officials supposed to do. Theyll turn so do. That turns a guess of thes office or the fbi or someone told us for that and understand the process at that point. Do we have a process that would kick him in the scenario i just described . Absolutely purred first of all i was at the tabletop exercise so i dont know what happened but i understand it was an accurate representation of the discussion but in terms of what would happen yes there would be a statement. I think the model in 2020 is an appropriate model if there is basically a video or some fake or disinformation thats being promoted. It could be that we find out out about intelligence otherwise identified and it would go through intelligence did not vacation premarket notification framework basically indicates we think this is something that deserves attention. I want to ask you for clarification the video is really fake. You may not be able to attribute it to a foreign adversary but you can say this is not real and we are working to see where it came from. Maybe was designed by a nationstate that at a minimum we have to be up to say this thing is not real and it could be the work of a foreign adversary. Who, would you be the one that would stand up or would it be the dni or the fbi . Would be the person who stands up for the American People and say we are interfering in the election and we just want you to know the video is not real. Who would be in charge of matt . I would be the person would make that determination now give an example frankly an article today about the fact that there is a fake video promoted by a russian affiliated group basically in that video purports to show a ukrainian former employee of the madeup cia supported farm cast with interfering in the upcoming president ial election. In the article its fake and im here to say categorically this claim is patently false that there is no such thing. It is disinformation thats the kind of reports that will continue to take acrosstheboard. Is that established that you could be the one . I guess my point is i dont want there to be gray area. Someone needs to be in charge and ultimately say we will be responsible for notifying the American People. The only hesitation is here for me is based on the fact that there may be certain circumstances in which a state or local official or other basically public Authorities Authority is in a better position to make the Public Statement and for the rest of us to come back behind. Its just a question going through the process determining what exactly is the issue thats being raised and whats the information is being put forward. Who is going to be the best official to immediately come out. Thats through the notification framework. Its a very valid question and with my colleagues in open hearings we go to seniority. Senator white. Thank you mr. Chairman its good to have all of you here. Id like to start by saying i have long believed that you have to follow the money to understand election interference in america. Today i want to start with influence because i think one very effective way for foreign adversaries during an election is a compromise candidate. The way you do that is through money. The value of this influx could not be because theres a price that you would the judge was taken aback and he wrote in the opinion the statement by the former president suggested of the question i would like to ask you director haines lets say donald trump for purposes of question. As a foreign country influence of a candidate in your view encounter to the intelligence confirm as a form of interference . Absolutely and its a tactic for example that the chinese engage in quite regularly. Good then lets go to data purchases, something you and i have talked about because one way for foreign adversary to use influences that the purchase of large amounts of american data. The executive order that President Biden signed february february 28 in the data export bill included invasive military and supplementals. Those were welcomed steps. I have indicated that. Unlike the bipartisan bill like chairman rubio they only apply to a handful of countries which in my view dont get the job done. The question here director haines is good and the country be covered by executive order them couldnt they just get the data from countries that are covered either by taking advantage of privacy laws were setting up Front Companies . Its hard for me to make a broad generalization but theres no question russia and china for example look to obtain critical information including for example polling data that ultimately allows them to determine targets of their influence campaigns including with respect to funding. Would you work with the vice chairman senator rubio and i to clean up the loopholes and pass legislation because it seems to me we can say there is progress and theres no question about that but you are just going to have a lot of the people who are engaging in these corrupt activities make their way to countries in the look of privacy laws and Front Companies and the race begins with more corruption of the election process. Meet the bill for vice chair and i put in to close that loophole. You said you would work with us. Apps away at work with you on any legislation at the offer. Very good. The election worker issue question for you we got a lot of interest in the statement that director wray put out. They want to protect election workers from threats of violence something we hear from county officials. This is an obvious and ongoing threat to democracy. Tell us if you would let you are involved with in this area of general incitement of elections and what are your priorities here . Thank you for that question obviously of you said election workers, election workers are critical to our democratic process and they are our frontline of democracy be in terms of what we are seeing with workers being harassed by robocalls powder letters and we take those issues very seriously. We are closely with the department of justice crimes task force. There had been 17 successful convictions as well as third teen sentencings. We continues to work for state and local authorities on these matters to hold any and all affected individuals will be than an aside responsible for their actions. My time is up and im going to ask you a question for the record about this gentleman Alexander Smirnoff recently charged with lying to the bureau when he passed on misinformation my time is up mr. Chairman. Thank you mr. Chairman and i apologize senator rubio made reference to the letter which he and i sent you director haines regarding the 51 former Intelligence Community people who signed the letter. Does that ring a bell with you . Yes but i dont remember the details. Let me help you. Thank you. We asked six questions and only one of those six questions was answered so im going to ask you here publicly. And by the way let me tell you how this fits in. Im as concerned with this as i am with foreign interference on the election process. This was. These 51 people say this is russian activity when we all know its not. These were 51 people that have significant influence in American Society and they sent this letter saying this was russian influence to let me ask you a question. One of the questions we ask is how many of those 51 people currently hold security clearance and that was as of may 31 of 2023 so let me ask you now how many of those 51 people still hold security clearance . I believe we provided you with an answer on that. If we did not we will get that to you shortly. We have that. How many individuals maintained business arrangements or contract arrangements with any element that they Intelligence Committee between october of 2020. That question was not answered. That question we are still trying to get an answer to. You are still trying to get an answer to it . Yes, sir. Spread this is security clearance of october of 2020. Surely you have listed these people and whether or not they had security clearance. Stay with a list of the people is security clearance and i thats a list without we provide to put him a contract that the more copy data questions. How many have currently maintained business arrangements with contracts or other consulting elements of u. S. Intelligence committee and that was as of may 31, 2023 and move that forward to today. How many of those 51 had the arrangements in october of 2020 and how many have contacted a . Did you get that information for us . I dont have that information for you now but well provided to you. With talk about this particular problem. Senator rubio was asking a question about whos going to stand up and look at the camera and thats going to be you. Thats the responsibility you have and that was in the context of foreign interference. What about this sort of thing where its domestic interference obviously false. Whos got the responsibility to stand up and look in the camera and say folks dont count on this its not true. Would that be your responsibility . Sir i think my responsibility with respect to seeking out in providing a wealth of their experience in such circumstances is not to determine what they should or shouldnt say rather to ensure they are not disclosing classified information. And it would if its false and they are using their role of having knowledge of Security Matters and Intelligence Matters and you know its false. Is that your responsibility or you just going to sam not getting getting involved in it . I understand because first of all they said their experience makes him deeply suspicious of that activity. They went a little farther than that. Then your characterization of it and have become into the information and is it your obligation or not your obligation to stand up look in the camera and say folks when you vote take this into account. I dont think frankly im sure that i Read Everything that was said on these issues so i dont think its appropriate for me to be determining what is truth in what is false in such circumstances. But what if you no . You are the center of intelligence and a merit to ride their emphasis come out and you know its false. What is your obligation or do you have any . Think my obligation is to ensure the best intelligence is being provided to the president to the federal government to congress and where possible to the American People through the classification which we do. But not calling out someone who stands up with misinformation that you know is false . If i were to first of all im not sure in the best arbiter of what is true and false. Within a particular instance you have seen the paper and you know its false. What do you do . It depends on the situation. If we are talking about. Someone stands up and says this and you know as the director of National Intelligence that its false. What do you do . I do not consider that to be part of my responsibility. If theres information thats put forward false information than we have the capacity to authenticated or two id been a fight is false and will do so to our customers and they would be a process and it may be to the public that might be classified information or it might be anything else. I dont know. My sense that would be the responsibility of the fbi. Im not sure we want the director of National Intelligence commenting about a domestic statement made by danger stand your point. Its the purpose of this hearing to find out how our purview the least is focused on foreign influence but i understand. I just didnt. Following up on this point it seems to me the attention eyes of dont want the u. S. Government should be the truth police. If you talk about true and whats not true you could have a thousand people doing that fulltime 24 hours a day but thats not the job of the u. S. Government who strikes me disclosure of sources that if you know through your intelligence sources your attribution a particular piece of information true or not this coming from a source that is the role where its important for you to notify the public so they know the source. Not whether its true or not because thats an impossible determination. Elise people should know the source. When somebody stands up to talk you assess not only what they say but who they are and you were not allowed to wear a bag over your head. Thats where i think you have an Important Role to play in the things that worries me is use the word notification framework. Ive seen that. The bureaucratic nightmare. A notification that comes in february after a november election isnt any good. What i want to urge his disclosure of sources when you are aware of it immediately, immediately. Mark twain said news gets around the world before good news gets time. I hope you can go back and look at this process and not make it bureaucratic if you have evidence this is coming from a foreign source let the public know so they can assess that. Is that something you could take back . Absolutely and that is something we do is try to attribute where information is coming from essentially and i realized the framework might sound bureaucratic but it really is a living thing and for example they have worked through a process where they can expedite their decisionmaking process within 48 hours. Acrosstheboard. Having this information is as a foreign source within u. S. Government doesnt do us any good if the election is five days away. Absolutely. What is going on here is our adversaries are using our strength. The kind of geopolitical jujitsu. The strength of our society is freedom of expression openness and they are using that in order to manipulate our most fundamental sacred right which is the right of so we have got to be alert to it. I disagree with my colleague. I think you are in the disclosure of intelligence sources and i hope that something you can continue. At cisa i worry that you may be overly concerned in being partisan and that will freeze you in terms of taking actions that are necessary. We have a very impressive list of all the things you are doing. Im hearing from some Election Officials that they dont feel that cisa is out there with them and they are getting the support that they need. I hope you were being very forwardleaning about the work and the protection you can provide to state and local Election Officials. Thank you senator. As i mentioned we are providing more services to more jurisdictions than ever before. We have enhanced our cybersecurity advisers physical security visors and Election Security advisers who were former secretaries of state or state election directors who are working handinhand with election directors. Im in touch with chief Election Officials across the country to include secretary of state and others to ensure that they are getting everything that they need to run safe and secure elections. That is not in any partisan way. We know these adversaries are coming at us. Final question we know in 2016 and i believe in 2018 the russians got into Something Like 35 States Election infrastructure. They didnt do anything with it. There was no effort to manipulate it but they were doing it for fun. Im worried that they are still there and the potential for example people walking into a polling place in miami and finding their name is disappeared off the list is 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. I will just comment that since we have designated election infrastructure is critical that theres been enormous progress in particular and raising the bar in cybersecurity so as you know not all of the voting equipment tabulation phot casting is not connected to the internet just vote reporting to the fact that its disconnected and not exposed to the internet thats a layer of security they are multiple layers of Election Officials look at technical layers procedure controls to ensure that the election infrastructure is secure and resilient. The other thing thats important to remember senator is we have so much diversity across our election infrastructure if you have seen one state, to benefit pretty these seen one state election youve seen one state elections of the virtuous their procedures and controls under the chief Election Officials to make that election equipment secure and having worked with folks like secretary of state mcraney in idaho i know that all Election Officials are focused laserlike on this and they dont see Election Security is a partisan political issue. They see it as an issue of ensuring that they can enable everyone of their citizens vote to be counted and cast. Director heads did you hear about the three conspiracy theorist that walked into a bar . It was a coincidence. Thank you for the good news. Director haines you said youd never been better prepared. He said our elections have never been more secure. I think thats good news. All the campaigns i have been involved in my career are observed as a citizen have never been exemplars of just telling. They are political contests for the hearts and minds of the voters and hopefully the ballot cast by that voter. I frankly dont think it makes a whole lot of difference if some messages generated by some computer code or algorithm or Artificial Intelligence or human being that is not telling the truth or some thirdparty like these 51 intelligence officials who basically shared in the lie at your bidding certain information in an election to russian disinformation. 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 involved in depth layers of defense and redundancies to ensure security and resilience. Its because of these measures and incredible efforts of election workers across the country that the American People at 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 that correct . Yes sir. Said any attempt by federal officials here in washington d. C. To centralize or concentrate that election authorities 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. Thats my observation and not necessarily yours. I was very encouraged to see the work you have done with chief Elections Officials in places like texas and elsewhere the training the assessments the resources he provided have been successful and led to boot less let us to believe we have never been more secure. Let me ask human maybe ms. Knapp and i dont know who should take this question what are the Biggest Challenges when it comes to elections or Cyber Attacks basically that it then an attribution . How do we know what the source of some of this Cyber Attacks lets say, how do we know who it is . Thank you for that question but i can certainly start and im sure my colleagues would like to jump in but as you mentioned attribution is the difficult thing but its not something thats impossible and it takes time. For us from an fbi perspective that would involve us tracing the origins and gather all available intelligence and use the Legal Process its an iterative. Its an iterative process. Said thats not something you could do in the backdrop of an election date. Well would depend on how easy it is to do a finishing whatever influences out there driving a conclusion. Director haines does the u. S. Government do anything to impose costs against those who engage in this misconduct . Obviously thats a policy question obviously there had been actions been taken. You may be a policy question that to you would know. Fair enough. Its an example of the kinds of actions that have been taken and actions depending on the particular scenario and we have seen as we have been helping europe look at russian efforts to influence europes in a elections theyve been taking actions in response to some of those influence operations that there arent that tools that can be used. Some guy just have 17 seconds left and let me change the subject a little bit but we talked about virtual threats to elections but he said you are willing to knowledge perceptions of immigration policies have been driving record numbers of Illegal Immigrants across borders. Director haines also talked about the isis affiliated individuals facilitating the passage of migrants to the u. S. Border of the United States. Can you tell us in open session how many Illegal Immigrants have ties to isis operatives and does the ie css individuals with those connections have entered the United States at the southern border as director wray has testified . In the i can answer your specific questions. You cant tell us what he told us which is isis facilitators have managed to deliver people to the southern border and they likely have been released in the United States . There is a Facilitation Network that we have been monitoring obviously that has some link to isis and that is something we can look at. I cant go into it further without being closed session. We are looking at a matter of when and not it will have to live with the consequences of that. Two quick comments. One i do think as policymakers there had been times in the past where we have fought back against some of those tender. I think we have to do more of that and try to urge as policymakers that action. And i want to commend and you made the centralized nature in texas which unanimous in the statehouse and 75 of your state Senate Approved legislation prohibiting deepfakes of political candidates and i think that makes lot of sense. Senator bennett. Thank you mr. Chairman and thanks for holding this hearing. Its a tough issue because we live in a free society. One way or another we are all trying to strengthen democracy and help strengthen the values that we share and we are under assault in a way that we have never been before. Our adversaries and i think we have competing values at stake here for the First Amendment on the one hand protecting our National Security on the other hand. I was reading director haines a piece in wired last week about the russian Disinformation Campaign the doppelganger operation the kremlin backed a person that promoted a fake Washington Post article that said that billionaire soros was hiring people for antisemitism and this site look just like the Washington Post. The people in this country that were having protests in the United States are basically being attacked by this propaganda. By this effort to divide us. And these guys working with the russians fabricated it in fox news as well and i just wonder if you could talk a little bit about the speed and thats not an election issue. Thats a democracy issue. This is a debate thats been going on in the streets of this country in the streets of free countries all over the world that are totalitarian adversaries are using to try to incite division and incite discord to take the temperature up based on information that isnt true. Somehow we have to find a way as a free society to respond to that. Seems to me the first part of that is to help notify people in real time that this kind of thing is happening when this country is subject to this intentional misinformation that we are seeing frankly throughout europe and we have seen it in the most devastating way in myanmar. People were killed as a result of the content that was being purposely disseminated over social media platforms there. I think we would buy knee be naive to think that level of political in the violence couldnt also occur here as well. The first question i ask is what are we going to do about it . I do think one aspect of what you do about it is basically expose with the tactics are and what we are seeing and then address specific issues as they come forward just as you have been saying. We have been looking at increasingly working with partners and allies frankly around the world to do exactly that because its better to do it in numbers and to get the message out in ways that people find it increasingly credible and targeting disinformation. Also part of what you are describing there is going after the sort of the platforms that get used in this context. Russia has been pretty extraordinary in terms of the platform that they have 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 sputnik and then network of quasigovernment that are used. Over the years the apparatus has grown. Its driving the array of influence actors the tactics that they use for covid and deniable operations and they are trying as you indicated to use political discourse to reduce support for for ukraine another think some part of what we are seeing is their capacity to use some of the platforms that are getting harder as we are Getting Better at disclosing how the platforms are being used and how countries are taking action to pull broadcasting licenses and other things along those lines to make it more challenging for the office to look for other opportunities to get around these things but thats among some of the opportunities for battling it. I might just add something to to your question so far as it relates directly to elections. We have a great relationship. Secretary of state griswold and your election director and we are very grateful. If you look at two very powerful examples again at the state level where this may actually happen one focused on being prepared and the other focused on a very effective response. 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 responded to be able to do anything with the local media and the community to help them understand these kinds of threats until they did groundwork to enact a inoculate them from being influenced and amplified by foreign maligned influence actors. The other very good example was the robocalls that happen in New Hampshire. Two days before the primary election. When that happened the attorney general came out with a very clear statement saying that it is likely criminal behavior saying that its being investigated and that it should be ignored as an example of repression of the vote in the secretary of state came out and 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 higher than he expected. Election officials who are the ones running secure elections are out there ensuring that they can prepare and i think we have good examples of how they are able to react to it. Thank you very much and thank you both for your testimony. I know im out of time mr. Chairman ive like to finish with one thought. Those are two great examples in New Hampshire where a level of Election Officials who were sworn an oath to the constitution are fulfilling that oath. Director haines had good examples of what we are doing what will we are trying to do with foreign actors associated with the kremlin. Mr. Chairman we still have a 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 and have not kept on the people that were hired to do the content moderation work that they were going to do and have not been willing to think about slowing down the degree to which information is shared across the planet earth that goes to the network but i just think we have a responsibility of our own here in terms of oversight to make sure. We are going to have that kind of pairing with the social Media Foundation to the ever patient in seven minute time. Thank you. Thank you all for your testimony. We are speaking to senator bennett about russia and the implants as they have targeted the places they are doing it and that starts with china. What is china doing currently to influence United States Public Opinion . We are seeing it in a broad range of things. We are they are growing increasingly confident in their ability to influence elections remained concerned about blowback and should they be discovered through the prc has made improvements to an influence operation tool using Artificial Intelligence and fake data. Their tactics globally include bankrolling candidates they prefer using Deepfake Technology 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 counts on a number of different platforms. We look to disclose that until companies about that when it happens to promote disinformation acrosstheboard and they also target their diaspora. Weve seen them obviously seek to influence elections not only in the United States and the congressional mandating. This is a different level but also elections in taiwan and australia and canada. A pretty significant portion. How do we expose that is how do we put the word out about the challenges we have talked about already and once it starts to get out there on social media and in other places how is that exposed most effectively . I think my colleagues will wish to amplifier certain part of this. We put in our annual threat assessment and in terms of influence operations including these and when we get intelligence that indicates the prc is for example taking on social media count accounts and platforms within pass that information through the fbi and they provide that to the companies to take action. A general statement that they are going to do a different ethnic sample to say heres an example that we know was created or amplified by china russia iran and north korea whatever it may be. In 2016 and 2017 we are able to pull it exact examples and able to list them and post them and say this is russia created. Heres where it started and heres where it came from. How do we do that now as we approach this election foreign actors are trying to influence hit . We will do just that. Essentially the same playbook in that sense that we are identifying specific credible intelligence passing that to the companies and disclosing it publicly. Let me keep going because ill be limited in time and i have seven minutes to run through this but i will still run out of time on that. Since we passed the help america vote act pair have been perpetual funding sent out to multiple states to improve their systems. Its been interesting i pulled new numbers because every states as we can improve our election system. We dont have enough money so we poll the recent spending than what people have and what they have already. Colorado my colleague senator bennett to just left has received 15 million has only 27 of that money. Hawaii received eight and louisiana has received 14. 5 million has there in maryland 17 million 37 minnesota 16000041 in oklahoma has received 11 million we 23 of that. Other other states to spend more but but this money is sitting e for years but but this is not my allocated treatments ago. Quite a bit of this funding was allocated years ago and they have not it so my question is on this how do we encourage states to be able to up their game on a couple of various . One is learned the election of the unofficial results on their own web site and how we protect the systems. Thats an obvious area creating distrust on Election Night if they are interfered with the sick one is oldschool paper ballot backups. If theres a problem with the machine everybody can verify it with a piece of paper. We have states it literally have millions of dollars sitting there saying we dont have enough to be able to do that when most of them do how do we advance that . I cant speak to those statistics but all happy to follow up on that. I will say what we provide is a Management Agency are nocost services and nocost training so many of the states intact thousands of jurisdictions take advantage of the cybersecurity assessment defreeze cyber scanning we provide Endpoint Protection and response we have the malicious domain blocking. All of that is in place across the country so i know they are taking advantage of that. That has significantly raised the bar for cybersecurity perspective. I take your point about Election Night reporting are very good ones. One of the things i think is really important for everyone to remember is those are all unofficial results. They need to be canvassed and certified which takes days to weeks. Right if its announced on Election Night who want in a week later the state announces a different person one that sews incredible distrust where now and no one trusts the Election Results anymore and while the Election Results were unofficial those are interfered with that to rove on our ability. I agree with that sir. As i said my Opening Statement the systems are more secure than ever before an Election Officials include your state election director archer fake and are working incredibly hard to make sure that everyone of the citizens votes are counted as cast and its really important that we focus on them. They are the true election experts and we listen to their voices and what they say. I would hope anybody who is providing unofficial results would make sure that state elections director get the poison that to say its not canvassed and is not certified yet so lets wait until certified. Thank you. Mr. Chairman heck just like to ask a followup question on this. As part of the fbi and u. S. Attorneys office is following up on a criminal offense of voting if you are not legally present country and voting in a federal election, that is a federal crime. I love to no if im able to get this statistic on this how many prosecutions we have across the country for federal election . Is that being followed up on and do we have a good number of the charges being filed and the actual prosecutions for federal election crime. In my state fleets talk about Water District attorneys are doing this state. They have a good history on that. Thank you very much for the question. What i have in front of me right now is how many cases have been charged to the department of Justice Task Force on Election Security. But it dont have the second part but i can give you a General Number right now. Right now the task forces charge 17 cases with the resulting 13 convictions and with respect to your subset of questions im happy to take that back and give you more complete answer. Thank you. I think those numbers are pretty remarkable. Some states have 70 to 80 in quite a giver states have 50 of or less and this was just a couple of weeks ago. Thats a very fair question. Under question about how many federal violations something in that range after the 2000 election that had a relatively small number. That might be in state and federal. Let me ask you something related to this. If they think we are talking about ai being all the buzz at this point but i think the nefarious nature of some of our adversaries using a series of Technology Platforms is the independent entities, companies that we are familiar with and that we have used have reported there are some of these gig employment companies. Freelancer and fiber that reports indicated where foreign governments are hiring unwittingly citizens in those countries, targeted countries and in effect paying them to be influenced operators. And even more specifically cameo im not sure if they are on ab or c list that has gone out and appeared to have unwittingly enlisted celebrities to help fund antiukraine messaging. How are we thinking as we think about malicious use by foreign actors. Couple of years ago we would not have thought that they gig platform would be a tool for that kind of foreign influence. Anybody on the paddle panel want to take that . I will start. First of all europes elite right. One of the key trends id identify with and commercial firms and some of them are waiting and some are unwitting is marketing firms and Public Relation firms Reputation Management firms acrosstheboard and they are increasingly being relied on to launder covertly directed narratives through social media platforms and this complicates obviously attribution and this is something we are trying to get better at in a faster way part of the reason they are doing this is because these firms tend to be more nimble than their own Intelligence Services before taking action they are way more sophisticated in their capacity to promote influence campaigns. This is one of the things we are watching in 2020 to give you a sense of the scale of this these types of firms involved in one manipulation information in the least 48 countries by our count. It is really becoming increasingly widespread and its one of the challenges we are trying to manage. I would only add just last month we worked with the fbi and dni to put out an advisory that specifically highlights these tactics to include using proxy media and how to recognize it and mitigation around how to deal with these types of things that we are doing separate training on it as well. Part of this is the awareness of it at the election official level and what they need to do to mitigate it. Separately the platform is an issue obviously there needs to be addressed directly. Thank you for the opportunity. We are 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 key partners like cisa and putting out the general word is these that allows Company Companies to be more informed so they can mitigate that. One of the things i would suggest and in this committees senator rubiomack and effectively is doing a series of classified briefs by industry sector around the challenges of prc. This is more specific but i would hope the fbi and the doj might update their Foreign Agent entity that makes all of this activity illegal and that guidance ought to be updated. I would strongly encourage some level of convening on these platforms. Where do you draw the line and if we have an open source documentation the fact that these platforms are being used and citizens are being unwittingly used and whether the platform is unwitting or not is maybe another question if they realize they are wittingly helping Foreign Agents interfere that there would be a violation of the law i think that would be a helpful process. My main thought is one of the really great things and 2020 thats different now chairman is we have the which allows for classified briefings. I think that is very much added value. I very much support to seeing whether we can enhance our capacity to get out to everybody since when these issues. One thing i am concerned about because i appreciate all of these comments on the outreach. How do we in an appropriate lead nonpartisan wayford some reports that there are not many but a certain number of counties that are opting out of some of the voluntary tools that cisa ossetian the past like the einstein system which i thought for a long time we had a level of perfection down to certain counties for whatever reason some counties are opting out of it. Is that a oneoff . I would his figure closer to election if the distrust of the federal government become such that people are literally turning away voluntary cyber another educational protections. The good news chairman is thats not accurate. The trend trenta state and local jurisdiction contained to take advantage of the nocost services with respect to the sensors in particular. Theres Albert Einstein and 1083. I think less than a handful less than five have not renewed their contracts and for a variety of reasons include opting to use Different Technology for intrusion detection. This is something we look out very closely and i have no concerns. At the end of the day as you now chairman cisa is a nonpartisan nonpolitical agency and we can be effective unless we can work with Election Officials at the state and local of level and both parties. I have not seen any significant changes in our ability to provide nocost Services Information no cost voluntary training to election jurisdictions across the nation. I will turn to senator rubio for closing comments and ill make one more comment. The whole system was shocked by 2016 and a lot of good work by this committee pointed out the level of russian interference. I remember some of the Tech Companies refusing to believe it. We took action in 2018 and i have repeatedly filed under the Trump Administration we were because there was Effective Communication and 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 dont seem to have their own standards which are not government standards. I worry in terms of some of these ai tools that can operate at the speed n. Scale thats unprecedented in the fact that we kind of have become almost immune to misstatements and mistruths falsehoods. I share some of the concerns raised by a number of members director haines that we do need a preassigned process especially if we are getting into those last week or so before the election on who would reported. This effort today is appropriate to the cia itself but as we get into those final days and weeks having an approach and citing the 2020 example where everyone acrosstheboard came out and called out the iranians for their actions. We need to not be gametime thinking that through her coming to bear. Senator rubio. I havent focused much on that role because to me the technical aspects its not that easy to have protective elections for people who are professional hackers. These people is what they do all day. The importance of the difficulty of that im pointing out is technical and its a red state and a blue state and they they are equally impacted and they are both ground especially when you get down to the congressional and even the local level for this reason i focus on much on election interference im sorry influence in a particular foreign maligning which is a lot trickier. I dont know where this comes from. Its the assessment for foreign threats. You go through this and you see one of the things it points out in part of their effort is some of these operators are largely focused on amplifying. They simply amplify things that people are saying. And you see the rrated depressions of the chinese or amplifying a message and some believe if i i believe in something of sit for long time time and now im a chinese agent or a russian agent you see it for example and iran proposed helping nationalist groups inside the u. S. And iranian officials have abdicated using covid social media to pitt student groups against each other. More likely for use in 2024. Obviously we are now in 2020 pharmacy that. Thats an effort to get americans to fight internally and the other thing in october of 2022 twitter exposed three separate iranianbased influence networks operating a the platform supporting leftleaning politicians including a range of Senate Candidates and according to industry reports pro palestinian sentiment and positive sentiment for the rest of the candidates. The rush and try to denigrate the Democratic Party to undermine confidence in elections most likely knew us to prefer ukraine. The Democratic Party wanted an amplified question about whether usaid and ukraine would continue. Its not that they were democrats or republicans it was part of their aim in the process our willingness to continue to be committed to help ukraine. You move on another one blaming all take culturalism for obsessively driving us into crisis. Few hold that view irrespective of what the russian thing. It just makes it more difficult and then you have cases and this one in particular strikes home because i think i know who they are talking about. The sense to undermine the electoral process of congressional politicians in 2022 that they perceived as. They focus their operations aimed at denigrating candidates in florida. In an attempt to shape the impression of other policies as well. And u. S. Policy with regards to cuba. They told members of who hold critical views of congress. Obviously it was in 22 so where i happened to be on the ballot the point being it was a very specific game. The way the other side holds inr tipping the scale in favor of your preferred candidate. To be bluntly its a video comes up its fake about trumped the d and i says this video is that shrek will be to reverse somebody a video comes out about biden and d and i or whoever is in charge of coming out with that says this video is a fake. I can see where people on the trumped side would say thats because you try to help biden. Its probably a realvideo perthe verse to be true in a rel video. Suggest we charge an coming forward. Thats the obvious question. The voices that are out there narratives that is a lot tougher. The most you can say and look the we know these countries are doing this. Not doing it because her democrats or republicans it serves some. Make america look chaotic. This is what they are doing and let people make judgments on how the narratives but its tough, i dont have the answer how we fix it or with the process should look like in terms of notifying people. I just note this will be far more complex. I predict it wont just be about election. Election become a real time. It already is, a policy debate that were having here. Should be banned tiktok . You name it, on a weekly basis whatever the issue is here i can see this is part of an influence even in our daily political debates. We really need to get a handle on it. Its a tough one but we need to because its going get far worse, far more sophisticated with far more players. Pose a grave danger at some point of turning into something weve not fully anticipated. I hope we can continue to work on finding a way forward. Im sure the beep talking about at this dais after we are both gone. This will still be a factor. I agree senator rubio. I think these are challenges. The only thing i hope we would both agree on is americas got plenty of difference. But if that amplification can literally be traced back to the cuban spice services and disappearing many floridians are saying something theyre not really saying, i think the floridians ought to know that is not the case. We can trace it back to the cuban services or we can trace it back to these individuals are orposting things are being paidy russia. If that proof is there some of these things would violate the upgrading of the bill there are restrictions against Foreign Agents taken these kind of actions. So it is a challenge for technology will make it much much harder. This will not be the last time that we deal with this. Please, for all the folks supporting you and more important back at respective agencies, we are going to count on you. We always say politicians i was super tickly when they are up this is the most important election adverb. Even though neither one of us are up this time this is most important election ever we are adjourned. [background noises] [background noises] [background noises] expands washington journal. A live form involving you to discuss lease issues in government, politics and public policy. From washington d. C. 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