Prediction That Russia Will Try to Do So Again in the 2018 Election.
Russians Tried, just Were Unable to Compromise Midterm Elections, U.Due south. Says
WASHINGTON — Russian operations meant to polarize American voters continued during the midterm elections, just did not compromise the voting systems used, according to a study by the intelligence community.
The assessment past Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, was the issue of a request by the White Firm before the Nov vote that he examine election meddling by Russia and other powers. The agency did non release that study, but Mr. Coats released a argument on the document.
"Russian federation, and other foreign countries, including China and Iran, conducted influence activities and messaging campaigns targeted at the United States to promote their strategic interests," Mr. Coats said in the statement.
The statement independent little particular, but American officials said the intelligence report found that Russia continued to apply social media, faux personas and Moscow-controlled media to influence positions on opposite ideological sides with an aim of further polarizing the United states.
The report will be sent to the Justice Department and the Section of Homeland Security. Under the executive social club issued in September, automatic sanctions could be imposed when the government review is complete on anyone found to have tried to manipulate the vote.
Mr. Coats said in his argument that the written report did not include an cess of the effectiveness of the Russian data campaign. The public written report besides did not include an assessment on whether Russian attempts at ballot meddling were tilted toward a item party or candidate. Current and old American officials have said that Russian propaganda efforts in the midterm elections were less than expected.
Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the study shows that the Russians did not stop attempts at election meddling later on 2016.
"Now that the Russian playbook is out in the open up," Mr. Warner said, "nosotros're going to encounter more and more adversaries trying to take advantage of the openness of our lodge to sow sectionalization and effort to dispense Americans."
Some officials attributed the diminished Russian activity at least in role to efforts by the regime and engineering science companies.
In the months before the ballot, the armed services's Cyber Command began a entrada to deter the Russians backside the 2016 influence campaign. They sent letters to Russian operatives saying they had been identified and warned them to finish their efforts.
Cyber Command, the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. also tried to identify faux accounts and Russia-backed trolls who were spreading Moscow'due south propaganda, passing that information along to technology companies so the accounts could be removed.
The New York Times first reported those Cyber Command operations in October. This month, The Daily Beast published an interview with Yevgeny Zubarev, the director of Russia's Federal News Agency, in which he said he had been targeted by Cyber Control. "The United states of america Cyber Command writes to me to say that what I am doing is wrong, that their job is to fight trolls," Mr. Zubarev told The Daily Beast
The results of those efforts, and much broader public agreement of Russian techniques, helped contribute to a less-effective campaign, according to Defense Department and other American officials.
Government officials said they had hoped American resilience and resistance to the Russian techniques might be growing. A pair of reports commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee and released this week provided new information most how Russians sought to inflame American opinion and exacerbate existing divisions in the country.
One written report released Monday outlined how the Russian campaign aimed to bulldoze down African-American participation in the 2016 ballot.
Participation in the midterms was up with both parties, and it was not articulate if the Russians tried to drive downwards participation with particular groups of people or if they abandoned that effort during this vote.
Laura Rosenberger, the manager of the Brotherhood for Securing Democracy, which monitors election interference, said as long as politicians continue to try to polarize American voters, the public will be vulnerable to Russian interference efforts.
"Our polarization is a national security vulnerability," she said. "The deeper wedges in American social club, the more opportunity at that place is for Russia to stoke divisions."
American officials said the efforts by Cyber Command and the National Security Agency were standing even later the 2018 ballot. Some outside experts take predicted an intensified data entrada past Russia around Mr. Trump's election campaign. Just a persistent campaign by the authorities intelligence agencies volition be able to blunt that, officials said.
Ms. Rosenberger said one effective Russian technique, the hacking and release of documents, was not seen in the 2018 vote. But American electoral politics remain vulnerable to such efforts.
Before the election, a joint statement by the director of national intelligence, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security said land and local governments accept reported attempts to access their networks. Simply in the statement on Friday, Mr. Coats said that no efforts had been successful.
"At this time, the I.C. does not have intelligence reporting that indicates whatsoever compromise of our nation'due south election infrastructure that would have prevented voting, changed vote counts, or disrupted the power to tally votes," Mr. Coats said, using initials for the intelligence customs.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/us/politics/russia-midterm-election-influence-coates.html
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