Beijing trumps Russia in counterintel threat to US

Election security concerns

WASHINGTON, Oct 10, (Agencies): China is waging an unprecedented campaign to influence American public opinion as November congressional elections approach and presents the greatest long-term counterintelligence threat to the United States, US security officials said on Wednesday.

Senators on the Homeland Security Committee questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and FBI Director Christopher Wray about President Donald Trump’s assertion that China is interfering in US elections and asked if Beijing poses a larger threat to the country than Moscow.

Nielsen told the panel that there were two types of threats to American election security from other nation: hacking or disruption of election infrastructure, which includes voter registration lists or voting machines, and influence campaigns.

“China absolutely is on an unprecedented –a or exerting unprecedented effort to influence American opinion,” Nielsen said. “We have not seen to date any Chinese attempts to compromise election infrastructure.”

Wray went farther when asked whether China posed a larger threat than Russia, whose activities during the 2016 presidential election are the subject of a wide-ranging federal investigation that includes whether Moscow cooperated with the Trump campaign to sway the vote.

“China in many ways represents the broadest, most complicated, most long-term counterintelligence threat we face,” Wray said. “Russia is in many ways fighting to stay relevant after the fall of the Soviet Union. They’re fighting today’s fight. China’s is fighting tomorrow’s fight.”

Meanwhile, with the midterm elections less than a month away, a strong majority of Americans are concerned the nation’s voting systems might be vulnerable to hackers, according to a poll released Wednesday.

That is roughly unchanged from concerns about election security held by Americans just before the 2016 presidential election, but with a twist. Two years ago, it was Republicans who were more concerned about the integrity of the election. This year, it’s Democrats.

The survey from The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that Democrats have grown increasingly concerned about election security while Republicans have grown more confident.

By 58 percent to 39 percent, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they are very concerned about hackers affecting US election systems. That represents a flip from the results of a similar survey taken in 2016.

Wray

The Pentagon has been slow to protect major weapon systems from cyber attacks and routinely found critical vulnerabilities that hackers could potentially exploit in those systems, a federal government report said on Tuesday.

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO), a watchdog unit of Congress, said in a 50page report that the Pentagon found “mission-critical cyber vulnerabilities in systems” under development.

“Using relatively simple tools and techniques, testers were able to take control of systems and largely operate undetected, due in part to basic issues such as poor password management and unencrypted communications,” the report said.

Some program officials told GAO that the weapon systems were secure and discounted some test results as “unrealistic.”