With primaries underway and less than four months to go until this year’s midterm elections, early signs of attack have already arrived—just as the US intelligence community warned.
US officials are on alert for multifaceted election interference threats from adversaries like Iran, China and Russia – including hacking, disinformation and influence operations – as the midterm elections approach, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday.
“We have to be concerned about hybrid threats,” Wray said at a cybersecurity conference at Fordham University in New York. That includes a situation in which foreign operatives might use an “unremarkable cyber incident” to sow “panic or lack of confidence in our election infrastructure,” Wray said.
Asked whether the war in Ukraine may distract Russia from interfering in the US midterm elections, Wray said he was “quite confident the Russians can walk and chew gum” and that US officials were preparing accordingly.
US officials have long been preparing for foreign operatives to amply misinformation spread about the US voting process by supporters of President Donald Trump who falsely believe the 2020 election was stolen. Added to those concerns are the threats of physical violence that many US election officials have faced from voters who believe the false fraud claims.
From The Shadows Emerges Knowledge