The 2024 Elections and Foreign Influence

Cait Conley, senior advisor to the director at the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA), discusses protecting democratic processes from foreign cyber and disinformation attacks. A question-and-answer session follows her opening remarks.

TRANSCRIPT

FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations State and Local Officials Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach here at CFR.

CFR is an independent and nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher focused on U.S. foreign policy. CFR is also the publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Through our State and Local Officials Initiative, CFR serves as a resource on international issues affecting the priorities and agendas of state and local governments by providing analysis on a wide range of policy topics. Again, today’s discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be posted on our website after the fact at CFR.org. We’re delighted to have over 400 participants from forty-eight states and U.S. territories with us today. So thank you for being with us.

We are pleased to have Cait Conley here to discuss foreign influence and the 2024 elections. I will give you just a few highlights from her distinguished bio. Cait Conley is the senior advisor to the director of the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Prior to this role, she served as a director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council. She's also the former executive director for the bipartisan defending Digital Democracy Project initiative at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

So, Cait, thank you very much for being with us today. I thought we could start by you talking a little bit about your efforts at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the resources available to election officials at the subnational level, especially as we're in the countdown now to Election Day on November 5—I think seventeen days—and what you see taking place in the days after the election. So over to you.

CONLEY: Irina, thanks so much for you and the team putting today together, and for this awesome program. And thank you all, who have dialed in, for your time today. This is an incredibly—not just timely, but incredibly important topic for all of us, right? As Americans. What we’re talking about and what we often say here is, you know, we are proud of our role as CISA—so the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Very long name. So CISA plays a unique role in this space in that, following Russian efforts in 2016 to attempt to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, it was a bit of a wake-up call for all Americans, right, in the cybersecurity vulnerabilities and the influence operation vulnerabilities of our process. And just the fact that American democracy was once again a target by our foreign adversaries in their efforts to further their own foreign policy objectives in undermining American standing in the world.

And so with that, after the 2016 election infrastructure—the systems that actually underpin the democratic process—were designated as critical infrastructure. And my agency was designated as the federal lead for partnering with state and local officials, like you all, to help ensure the security and resilience of that system. And it is with full acknowledgment, recognition, and tremendous respect that elections are administered in the states, right? Like the Constitution makes this very clear, who has that ball in terms of, you know, the principal actor in this space? But what's not fair is for us at the federal level to sit back and ask you all to not only administer elections but to on your own defend it against the range of cyber criminals we see out there, terrorist groups, to include state actors, right? And so I think that's where, looking at what we see in the 2024 election cycle, we can say that we are absolutely facing the most complex threat landscape yet for an election.

And what I mean by that is the range of physical, cyber, and operational risks that we have to defend this process against is greater than what we’ve seen in prior cycles. But there is a hugely good news story here. And this is where, as I go through the arc of this journey together at the end what I hope everyone feels is not just tremendous pride in this process, but confidence in this process, that the outcome, regardless of who wins, will reflect the will of the American people. And so with that, I will say since the designation of critical infrastructure in 2017, we have seen waves of investment, thanks to many of you on this call, right? Waves of investment in the cybersecurity and physical security of our election offices and our election infrastructure. And it’s for those reasons, and additional federal government support and investment, that, again, we just have tremendous confidence in the integrity and security of this system, and ensuring that, at the end of the day, every vote is going to be counted as cast.

Now, we don't take that for granted. What we've seen this cycle in terms of the threat landscape? On the cyber side, we've seen ransomware target state and local government offices, as well as other critical infrastructure sectors, to include election infrastructure being impacted by some of this too. Not necessarily because they're targeting elections or trying to interfere in elections, but because election offices are offices too—(laughs)—and these are just targets of opportunity for these malicious actors who are just looking to find a victim to extort. We've also seen things like distributed denial of service attacks against websites. Those are things we've seen in foreign elections against election offices. And what's important to note here is while that can be disruptive, it can make it harder for a voter to know where their polling location is or it may delay the ability of the unofficial election night results to come out, a DDoS attack still has no actual bearing on the security or integrity of the actual vote cast and your counting process.

So we still see things like ransomware and DDoS that are valid cyber threats, but not the security or integrity of the process. More about the disruptive effect they could have. Then we get to the physical side. And I think this has probably been one of the most challenging parts, especially for this year. And this is where we've seen, largely based on unfounded claims that the 2020 election did not reflect the will of the people, election officials have become targets of threats and harassment. And so we've seen a surge in requirements to help increase the overall physical security of these locations. And so it's no longer just about securing the systems, right, and ensuring proper chain of custody there, but now we're talking about how do you keep people safe?

And so with that, you know, we’ve seen things like swatting of election officials, so where people are calling in false claims of a violent incident in order to deliberately have these emergency response teams deployed, trying to prompt some type of interaction with law enforcement and the victim, putting both at risk. We’ve also seen things like fentanyl-laced letters being sent to election offices, or even just suspicious white powders deliberately contained in letters to election offices to intimidate workers and to disrupt the process. And so we see these types of continued things, again, looking to intimidate, to threaten, in some cases to harm people and also disrupt the democratic process itself.

And then we get into the operational risks. And so we just saw over the past couple weeks mother nature and natural disasters are still very real considerations. And I have to tell you, it is inspiring to see the resilience that states impacted by both hurricanes Helene and Milton have demonstrated, and being able to unify, unite, implement backup plans, and contingency operations to conduct elections, to still hold democracy, right, despite the devastation they may be faced.

There was an incredibly powerful press conference yesterday by the Buncombe County, North Carolina elections director, the North Carolina executive director of their state board of elections, talking about, despite hurricane Helene and the devastation it brought to that county, weeks later they’re up and running, administering early voting so that North Carolina citizens can still have their voices heard. And if that doesn’t inspire you in terms of, like, the resilience of American society and the importance of democracy, right, like, it just really is an incredible tale.

So on top of all of that, we then get to the threat posed by our foreign adversaries and the foreign influence operations that they are conducting, which share a very common objective. They want to undermine the American public's confidence in our democracy and sow partisan discord. Whether it's Russia, Iran, or China, they share the same objective, regardless of the tactics they use in these influence operations. And so we have seen in this cycle a greater degree, significantly so, of these foreign influence operations than in prior cycles. And in some ways, the most sophisticated yet because of the tools that are being leveraged.

And so I know I was just talking for a lot and laying that macro, so I’ll pause. And happy to deep dive any of that. But I will say that we are—we are seeing a spectrum of tactics used, especially by Russia and Iran, to, again, target different elements of the population, as well as all American voters with these narratives that are deliberately intended to stoke partisan discord and to undermine people’s confidence in our democratic process.

FASKIANOS: Thank you, Cait, very much for that. So we’re going to go to all of you now for questions and to share, you know, what’s working in your communities. As a reminder, we are on the record.

(Gives queuing instructions.)

So let’s begin. We have the first question from John Jasinski.

Q: Can you hear me now?

FASKIANOS: We can.

Q: OK, great. My question is really simple: Who offers the greatest threat, the foreign actors or domestic actors?

CONLEY: John, that is a phenomenal question, right? And in some ways, one begets the other. So I think we see our foreign adversaries who are throwing what they’ve got into this fight, right, I think with respect to Russia, the scope and scale of the things they’re bringing to bear are greater than other adversaries. But I think what we are seeing happen is they are latching on to narratives that are even originating domestically, right? When folks are saying inaccurate information about things like our voting process, that’s fueling these foreign adversary narratives. They’re adding gasoline to the fire. And I think it’s really important to remember, as Americans, that we have to recognize while elections may be political, election security is not. Election security is national security. And we don’t want to do the work of our adversaries for them.

And it's these types of narratives that are undermining confidence in our democratic process that disregard and completely undermine the actual facts about the extensive layers of safeguards that are in place to ensure the security, and integrity of our system because their objectives are to make sure that Americans lose confidence in our democracy and undermine democracy itself. So in many ways, John, it's kind of this mutually fueling cycle of when folks provide that type of information we see foreign adversaries looking to amplify those things.

And in many cases, what we’ve seen more this cycle too is our foreign adversaries trying to obfuscate their role in it, to hide their hand by doing things like hiring public relations firms and other commercial firms to push out narratives. They’ll even hire witting and unwitting Americans to further these narratives too. So, again, I just think it’s really important, as Americans, that we don’t want to do the bidding of Russia or Iran. And to be aware that these are the things they’re pushing.

Irina, I think you might be muted still.

FASKIANOS: I am. Thank you.

I'm going to take the next question from Justin Bielinski, who is a supervisor in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin: Can you provide any examples of these foreign influence campaigns breaking through into mainstream elections reporting this cycle?

CONLEY: Thanks, Justin. Yeah, so I think there are a few examples. Actually, this afternoon I am hoping you will see a press release and accompanying few-page document from CISA and the FBI where we provide some actual examples of these types of things we've seen manifest this cycle. Some of the things we've seen them do involve creating these websites that mimic authentic media outlets, and then replicate them. So, for example, we’ve seen this done with the Washington Post, with Fox News, with Reuters, where they’ll create a fake website that manipulates the real website address slightly, and then they’ll actually put in fake articles with real authors that are filled with their information narratives, their information operation narratives. Again, whether it’s things like, on the Russia side, trying to dissuade Americans from wanting to support Ukraine, or stoking, like, policy issues that that, again, fuel partisan discord.

We see them trying to get these messages out by then taking those fake website links and actually sending them to people as shortened URLs, where you couldn’t tell the difference. You just get this message in some type of social media account or via email. You click it, you go to a web page that you think is the real whatever, right? The real Washington Post, the real Fox News. And it turns out, it’s not. And so we’ve seen tactics like that, where they’ve taken on a range of issues. And I think what’s also really important to remember is nothing is off the table for these folks. Once they see a narrative that they think can get traction here domestically, they are incredibly flexible to latch onto that narrative and to use that to their advantage.

I’ll give an example of something we saw earlier this year which shows the power of the information domain potentially leading to effects in the physical domain. In July, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence put out a statement that highlighted how the intelligence community had observed Iran actually using influence operations to foment and stoke protests here in the United States around the Israel-Gaza conflict. And so that’s where some of the tactics and angles we’ve seen haven’t just been about, like, election security itself. It’s also been about policy issues relevant to the election cycle. But the PSA we put out today is going to have actual examples of some of the websites that they’ve done, as well as lists of websites that they’ve created as one of these example tactics.

FASKIANOS: That’s great. And we can circulate it as well to this group. Is it going to be—and how—is it going to the general public as well? Or who are you disseminating it to, Cait?

CONLEY: Yeah, so we’ll be pushing now to the media outlets as well. And then we’ve got a separate media call scheduled for Monday with some of our federal partners and colleagues to talk more about this and other things. But we’ve actually done a four-part public service announcement series this cycle between CISA and the FBI. This is the fourth and final one. The first three were about examples of narratives that we have seen Iran or someone else use in prior cycles that they may use again this year.

So, for example, you know, I spoke earlier about distributed denial of service. Our first PSA was about DDoS attacks, where we were saying, look, they’re probably going to happen on Election Day. It’s probably going to happen. But that’s OK. It’ll be disruptive and inconvenient, but in no way will it actually impact vote casting or counting. But your election—or, your foreign adversaries are probably going to try to make you believe otherwise. And so to be aware that that’s a narrative they could spin.

It’s the same thing with ransomware. That was our second public service announcement. A ransomware attack may hit a county on Election Day. And it's going to be real inconvenient, because they might not have email and it might be harder to actually get on the phone—or, get on your computer to get your phone tree to call all your poll workers, or—there's going to be a lot of inconveniences that come from that. But the actual integrity of the voter registration database, the actual integrity of the voting systems, and the vote tabulation systems are not going to be impacted to that, because those are isolated out.

And so it's just important to understand that when these things happen, we might see adversaries trying to spin it and to not fall for it. But it could be coming. We've already seen them do this quite a bit with voter registration data. Cyber criminals do this too. As many of you know, voter registration data is—most of it's publicly available, or commercially available, right? And so what they'll often do too is they'll take publicly available voter registration information and use it as evidence that they hacked something. And it's false. It's just stuff that they were able to access. They're trying to make it look like something it is not.

And so those are things that we just need to be aware of. So those are the first three PSAs. And then this will be the fourth, where we kind of stitch it all together. But would definitely recommend checking out our Protect 2024 website, I'll drop the link in because this is where we have all this stuff live. I think it’s just really good general information not just for frontline defenders like you all, like the state and local officials who are actually out there on the front lines trying to defend systems and be the first responders, but it does have some really good security information there. But it’s also just general awareness of the threats we’re facing.

FASKIANOS: Fantastic. All right.

Let’s go next to Brian Peale (sic; Peete), director of the Riley County Police Department in Kansas: What causes and concerns are you seeing with AI in this landscape from negative and false information dissemination to actual election security in county votes and protecting cyber infrastructure?

CONLEY: Thanks, Brian.

Super important question. So I think my biggest concern is kind of what I talked about a little bit, which is cyber incidents can happen that will have no bearing on the actual security or integrity of the process.

But there’s going to be those who try to tell the American public otherwise, and I think where that leads to some concern, right, just like what I gave you as an example of what the Iranians tried to do this summer with the Israel-Gaza conflict protest here in the U.S.

You could easily see an adversary trying to—especially in the days after the election to use anything possible as a narrative to spread, to try to undermine confidence in the electoral outcome or the process itself regardless of who wins, and I think that's really important, right?

This isn’t actually about who wins. Their objective is to undermine confidence regardless and I think that’s where—as many of you know, like, elections are run by state and locals. This is absolutely a process where there’s tremendous rigor in terms of validating and certifying the results.

And so you’re not going to get the official results on Election Day. It’s going to take time for that to occur and that window of time is where I think we’re really going to see our adversaries double down on fomenting these narratives to fuel distrust and, unfortunately, what we’ve seen is how those feelings can manifest into physical threats, right.

Again, going back to what we saw after 2020 and honestly, sadly, even something we just saw yesterday in Oregon where there were, you know, allegations of the former president not being put on the ballot, which were inaccurate, that led to threats of violence against election officials in Oregon.

And so, again, it just—it shows the power of the information domain, like, cutting over into real threats. And that’s what I fear because people aren’t going to know if the persona that’s telling them that lie is actually in their same state, or the neighboring state, or in Saint Petersburg, Russia, right? They're just not going to know.

FASKIANOS: So you’ve talked about—you just touched upon it. Can you go into a little bit more detail about what state and local officials should be doing in the day after November 5 in light of the security threats and the misinformation that will continue to be disseminated?

CONLEY: Yeah. So, I mean, at the end of the day, defending democracy is a team sport and I think—kind of going back to something I said earlier, I think what a lot of us have learned is, you know, election security is not political. It’s national security. It’s not a partisan issue. It’s an American issue because it’s not about the outcome; it’s about protecting the process itself.

And so I think, you know, as we look at just even what we expect our foreign adversaries to be doing the days after Election Day very well could be the highest threat period we see as it takes time for the final and official counts to occur, as it takes time for the state's chief election official to certify the results.

And so I think working with your state and local election officials now to think about security not just for Election Day but now thinking about beyond Election Day could be a really helpful conversation, and just asking them what help they may need and recognizing that we’ve asked a lot of these folks, right.

Like, we have put a lot on election administrators. We’ve asked them to not just know how to administer the democratic process but to now become physical security experts and cybersecurity experts and foreign influence operations experts, right?

Like, there’s a lot that they’re dealing with and I think they would appreciate help, and I think we all need to try to figure out how can we help them take this on, this no-fail mission that is really all of ours.

And so I would ask, just thinking through how could you help your election official and maybe think through with them some of the security concerns for potentially post-Election Day, I will tell you on the national level, you know, there are some specific dates in the electoral process that are written to the Constitution in terms of when they must occur.

And so one, for example, that has come to mind in a lot of discussions we’ve had with election officials is December 17 because that’s the day where in every state across the country the electors—so that state’s electoral college representatives—must come together, whether it’s in their state capital or whatever location, to cast their official votes and that is what is transmitted to Congress.

And so that day and potentially trying to disrupt that process, maybe not even through violent means but through nonviolent means, could be something that folks may just want to talk through and maybe plan for.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. There’s a written question. Please—again, if you want to ask a question please raise your hand or you can put it in the Zoom chat.

From Karen Lotts who’s with the Chippewa County Board of Supervisors in Wisconsin: What action in the U.S. would prompt not being able to have an election?

CONLEY: I mean, I would say that what we’ve seen for 250-plus years or nearly 250 years, I should say, is we’ve had a lot of disruptions to the elections process, right? We’ve had, again, just two hurricanes came through and impacted states and caused some significant devastation. But we’ve seen a storm hit and a tree fall on a power line and knock out power to polling locations.

We just went through the pandemic in 2020. We’ve seen a lot of things disrupt actual election administration but here is where the testament of American resilience is the inspiring story and the good guy wins in the end.

Like, American democracy has overcome all so far and we are absolutely confident it will continue to this year. But it’s because everyone who plays a part in that. So I would take this back to—I don’t think anything’s going to stop American democracy. We’ve already seen tremendous efforts by state and local officials in North Carolina and Florida and Georgia overcome some pretty extreme devastation over the past several years—all of these threats I just talked about.

The other thing is none of them are new. All the cyber threats I’ve been talking about—ransomware, distributed denial of service, like trying to hack into accounts—that’s not new. Some of the physical threats over the past few years are newer but now we know that this is part of this and we’ve been planning for it, and that’s why when I say our election infrastructure because of state and local officials like you on the front lines and all of the work that’s been put in, because of the federal government making this a top national security priority, because of the work by election vendors to move the needle and do even better to ensure the security of their systems, our election infrastructure is legitimately more secure this cycle than any prior cycle and I think that’s an important thing in general for security, right?

We will continue to move the needle and to do better because we’re also facing the evolving threat environment. But we’ve also seen election officials invest so much into resiliency and that’s why I think we also see an election community that is more prepared than ever and that’s why I say I don’t think anything’s going to stop democracy. I think American democracy will continue to thrive. But it takes all of us.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to ask a written question from Ann Bollin, who is a Michigan representative: Isn’t the elimination of some of the checks and balances in election law—for example, no ID, no postmark, extending deadlines—a threat? I’m not sure if this is in your lane but I’m asking the question.

CONLEY: Yeah. No. So not really CISA’s lane but just because state and local election officials are responsible for the Constitution, for determining how to administer in their states.

But what I will say is in this job I’ve met with, you know, the election director or the chief election official from every state and I have to tell you the level of commitment of these public servant professionals to ensuring that every eligible voter has the ability to cast a ballot and to ensure that that ballot is counted as cast is unwavering, right, and like those are what these folks are—the public servants are committed to. They’re not doing it for glory. They’re not doing it for financial incentives. They’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do.

And so with that, there are states who have different approaches but across all states ensuring every eligible voter has the ability to vote is a priority and that is the standard. And so I will say also because I think there was a few questions about the voter list maintenance, voter list maintenance is a responsibility of all election officials and so there’s different ways that can get conducted.

But we have seen persistent prioritization of that and, again, there’s lots of ways to get that done but I think, again, that is a universal responsibility and obligation that we’ve seen election officials committed to.

FASKIANOS: Great.

I’m going to go to a raised hand from Stan Hilkey who I believe is the executive director of Colorado’s public safety, but you can correct me.

Q: No, that’s correct. Colorado’s public safety. Thank you so much, and appreciate this information.

Like other states we are wrapping layer upon layer of security around the threat environment, et cetera, and one of the things, though, that I worry that we in the public safety realm don’t do well is combat the narrative. We attack the problem. We make sure things are working. We make sure people that are making threats we can address them. But sometimes I feel like we don’t do as good a job as we should in combating the narrative and trying to get ahead of bad information. What do you recommend as best practices for that?

CONLEY: Stan, you hit the nail on the head, right? Like, you—when people ask me a lot when I talk about foreign influence operations and disinformation, like, what are the most effective tactics for mitigating it, and a lot of times they’re, like, well, what about this synthetic media analysis tool or that?

I'm, like, stop. The most effective thing to combat this is just straight-up communication, like, speaking like a real human to the American people about what the facts are.

Because here’s the thing. The facts are on our side. We have this incredible story to tell. State and locals have an incredible story to tell, and you’re not strangers to these folks, right? Like, they’re members of their community. They’re people that you see in the grocery stores and you go to PTA meetings or, like, soccer games with or football games. And so your voice carries tremendous, tremendous power.

And so one of the things we’ve really spent this year trying to reemphasize with all of our state and local stakeholders is communication. There’s no fancy solution that’s going to win the day.

Like, the thing that’s going to win the day is you. It’s you getting out there and you telling your voters or your citizens what the facts are the best you know it and what that means and putting those threats in context for them.

So what we try to do, Stan, to help tackle that, especially recognizing that there’s a lot of government offices out there that may not have a dedicated communications team, right? You’re talking about a few folks doing it all. You are the Swiss army knife of public officials.

So we tried to develop two things this year to be helpful in that way. One was a guide to develop an overall communications plan. So how do you build a communications plan around election security—or, in this case, we said infrastructure security—that will be able to help you build trust early, right?

Like, don’t just wait for the incident to happen to communicate with the people for the first time. Trust takes time to build. So communicate early with folks.

And then the second document we provided was a playbook for how to develop an incident response communications plan for or around election infrastructure security.

So I’ll drop both in the chat in case they’re helpful, and while they’re for election officials, like, their value really goes beyond that. These are just communications best practices that we do believe enhance public safety and security by getting critical information out.

FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you.

I’m going to go to the next raised hand from Councilmember Jeff Preptit of the Nashville Davidson Metropolitan Government in Tennessee.

Q: Yes. Hey, good morning and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for allowing me to ask a question.

So there have been a number of questions within the chat around voter registration and the perceived threat of ineligible voters registering to vote, and one of the things that we have seen here in Tennessee are consistent acts by local election administrators that are essentially violative of the National Voter Registration Act.

And so my question is and sort of what we’re seeing is but for local law firms and other nonprofit agencies that are within the election protection space—but for their actions we wouldn’t have had remedial measures to ensure that every individual who was eligible to register to vote was registered to vote.

So my question is are there any programs or is there anything that is being done in conjunction with the DOJ to ensure that local election administrators are adhering to the requirements under the NVRA?

CONLEY: Thanks, Jeff.

And so I do have to preface this with, like, that—this is not really the CISA wheelhouse in terms of election infrastructure security and resilience, things like that but acknowledging the topic you bring up and concerns you bring up. I don’t want to speak for DOJ and so I would recommend, like, they’re the best place to reach out.

But I do know they are committed to enforcing all federal laws to include the provisions of the NVRA and I think that they’ve taken actions in recent weeks to demonstrate that they’re going to hold folks accountable and pursue those means if it does look like they’re violating that. And so, again, I think that there is certainly a federal government commitment to upholding federal law and making sure that that matters.

And I will just say that—you know, I think you were talking about at the beginning the noncitizen voting claims and I do want to just make a very clear point for this group—again, not CISA’s wheelhouse but just an important point of clarification.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is a federal crime and we do not see evidence that this is a real issue at scale and had a material impact on the outcome of any election. So but, again, I would defer you to state and locals who are responsible for the voter roll maintenance.

But I think it’s just an important reminder because some folks don’t even realize that noncitizen voting in a federal election is a federal crime in every state and so—

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

So I’m going to take the next question from Massachusetts Representative Tram Nguyen.

Q: Thank you so much for this webinar. I’m Tram Nguyen, state representative from Massachusetts.

I want to go back to your earlier discussion of communication. I think it’s very important for us to talk about these issues, right? That’s why we’re here. We’re interested in this. But I don’t think the average person out there understands the threat.

So how do you—do you have any advice on how to strike that balance of talking about the importance of understanding these threats without sounding like an alarmist to the average folks out there who may or may not be paying attention to these issues on a day to day and most of us don’t have staff to deal with it?

CONLEY: No, I think that’s a great question. I think that that’s kind of the balance that we’ve been trying to strike, too, as a federal government.

What I will say is for this election cycle what you’ve seen coming out of the federal government has been an unprecedented commitment to be as transparent as possible about the threat environment and that started, really, in early July where we published the first election threat environment update.

And exactly to your point, the intentions of these updates it wasn’t just for state and local officials or election officials. This was for the American people and to really just continuously give the American people this snapshot of this is what our adversaries are doing. Like, we need you to know this.

And so I do think that the updates that we’ve put out, both the first one in July, then there was a hundred-day update, then there was a sixty-day update, then there was a thirty-day update, and then on Monday we will be releasing the fifteen-day update, and so I don’t know if the team could—I can drop the links in, too, for those but they’re ODNI press releases that have these and they’re one-pagers that are just meant to be something that folks can read and you don’t have to be steeped in foreign policy or national security or domestic security to be able to understand what they’re trying to do.

And I will say that that was also the intention of the public service campaigns that CISA and the FBI have done this year. It’s still not perfect. I can’t help it. Like, at the end of the day, it’s still a little bit of Fed speak, right, despite our best efforts to not.

But I think this last one we’re doing is the first time we’re using actual examples of some of these influence operations and I have to tell you what I think is one of the most powerful ones is we have an image of the fake Washington Post website right next to the fake Fox News website and the point of this is they’re not going after some Americans. They’re going after all Americans in unique ways.

FASKIANOS: Great. And yes, we will be circulating after this all the links that you’ve—and the things you’ve mentioned, Cait. So we will circulate it to everybody on the call, and even those who got—didn’t make it onto the call. So we want you to have that information.

I’m going to go back to John Jaszewski from Mason City, Iowa.

Q: Thank you, Irina.

I have just a simple question: Is there something that the average voter can do—some easy way to figure out what is a fake news website, and what is a real news website? Is there some sort of test that they can do that's easy to do and simple to figure out that this is actually a bogus news story I'm reading or is not?

CONLEY: John, another great question.

So I would say the first thing is don’t click on things that seem suspicious to you, right? Like, if you get a link in a text message that just doesn’t seem like it’s really who they purport to be or it’s, like, the fake kind of short URL, often those things are intended to take you to a fake site and you won’t really realize it unless you check the site once you get there.

But that is one of the things. So what you’ll see when we publish all the websites, too, is none of them are the actual real website. You know, instead of, like, foxnews.com it’s, like, foxnews.tm. So there are little things that you can look for to just kind of make sure it’s the actual authentic thing.

But I will tell you, it is getting harder and harder to do that with just kind of like the naked eye because they’re using more sophisticated tools, right, like generative AI to make images more compelling and writing articles that sound like real articles that a real American wrote, you know, not like a 23-year-old Russian army specialist.

And so I think what we’ve been telling folks is when it comes to elections this year you’re going to be getting information from everywhere. There’s going to be a ton of noise. What you need to do is realize that your state and local election official is that signal through the noise.

If you have a question about election administration in your jurisdiction or your state go to your state or local election official. Go to their webpage, many of which are on the .gov. So as CISA we manage that top-level domain. So if it's, like, OrangeCountyNewYork.gov—I made that up. That's where I'm from.

But, like, that .gov CISA manages, and so that’s, again, one way to make sure that your state or local government is actually—like, visitors on that webpage know you’re real and you’re actually a government entity and not someone, you know, pretending to be.

So there’s steps like that that we can take and that’s the same thing with getting state and local governments on .gov emails too, right? So just people have more confidence that they know you are the authentic sender and not someone impersonating you.

FASKIANOS: OK. And you wrote an article in Foreign Affairs in January about the disruptive potential generative AI in elections. We can share that as well.

I don’t know if there’s anything more from that piece that you’ve co-authored, I think, with Jen Easterly and Scott Schwab about how it will play out in this election.

CONLEY: I do appreciate that. I feel like my generative AI and election journey this year has started and is coming to an end with CFR in terms of kind of the cycle. So that was our first publication on this issue and I think we got it right in terms of where we said we don’t think generative AI is going to fundamentally introduce new risks. But it’s going to make some of these tactics they’d already been using even worse, right—like, even more compelling, and that’s really what we’re seeing.

We’re seeing things like them, again, creating fake websites—where before they could do that and they did do that but now they can do it faster and it’s more compelling. I think the other part of this that we’re seeing manifest and at the state and local level something where, again, I think you’re going to be the tip of the spear on are things like robocalls using voices that are impersonating someone or robotexts which don’t use gen AI but, again, just things that—to be prepared for that you may see this cycle.

So I think we’re going to see generative AI in future years be used more and more but I think this year it’s really just not introducing anything fundamentally new but it’s just making the existing tactics even more effective.

But there is a good news story here, too. We’ve also been using generative AI to make our cybersecurity defenses even stronger. So it’s a technology where we will take as much as we can to be even stronger with it, too.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

Next question from Brian Peele (sic; Peete): Are you seeing foreign attacks on state and local levels as well? I mean, how much are you monitoring the subnational, and what are your efforts on that front?

CONLEY: Yeah. So what we have seen is we have seen some down-ballot targeting at the congressional level by, like, Russia, by China, around policy issues. So not one political party or the other but certain representatives who may be very pro-Taiwan or maybe very pro-Ukraine.

And so where, again, the foreign objectives of the adversary may conflict with some of the policy preferences of a representative we have seen some of that. I can’t get into specifics beyond that but I will say that is something we’ve also seen this cycle.

But what I’d say we’ve also seen is on the foreign influence operations side also the development of fake media outlets that purport to be local media, and you’ll see a couple examples in what we put out this afternoon but purporting to be something like the Savannah Times or the Westland Sun, trying to make themselves look more authentic to those local target audiences by looking like they’re from those areas is another thing we’ve seen with, again, just more advanced targeting at the state and local level.

FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you.

OK. So I’m just looking for—the last—another question I wanted to ask you is: Looking back at 2020, what are some of the lessons you learned from 2020 and 2016 that you are carrying out—you know, that you’re looking at from 2024?

CONLEY: Yeah. So I think, you know, we’ve made, as I said at the beginning, a lot of progress working with state and local officials across the country, you know, from coast to coast to continue to move the needle on election security, on critical infrastructure security, building on all of these years of progress.

And so I think entering the ’24 cycle we’re seeing a lot of the same threat vectors we saw in 2020, plus. And so we have to keep moving that needle, right? Like, security is the race without a finish line because you are always facing an evolving threat environment. But I think a lot of it is what we kind of talked about already where we continue to see those routine cyber threats that were a thing in 2022—DDoS, ransomware, hacks, and leaks.

On the physical side, that’s probably the newest bin and something that’s unique to just the past few years—again, largely fueled by unfounded claims around 2020. And so when you get into 2024 and the influence operations domain and what we’re seeing especially from the foreign adversaries, I think it is more than what we’ve seen in prior cycles. It’s the tactics we’ve seen in prior cycles plus, and I think there’s still more that we’re expecting to see, if we’re being honest.

You know, I think in 2020 Iran didn't really start their attacks against election infrastructure and election security until really the post-election period or in the lead-up. So I think we're kind of on that cusp when we're expecting some additional incoming and campaigns.

So, if you remember, in 2020 Iran took voter registration information to get contact info and then sent emails claiming to be from the Proud Boys to try to intimidate certain voters to not turn out. They were behind that. Like, those kinds of tactics we haven’t seen yet but are highly possible and I think that that’s just something to be careful of.

The other thing we saw them do in 2020 was the Enemies of the People website where, again, after Election Day capitalizing on claims of election fraud and things like that they created a website called Enemies of the People where they put on blast election officials around the country—put their names, their faces, their home addresses. So it’s those kinds of very deliberate attacks against public servants that I think we’re also very cautious of, too.

FASKIANOS: And to Carolyn Broullon, yes, we are going to make this available as a link or links so you can share it with your counsel and clerk.

So I’m going to ask—there’s a written question from West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner, and I’m going to just make it a little shorter: Concerns or concerns regarding the handling of the Hunter Biden laptop situation by CIA, FBI, and social media platforms, and feelings that this represents a case of cyber disinformation. How are you or how is CISA addressing these concerns and trying to prevent them in the future?

CONLEY: Yeah. So, Secretary Warner, good to see you and, you know, you are a partner that we’ve worked with for many years so glad to see you on this call.

So what I would say, though, is my understanding of the Hunter Biden laptop was an issue during the Trump administration on how that administration chose to handle an issue. I’m not an expert in it, but what I would say is focusing on the 2024 cycle and my agency’s commitment to that which, again, like CISA wasn’t involved in however that administration handled that issue.

This cycle I will tell you we are laser-focused on helping ensure the security integrity of the American democratic process from our foreign adversaries and so that's where we've really focused on working hand in hand with our intelligence community federal partners on things like you see from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence where we are making so much public. We're not holding things back.

We’re making so much public, and I think it is really a testament to the professionalism of our intelligence community how much work has gone in to take this very sensitive stuff that we’ve collected through these clandestine and exquisite means, in many cases, and make them available to the American people so we know what’s going on so you all know what’s going on.

FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you.

So we are almost at the end of our time. John has his hand back up but I’m not sure if you just didn’t lower your hand or if you have one last follow-on comment or question.

Q: I do have one more question—

FASKIANOS: Great.

Q: —and it’s pretty simple.

Is there—you know, the local folks, poll workers and such that are being threatened either physically or psychologically, is there anything they can do to protect themselves?

CONLEY: John, great question again.

So what I would say is it’s typically the election officials that we’ve seen being targeted and so CISA did develop a personal security considerations guide—I will drop this in this chat, too—that basically it’s for all critical infrastructure owners and operators and not just election officials but all. But it talks through some just personal security considerations that folks can think through and take on to help ensure their own safety and security.

We also made a training video for that that we’re in the final stages of producing that we’ll be posting on our website so folks can just access, and that is, hopefully, going to be another tool that whether an election official or poll worker or anyone you can just see and if there’s ways you can enhance your own personal security and safety that’ll be available.

But the other things I would recommend are we published this summer a checklist for polling places—a physical security checklist for polling places and a physical security checklist for election offices and they’re intended to be self-guides for how do you think through security at your location in just some basic ways, and have some no- to low-cost solutions baked in to consider.

FASKIANOS: Fantastic. I think we—oh, there’s also a comment from Patrick Finlon. I don’t have your affiliation. But a suggestion for physical security concerns is to contact your local law enforcement and district’s states attorney’s office. I think that also is good advice.

So, Cait Conley, thank you so much for this discussion. You’ve given us so many resources. We will circulate them. I think we’ve learned from this call that you should go to CISA and there seem to be a lot of resources there that will help prepare you or guide you and protect election workers and whatnot and resources there.

So we will circulate all of the great things that Cait referred to to all of you. So we really do appreciate it. We will also share out this webinar recording and the transcript.

We also have a website, CFR.org/Election2024, that has a lot of nonpartisan information and analysis to help Americans better understand the critical foreign policy issues at stake in the upcoming U.S. election, and next week CFR will host the last two of its four U.S. foreign policy public forums with Grand Valley State University on Monday and Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster on Tuesday. And if you are interested in coming it’s free and open to all. You can email [email protected] or visit the link posted in chat to register.

As always, we encourage you to visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for the latest developments and analysis on international trends, and you can share suggestions for future webinars by emailing [email protected].

Again, Cait Conley, thank you very much for all the work you’re doing, for taking time out of your busy day to be with us, and to all of you for what you’re doing in your communities to protect the elections and safeguard democracy.

So thank you, all. Have a great day.

CONLEY: Thank you.