Foreign Cyberattacks and Election Security

Free and fair elections are essential to a functioning democracy. However, ensuring the integrity of U.S. elections is a growing national security challenge. As cyber capabilities become more advanced, foreign actors are increasingly targeting elections around the world through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns in order to influence results, aggravate social and political tensions, and undermine confidence in democratic processes. Election interference not only threatens U.S. sovereignty but can also sow instability that hinders the government’s ability to operate effectively. The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the 2018 midterm elections, and the 2020 U.S. presidential election by accessing state election systems and voter data, hacking and leaking Democratic National Committee emails, and spreading disinformation on social media. In addition to Russia’s interference, China orchestrated election influence activities in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections. It does not appear that hackers directly manipulated any voter data, and it is difficult to know how successful the disinformation campaign was. But foreign interference struck a blow at confidence in U.S. elections. Analysts fear that if policymakers cannot ensure public trust in future elections, even the threat of interference could erode democratic systems and aggravate domestic divisions, weakening national security. 

Intelligence agencies and security experts warn that foreign interference may affect the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Possible actors include Russia, China, and Iran.  Public reports so far indicate social media accounts from China posting on partisan issues ahead of the 2024 election; Meta has since disabled these accounts. The attacks reported so far may or may not be state-sponsored, and there may be more that are not publicly known. Election interference is expected on multiple fronts. Most directly, foreign actors could launch cyberattacks on U.S. election infrastructure by hacking voting systems to manipulate votes. They could also attack voter registration systems in order to remove certain voters from the rolls, target them for disinformation, or impede their access to the polls. Cyberattacks could target specific campaigns or parties as well in search of damaging information to leak. Furthermore, disinformation campaigns on social media threaten to influence the outcome of an election and exacerbate partisan divisions. Even a small-scale or failed attack on an election would create mistrust in the democratic process. With elections fast approaching, policymakers face a renewed challenge to safeguard U.S. elections against foreign threats and to determine how to respond to actors seeking to interfere in the United States’ democracy.