US officials are warning ahead of the November midterm elections that Russia is working to amplify doubts about the integrity of US elections, while China is interested in undermining US politicians it sees as threats to Beijing’s interests.
An unclassified US intelligence advisory says China is probably seeking to influence select races to “hinder candidates perceived to be particularly adversarial to Beijing.”
In the advisory, sent to state and local officials in last month, intelligence officials said they believe Beijing sees a lower risk in meddling in the midterms versus a presidential election.
Photo: AFP
While officials said they have not identified any credible threats to election infrastructure in the US, the latest intelligence warning comes amid the peak of a midterm campaign in which a rising number of candidates and voters openly express a lack of confidence in the nation’s democratic processes.
Foreign countries have long sought to sway public opinion in the US, perhaps most notably in a covert Russian campaign that used social media to sow discord on hot-button social issues ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
The US government has been on high alert since, warning about efforts by Russia, China and Iran to meddle in US politics and shape how voters think.
The US faces foreign influence campaigns, while still dealing with growing threats to election workers domestically and the systematic spread of falsehoods and disinformation about voter fraud. Former US president Donald Trump and many of his supporters — including candidates running to oversee elections in several states — continue to lie about the 2020 presidential election even as no evidence has emerged of significant voter fraud.
“The current environment is pretty complex, arguably much more complex than it was in 2020,” US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly told reporters on Monday.
Russia is amplifying divisive topics already circulating on the Internet — including doubts about the integrity of US elections — but not creating its own content, said a senior FBI official who briefed reporters on Monday on the condition of anonymity under terms set by the bureau.
Overall, China’s efforts are focused more on shaping policy perspectives, including at the state and local level, rather than on electoral outcomes, the official said.
Still, China appears to have focused its attention on a “subset of candidates” in the US it sees as opposed to its policy interests, the official said.
In one high-profile case, the US Department of Justice in March charged Chinese operatives in a plot to undermine the candidacy of a Chinese dissident and student leader of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 who was running for a congressional seat in New York.
The briefing on Monday came weeks after the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) distributed an advisory that described China’s approach during this midterms as different from the 2020 election, when the intelligence community assessed that China considered, but did not deploy, efforts to influence the presidential election.
There were publicly revealed examples during the last presidential election of influence campaigns originating in China. Facebook in September 2020 took down pages that posted what it said was a “small amount of content” on the election; that effort focused primarily on the South China Sea.
The DHS advisory did not list specific races or states where it thinks China-linked actors might operate, but cited the March indictment alleging efforts to undermine the New York congressional candidate.
It also suggested that China’s interest in politics extends beyond the US, saying that Australian intelligence since 2017 has scrutinized Chinese government attempts to support legislators or candidates, including those who have amplified Beijing’s stances on select issues.
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