A pair of senators are concerned that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard may have instructed spy agencies to stop disclosing intelligence on foreign adversaries’ attempts to undermine the integrity of U.S. elections and sway election outcomes through influence operations.
Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Alex Padilla of California, the top Democrats on the high chamber’s intelligence and rules committees, asked Gabbard in a Monday letter to schedule a briefing with senators by Oct. 10 to provide an assessment of planned steps the intelligence community is taking to protect the security of upcoming elections in November, as well as next year’s midterms.
They also asked Gabbard to clarify statements she’s made since taking office that appear to call into question the security of voting machines in the U.S. Those statements are “harmful and unsubstantiated,” the lawmakers wrote. Independent groups test voting platforms for vulnerabilities ahead of major elections, and past reviews show that claims about their poor technical controls stem largely from false narratives spread by foreign adversaries.
Major races this November include the New York City mayoral election, which has drawn national attention, as well as mayoral contests in Atlanta and Boston.
President Donald Trump and his GOP allies have long been suspicious of the U.S. intelligence community, particularly in light of its assessment that Russia aimed to sway the 2016 presidential election toward Trump. Multiple reviews, including a comprehensive, bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win. Under Gabbard, the White House has sought to diminish such findings.
The administration has dismantled and shrunk offices that track influence operations, saying that their efforts to prevent the spread of false information about contentious topics, such the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic, constituted censorship.
The election-security work of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has also been reduced. Its former director publicly declared that the 2020 election was secure, undermining false claims from Trump that the election was rigged against him. He was then fired, and recently became a target of this new administration.
“We are concerned that you may have directed the Intelligence Community (IC) to cease its intelligence reporting on this vital topic,” Padilla and Warner wrote. “Since taking office, the administration paused CISA’s election security work, fired election security staff, and staff are reportedly afraid to work with state and local election officials and vendors for fear of retribution.”
In a statement to Nextgov/FCW, ODNI Press Secretary Olivia Coleman called the letter “factually wrong and an obvious effort to spread manufactured panic.”
“As we’ve said publicly on numerous occasions and as Congress has been told directly, all core functions and expertise to ensure the safety, security, and freedom of the American people, including operations to counter foreign and cyber election threats, have not and will not be affected by our ODNI 2.0 efforts,” Coleman said. “In fact, thanks to the dogged transparency and accountability efforts of DNI Gabbard, the IC has never been more prepared to address these threats.”
Using secret technical capabilities and resources, spy agencies can gather data on plans to influence Americans via social media or other subversive methods. Under former President Joe Biden, ODNI tracked and disseminated findings on influence operations launched by Russia, China, and other nations in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
Influence campaigns have improved greatly since 2016, largely through innovations in artificial intelligence tools. The Chinese government has enlisted a range of domestic AI firms to develop and run sophisticated propaganda campaigns that look far more lifelike than past public manipulation efforts, according to a cache of documents tied to one such company recently reviewed by Vanderbilt University researchers. The firm, GoLaxy, has built profiles on at least 117 sitting U.S. lawmakers and over 2,000 other American political and thought leaders.
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