U.S. MUST UP ITS GAME IN ‘INFORMATION WARS’
Russia’s attempt to influence elections points up need to defend country’s institutions, information systems and intelligence against cyber attacks
IN recent days, significant new evidence has emerged of a Russian campaign to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, as well as several U.S. House races. Although there is no evidence of computer hacking of voting systems, agencies of the U.S. intelligence community have produced significant findings regarding cyber attacks to purloin sensitive information from the Democratic National Committee and the email accounts of other senior party officials, concretely tying them to Russia.
The stolen information was then strategically disseminated to the WikiLeaks web archive and members of the U.S. media in an information operation allegedly supervised directly by Vladimir Putin.
While the outcome of the election is not in doubt, that our nation’s democratic process could be significantly influenced by the combination of cyber attack and carefully orchestrated propaganda should trouble us deeply. The passage of emails and other documents stolen by electronic means by Russia’s intelligence services, the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, and the country’s Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, likely influenced the outcome of the election. This is an issue of concern for all Americans, not just Democrats, for as Marco Rubio opined in October: “Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow, it could be us.”
Yes, the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign can be fairly criticized for failing to follow the rule of not putting anything in an email that you don’t want to see in the news. However, long before the DNC hack, WikiLeaks had grown to be seen as a Russian outlet or proxy. The New York Times pondered, “How Russia often benefits when Julian Assange reveals the West’s secrets.”
Beyond WikiLeaks, if more argument is needed on Russian skill in manipulating opinion via information taken through cyber attack, ask yourself, “Have I ever heard anything bad about the Russians from the Snowden Archive?”
What has happened is serious. The last time the DNC was penetrated, people in this country who worked for the president went to jail. My colleague Thomas Rid elegantly stated the upshot. “[D]igitally exfiltrating and then publishing possibly manipulated documents disguised as freewheeling hacktivism is crossing a big red line and setting
a dangerous precedent: an authoritarian country [Russia] directly yet covertly trying to sabotage an American election.”
Action — by Congress in investigating the matter, by the foreign policy and national security establishment in preventing similar events in the future, and by the Fourth Estate in trading scrutiny for sensationalism in reporting based on stolen information — is a necessity. The U.S. has almost entirely ceded the field of international influence via information, something almost unthinkable for the nation that created the internet. The trend must be reversed immediately.
Thinking to that end is in place, and predated the November election that brought this long-simmering problem into full view. U.S. Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., introduced legislation this year intended to bolster the federal government’s cybersecurity workforce and strengthen our nation’s cyber defense. The proposal, which passed the Senate last week as part of the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act Conference Report, pointedly states that “the challenge of countering disinformation extends beyond effective strategic communications and public diplomacy, requiring a whole-of-government approach leveraging all elements of national power[.]”
Beyond the persistent struggle to protect our information systems, the country needs to develop information capabilities to counter propaganda and information warfare campaigns. Wemust seek truth rather than opting for conspiracy theories.
Manipulation of the American political system by foreign powers and their agents is as troubling now as it was in the time of the Founders. As a new nation, foreign interference, no matter how subtle, was front-of-mind in our politics. In his farewell address, George Washington gave warning that, “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake.”
As a nation we should be outraged to action, not content to bicker on Facebook. Wake up, America.
Bronk, Ph.D., teaches computer and information systems at the University of Houston’s College of Technology. He previously was a diplomat with the U.S. State Department and published the book, “Cyber Threat: The Rise of Information Geopolitics in U.S. National Security.”