Russian groups and other foreign adversaries have unleashed an extensive disinformation campaign to undermine confidence in the U.S. election, but there is no evidence that their efforts will affect the outcome, federal officials said on Monday.
The officials remain concerned, however, that foreign adversaries will see the weeks after the election until it is certified by Congress on Jan. 6 as an opportunity to stoke political discord in the United States.
Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said her organization would hold regular updates throughout Tuesday to inform the public of threats to the election.
“We are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation being aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries at a greater scale than ever before,” she said.
The agency has activated its election operations center to monitor potential threats to the voting infrastructure, Ms. Easterly said.
In recent weeks, officials from the agency have monitored attacks on ballot boxes and election-related websites as well as disinformation campaigns by Russia.
But so far, Ms. Easterly said, “we see no evidence of activity that has the potential to materially impact the outcome of the presidential election.”
At the start of the election cycle, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the hyperlocal nature of the American voting system had dissuaded foreign adversaries from trying to tamper with election infrastructure to change results. But various adversaries, including Russia and Iran, had concluded that they could potentially influence the vote by spreading falsehoods about candidates and undercutting faith in the election.
On Monday, videos falsely claiming to be from CBS News and CNN circulated with the aim of stoking fears that election results were being manipulated. Both networks quickly called out those efforts as fake.
Officials from the cybersecurity agency said that they were only broadly aware of the fabricated videos but that they had been warning about those kinds of fake videos for weeks.
“We know we can expect more of it going into tomorrow, throughout tomorrow and in the days after the election,” Ms. Easterly said.
U.S. officials said they did not immediately know where the videos pretending to be from CBS and CNN originated. But intelligence agencies have called out other videos in recent days as the work of Russians.
Cait Conley, a top adviser to Ms. Easterly, said no matter who won on Tuesday, or how quickly election results were clear, foreign powers would most likely try to sow doubts after the vote.
“These efforts to discredit the process and undermine confidence and to stoke partisan discord are likely to continue not just on Election Day and in the immediate days after as the certification process continues, but really up until Jan. 6,” she said.
Intelligence officials have said that Russia favors former President Donald J. Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. His skepticism about offering military support to Ukraine, which Russia invaded nearly three years ago, and his vow to force peace talks have raised the stakes in the vote for Russia, officials say.
Mr. Trump’s supporters have discussed challenging the certification process in various states, and election and intelligence officials say that Russia and other adversaries could work to amplify those efforts.
Ms. Conley said adversaries saw the certification process as an opportunity to undermine confidence and stoke discord in America.
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