Politics and Government

Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, leads the conversation on public opinion on Israel and Palestine.   FASKIANOS: Welcome to the final session of the Fall 2023 CFR Academic Webinar series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Shibley Telhami with us to discuss public opinion on Israel and Palestine. Dr. Telhami is the Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development and distinguished scholar-teacher at the University of Maryland, and director of the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll. He is also a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is an expert on U.S. policy in the Middle East and on Arab politics, and regularly conducts public opinion polls in the Arab world, Israel, and the United States. He has advised every U.S. administration, from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama. And Dr. Telhami is the author and editor of numerous books. His most recent is a coedited book with contributions volume entitled The One State Reality: What is Israel/Palestine?, published by Cornell University Press in March 2023. So, Dr. Telhami, thank you very much for being with us today. I thought you could start us off by talking about how the Israel-Hamas war has affected American public attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue more broadly. TELHAMI: Well, first of all, thank you, Irina, for hosting me. And thank you all for attending. Let me just do maybe a little bit of a background about shifts in public opinion even before the war, and then talk about what happened after the Hamas attack October 7. I think it’s important to put this in historical perspective, because I had been doing polling on this issue for decades, literally, with some tracking questions about whether the public wants the U.S. to lean toward Israel, toward the Palestinians, or toward neither side. So historically, it used to be the case when we first started doing polling on this issue that the majority of the public wanted the U.S. to be neutral, to take neither side. That, by the way, has not changed. But what used to be the case is that a significant minority wanted to take Israel’s side, and very few wanted to take the Palestinians’ side. And that used to be the case across the partisan divide, Democrats and Republicans held it across the board, and independents. Over the past fifteen years, there has been a shift. It is still the case that the majority of Americans want to take neither side. And even during the war, and even after the first week of the war after the Hamas attack, still a majority of Americans want the U.S. to take neither side. But what happened among those who want to take a side, has been a shift. More and more on the Republican side wanted to take Israel’s side, to being close to almost half of the Republican constituency. And among Democrats, what happened is that more and more started being either evenhanded among Israelis and Palestinians or, increasingly in recent years, a slight majority, particularly among young Democrats, wanting to lean toward the Palestinians. In fact, right before the before the Hamas attack, there were many polls that showed—including Gallup polls in the past year—that showed that there was more sympathy among Democrats to the Palestinians than for the Israelis. So there has been a shift that has taken place over time. That shift is really a function of four things that might be useful to think about. One is demographic, in the sense that the Democrats became less and less white and more diverse. And we know that typically African Americans, Hispanic Americans, young Americans, women, Asian Americans tended to be somewhat more sympathetic with the Palestinians. So we’ve had that demographic shift take place. We have also had been the media sources. So we know that more and more young democrats, particularly, have shifted to social media. So the sources of information coming to young Democrats is different from the general public, the establishment media, the establishment TV, and newspapers. That source has really impacted the way people form opinions. The third reason is that the democratic constituencies have become more and more focused on social justice when they view Israel-Palestine. And we’ve seen them look at Israel-Palestine less through the prism of strategic interests of the U.S. or, unlike many of the Republicans who are Evangelical who look at it through a biblical lens, they look at it through the view of social justice, like Black Lives Matter. And we’ve seen sympathy increase for the Palestinians through that prism across the board. I would also add the fact that in the past decade and a half, Israel has had a right-wing government, mostly headed by Netanyahu. And that has seemed to be aligned with the Republicans in American politics, which alienated Democrats further, especially young Democrats. So we’ve seen this shift take place all before—well before the October 7 attack. We’ve also seen that more people, more Democrats, had a somewhat negative—young Democrats, people under thirty-five, have a negative opinion of Israel. It used to be that Israel—and many Americans still have a positive view of Israel across the board. But young Democrats increasingly had a negative view of Israel. And, remarkably, I did a poll a few months ago asking—and this obviously is before the attack in October. We did this in March of last year—in March of this year, I mean. Last March. We did a poll asking whether Americans thought Israel is a vibrant democracy, a flawed democracy, a state with restricted minority rights, or state was segregation similar to Apartheid. And the remarkable thing is that slightly over half of Americans said they don’t know whether Israel is a democracy or not. This kind of by itself is a big shocker, because you think the talking points about what Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and shared values. And a slight majority of Americans say they don’t know whether it—of those who said they know, the plurality of Democrats, 44 percent, said it is a state with segregation similar to Apartheid. More people said that among Democrats than said it is a democracy or flawed democracy. So there is a perception, obviously, already before this war that had shifted in terms of views of Israel and Israel-Palestine. When the war happened, when Hamas had its horrific attack—and we know how horrific it was. There was a lot of publicity around the Israeli victims, the depth of that attack, the shock, and also a lot of official support from the U.S. —our White House, Congress, establishment organizations, community organizations, and local leaders all expressed a lot of support. So we did a poll within two weeks of that to see whether there has been a shift. And there was, in fact, a shift. There was a spike in sympathy for Israel, of increasing the number of people who want the U.S. to lean toward Israel two weeks after the war, across the board. Meaning among Republicans, among Democrats, among independents. The only group that was unaffected, even after the first couple of weeks, were young Democrats who are under thirty-five, who didn’t change their view from prior to the war. We then did another poll. And remember, while I say there’s a spike in the support for Israel, it’s still the case that a majority—the majority of Democrats and independents—wanted the U.S. to take neither side. So that hadn’t shifted. They still, even after—immediately after the attack a majority wanted the U.S. to be neutral, not to take Israel side. But among the minority who wanted to take sides, more people wanted to take Israel’s side than the Palestinians’ side. Two weeks after that, after the kind of the media shifted to the Israeli attack in Gaza and with all of the destruction and death that we’ve seen, we did another poll. And we found that most of the gains that Israel had made in the poll that we conducted two weeks before had disappeared. But the most important impact was really among young Democrats, who more and more of them wanted to lean toward the Palestinians, not to lean toward Israel. And we also found that a plurality of those who gave opinions thought that—among Democrats and independents—thought that Biden was too pro-Israel. Very few thought he was too pro-Palestinian. And more importantly, when you ask them whether the posture on Israel-Palestine made them less likely to vote for Biden, we found that young Democrats, like 21 percent, said that they’re now less likely to vote for Biden compared to only about 9 percent who said they’re more likely to do it. Now since then, there have been some striking polls that indicated further deterioration, particularly in terms of criticism of Israel, people who said Israel has gone overboard. Particularly the NBC poll that was done November 10 to November 14. And a substantial percentage of people who have disapproved of the way Biden handled, meaning his overwhelming support for Israel—including, remarkably, 70 percent of voters ages eighteen to thirty-four, some constituents that he needs. And a majority of Democrats— that included a majority of Democrats overall. And also, we found a majority of Democrats who wanted to withhold military aid from Israel.  So we have a really significant shift that has taken place in the past few weeks in a way that has undermined the posture of the Biden administration. And there is every indication that the posture that Biden has taken, of wholehearted support for the Israeli bombings in Gaza particularly over the first few weeks, has hurt him politically. It certainly has hurt him in the Middle East and elsewhere internationally. But we know that some of the decline in his popularity and approval ratings in the U.S. has been a direct function of his posture on the war. So I’ll stop here and just open it up for discussion. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you so much, Shibley. We’re going to go to all of you for your questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) There is a written question. Monica Byrne asking about if these polls are available. Yes, they are. And we will send after this event. We’ll send the link to the video and transcript as well as links to some of the polls that Dr. Telhami referenced, so that people can access them. OK, let’s see. We’re going to go now to raised hand from Jonathan Van Hecke, who’s at the Indiana University Bloomington. Q: Hi. This is actually—it’s David Bosco with the Hamilton Lugar School of Global International Studies at Indiana University, with a group of students. But we had a question about perception of what happened on October 7. There’s been a kind of video circulating on the internet of some pro-Palestinian activists kind of essentially saying that what happened on October 7, or what seems to have happened, didn’t happen or questioning, you know, the accounts. And I wonder if that’s kind of—you mentioned social media. And I wonder if that’s something that you’re able to ferret out from the polling, is kind of what trust there is in information about what is actually happening on the ground. TELHAMI: Yeah, thanks for the question. But also, I have a soft spot for both Hamilton and Lugar. So—(laughter)—so I have to say that I worked for Lee Hamilton. This is—he was my teacher on American politics, in a way, when he was the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I advised him. And guess what, Irina? That was a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellowship, when I advised Lee Hamilton and became close to him for years. And Lugar, Senator Lugar, who was one of the finest bipartisan, in a way, voices who—the kind of American politics we don’t really see now, unfortunately. But it was much more common. I had the pleasure of traveling with him and spending a week with him in Finland, at a conference and got to know him very well. And so I have a very soft spot for those two men, and therefore for the school that’s named after them. So thank you for the question. Of course, there’s a lot of stuff going on. And, frankly, part of—even within Israel itself, there are conspiracy theories among even people who are supportive of the government, who are blaming the security forces, that this is a way of kind of attacking the prime minister, and the prime minister is using that against the security services, the establishment. So there are conspiracy theories even in Israel itself. That’s not unusual, in a way, when we have an event of this sort, because it was honestly shocking. The shock wasn’t that it took place. I mean, Hamas was capable of doing it. That was not the thing. The main thing is that it was shocking, given the perception of Israeli security and given their perception of the limitation of Hamas, that they were able to do something on this scale, was shocking to everyone. And so I think it was bound to create all kinds of conspiracy theories. I don’t think that most people that I’m polling, and I’m talking to, and following on social media, and people who are communicating with me, who are very, very opposed particularly to the Biden administration policy, are mostly doing it because they’re questioning the fact that it happened. They might be questioning a little bit about the reporting about casualties on the Palestinian side. There was disbelief about some of the reporting of civilian casualties. People wanted to dismiss that. You see that on both sides. And when the Israelis say, well, it’s Hamas numbers. I don’t trust them, even the president said that initially.  So you find that kind of narrative more or less. But I believe that the bulk of the opposition that you see, particularly among young people, is mostly based on a preexisting sympathy with the Palestinians. Meaning that they have become sort of—they look at it through the narrative of occupation. They don’t condone what Hamas did, but they don’t think that history started on October 7. And that is the more common source of opposition people, who have preexisting views that blamed Israel for the occupation or called Israel an apartheid state. And they don’t condone what Hamas did, but they don’t think that justifies what transpired afterwards. FASKIANOS: And, just to follow up that, a written question from Carolyn Ford, who’s an undergraduate at Georgia State University: Is the shift in attitude among young Democrats related to specific events prior to October 7? TELHAMI: That’s really a good question. I think that the multiple Gaza wars, because I’ve traced those. For example, the 2014 Gaza war, when Obama was president, that generated quite a bit of attention among young Democrats. I do think that during that period, the Obama administration, we started finding a lot of shift. Part of that shift was based on confrontation between President Obama, which was admired by a lot of, obviously, Democrats, but especially young Democrats. His confrontation with Benjamin Netanyahu, right-wing prime minister who was kind of—had a very confrontational relationship with President Obama. And then he came to the U.S. behind the president’s back, in order—working with Republican opponents of the president trying to undermine the president’s most important deal in his second administration, the Iran nuclear deal. It created a lot of tension and resentment, certainly, in that relationship. But we also saw it in my polling, for example, after—during the Trump years. Because obviously Trump is not exactly liked by young Democrats, or any Democrats for that matter. But he was seen also to be particularly anti-Palestinian, particularly pro-Israel. That generated—that polarization also played into the hands of young Democrats. The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement put more focus on—at the same time, on the suffering of the Palestinians. We saw after Biden was elected in the 2021 Hamas war that was much more limited—I did a lot of polling. I wrote actually two pieces, I reviewed them recently, in which I showed that Democratic public opinion became critical of Biden. In fact, Biden’s drop in approval rating started right there with that war, and most of it came from Democrats. And at a time when Democrats, a good percentage of them, was disapproving of his policy of support for Israel during that war as well. So it’s more than one thing. And I do think that the fact that many young Democrats go to social media for news, rather than, let’s say, watching CNN or MSNBC or any of the major news media or Fox, or read the New York Times or the Washington Post, they will principally go to the bubbles in the media that they have. FASKIANOS: And there’s a follow up question from Thomas Ferguson, who’s a professor emeritus in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston: What can you say about perceptions of antisemitism over time? And, secondly, have you tried any questions involving Biden that include Trump in their framing? TELHAMI: First of all, with regard to Trump and just the framing, I try to avoid that to the extent possible, because we don’t want to bias the kind of the answers, by referring to names. We did have lots of questions about Trump policy and Biden policy separately over time. On antisemitism, we did a poll on antisemitism last year. We found that a majority of Americans think—a slight majority of Americans think that antisemitism is on the rise in the U.S. So there’s that impression. Most do not consider criticism of Israel to be antisemitism. Most, obviously, consider bias against Jews to be antisemitism. Many also consider criticism of Zionism to be—though not a majority—to be antisemitism. But a majority don’t consider criticism of Israel to be antisemitism. That is available on our website. You can go there and find it. We have done it. In fact, it is—actually, at the same time we ask questions about Israeli system of government, whether it’s a democracy or something else. FASKIANOS: And on the other—a corollary question from Ahad Din, who comes from Dallas College: Has your work uncovered a shift in sympathies for Muslims as people, societies, or nation, that correlates with the uptick among younger American voters who are also being targeted by Islamophobic violence? TELHAMI: Well, this is really an interesting story, actually. Thanks for asking that. I have—and the answer might really surprise you, in a way, because I have actually been tracing attitudes towards Islam and Muslims for years. And I started doing it more intensively with the beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign, because of the rise of Trump and his anti-Muslim kind of speech, even before he became president. And then I did, like, multiple polls per year, not just one. Maybe sometimes two or three per year throughout the Trump presidency, well into the Biden presidency, trying to trace a shift that is taking place. Let me tell you what we found that is really remarkable. From the moment Trump began his anti-Muslim campaign, attitudes among Americans improved toward Muslims—improved, incrementally. Every poll we did was more favorable than the poll before. And in fact, you see, graphically, it’s remarkable. I have a couple of articles on it. I did one for the Washington Post, one for Politico, one for Brookings over the years. They are all on our website. You can see it. But it’s really, really interesting. And the reason for it is that it mostly came from a kind of a rallying behind Muslims, mostly among Democrats and independents who didn’t like Trump. So it was kind of like, Trump dislikes Muslims. Therefore, we like Muslims. And so we had this kind of interesting trend. Obviously, that was more true of young Democrats, for sure, but across the board we have seen this remarkable shift that has taken place, even among—on attitudes toward Islam. Because historically we find that attitudes toward Muslims are somewhat more favorable than attitudes toward Islam as a religion. I have written about this as to why that is the case. But you will find that even attitudes toward Islam improved as well. Not quite as much, but also improved over time. So, yes, there has been a marked shift that has taken place during the Trump years into the Biden years. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question from Angela Williams with a raised hand. If you can identify yourself. Q: Can you hear me? FASKIANOS: Yes. TELHAMI: Yes. Q: Hi.  TELHAMI: Hi. Q: Thanks for having us here today. Now, my question for Dr. Shibley is, you speak of social justice, but I want you to go back and speak of justice, because you also referenced Evangelicals. TELHAMI: Yeah. Q: Now, justice is what is in the Bible, not social justice, which came about 1970s and 1980s, or if you want to go Luigi, in 1840s. But I think that we are—don’t have authentic conversations or perspective because justice is not the focus. Most of the conversation is related to nations, not all the social justice emotionalism that we witness in media. FASKIANOS: Angela, give us your affiliation? Q: Yes. Professor at Georgia Military College.  FASKIANOS: Thank you so much. TELHAMI: So let me answer that a bit. I use the term “social justice” because that’s what we traced, meaning that if you look at—particularly during the Trump years when we have a value divide in America, obviously. I mean, it’s not just a partisan divide. And much of it, particularly the things that animated young Democrats, have been issues of justice, you’re right, in a global justice, international law, rule of law, but also social justice, because the issues that have animated much of the conversation had to do with Black Lives Matter, anti-Hispanic sentiments that was seen to have come together with the Trump presidency. And we were focused more on domestic issues because that was what the fight was. And it was wrapped into this worldview that brought people into other issues as well. But you’re right. It’s justice more broadly. But since you raised the Evangelical issue, I do have a lot of polling among Evangelicals. So I’m actually writing a book on Evangelicals. I’ve been doing this for a number of years. In fact, I started it in 2015, doing a lot of polling among Evangelicals related to our politics, and particularly their interest in the Middle East. And, clearly, Evangelicals have been perhaps the most supportive constituency in America of a right-wing Israel, meaning an Israel that wants to claim ownership with the West Bank. Evangelical leaders have been very much behind that. And we see them supportive of Israeli policies and Israeli government attitudes over time. But what is interesting is that while this is predicated on some biblical interpretation—what is Israel, or support for Israel—as I have found in interviewing many of the Evangelical leaders, they say their support for Israel is really coming not so much out of their interpretation of the Bible as much as it is about being socialized into a political process in which they have come to certain strategic conclusions. So what happened among the grassroots Evangelicals is that in the polling that have been done over the past five years, including our own but also scholars in the University of North Carolina, what we found is actually support for Israel is diminishing among young Evangelicals. And we have anecdotal evidence that that’s principally because increasingly also young Evangelicals see the Israeli-Palestinian issue through a prism of justice, whether you want to call it social justice or another prism of justice. But there is increasing evidence. I’ve written about that. I have a couple of articles about it. You’re welcome to see it. It’s also posted online and then other scholars have written about it. But there is a shift taking place among young Evangelicals, that seems to be justice connected, that is moving them toward more evenhandedness on Israel-Palestine. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m taking the next question from Kathy Long Holland, who gets a number of upvotes. She’s an auditor and faculty member at Portland State University: Why do you think Biden did not take a more neutral stance from the beginning? TELHAMI: Well, this is really an interesting question, honestly. And we now know quite a few things. I have—the president himself has been, of course, pro-Israel. He considered himself—in fact, he called himself a Zionist, including while visiting Israel this time, but over the years he called himself a Zionist. He has been— whether this is being socialized into a political system where support for Israel was kind of automatic if you were a member of Congress—he spent so many years in the Senate and obviously was attuned to the political environment— or whether he has his own belief system, is hard to know.   I happen to have interacted with him when he was a senator and testified before his committee, had conversations with him on Israel-Palestine. Had one conversation with him about this issue when he was vice president. I knew where he stood. But he still surprised me quite a bit. And so it has led to a lot of reinterpretation of where his position comes from and including people who are looking back to see his posture in 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. I went through—a couple of articles led me to some material related to his posture when Israel was invading Lebanon in 1982, when he thought Israel was justified to even do more damage to civilians at that time, when everybody was criticizing what they thought was overreaction by Israel or affecting civilian casualties more than was warranted. He seemed to say, I’m fine with that, and people have been referring to that now. The New York Times has an article now, I think it may even be today, about how the president himself had disagreed with Biden back in 2014 when—with Obama, sorry. When President Obama in 2014, when there was a Gaza war and Obama wanted to be publicly critical when the Israelis were attacking in a way that led to many civilian casualties. That Biden disagreed with him. Biden said, you shouldn’t do that. We should embrace Israel. And that will give us more leverage with Israel. We should hug them and not criticize them publicly. So he talked about it as if it were a tactic. So he had, obviously—I’m also finishing up another co-authored book on Biden, Trump, and Obama presidencies. And in our interviews with Obama officials, we discovered a number of areas in which on this issue there was disagreement between Biden and Obama, and Obama supporters. So we don’t really know exactly what is driving him personally, because we do know that it was a rather unique position that he was the one who was leading this kind of embrace of Israel. We know there’s been division within the State Department, people who are critical. I’ve spoken to many of the officials who are privately not pleased with the way this has gone. Been a lot of public writing about disagreements within the White House. The State Department, the initial instinct was let’s deescalate and let’s have a ceasefire. Then information came from the White House, no, that’s not what we’re going to call for. We’re going to support them for the purpose of destroying Hamas. And I don’t think the president fully understood, separate from how this is going to play internationally—it’s not playing well, by the way. As one official said, we are taking a lot of water over Israel right now internationally. No question about it. But I don’t think he realized how much more damage it would do domestically. There are a lot of members of Congress, Democratic members, who are very angry with him, who don’t support his policy, who are not going to go out and publicly criticize him in a very strong way because he is a Democratic president who is in an election year, and they don’t want to weaken him further. So they’re kind of being quiet. But the polling is shaking them up. And I think you can see a little bit of change in the discourse in the past couple weeks. I think this chapter hasn’t been written about why the president took a decision very early on to embrace, almost a blank check, for the Israeli operations in Gaza in a way that has generated devastating results, for an aim that is probably not achievable—whatever that means, destroying Hamas—in a way that impacts U.S. national security interests. This is not just about supporting Israel. There are huge American interests at stake. One is blowback. A lot of people in the Arab and Muslim world are watching this. They can’t believe this is—they blame America more than Israel over this. I happen to think this is a paradigm-forming moment. I don’t think this is a temporary anger. I think a whole generation of Arabs and Muslims are now going to have this picture in mind, what happened in Gaza in 2023. And they’re going to blame the United States for it. There’s obviously a risk of escalation. We’re already seeing some of it, in terms of attacking American forces in Iraq and Syria, and elsewhere. There’s a chance of escalation to draw the U.S. into a war with Iran, if there is an ultimate escalation that that brings Iran and Hezbollah into the fight. And yet, there has not been—from day one—an interagency process about what choice we should make and what are the implications—what the implications are for U.S. interests if, in fact, we took that particular course. There is no evidence there was any kind of interagency process the president initiated, or military strategizing before he sent two carrier groups to the Middle East, that obviously he thought of them as a deterrent to Iran or Hezbollah. Maybe they served that purpose, but also they were escalatory in in various ways. There was no apparent consideration of this. Instead, he went to Israel. Sure, he needed to support the Israelis. The Israelis came under a horrific attack on October 7. They felt vulnerable. The U.S. is a supporter. That was the right thing to do for president, to go and say, look, we’re with you at your moment of pain. We will support you. We will not allow somebody to destroy you. But that’s different from saying we’re going to give you a blank check to define what is your self-interest. Every state has the right to self-interest, but no state has a right to define alone what action constitutes self-interest. And we do know that this Israeli government—sure, a lot of them want just self-defense, and they want security. But many of them want a lot more. This is an extremist government. And many of the objectives of the ministers in that government do not coincide with interest in the United States, whether they’re—some of them want to expel the Palestinians from Gaza, ethnic cleansing. Some of them, including the prime minister, have been known in the past to want to draw the U.S. into a war with Iran. And so the interest, sure—the overlap, at some point, you want to support self-defense. But you don’t want to give a carte blanche in a way that undermines your interests. And the president has—we don’t really know what process he undertook to reach this conclusion. I think this chapter has not been written yet. And I think there will be a lot of things that we—certainly there are a lot of things we don’t know about Biden personally. But we don’t also know a lot of things about how these decisions were made. FASKIANOS: There has been a lot of talk in the media about President Biden putting pressure on the ceasefire, in order to have the hostages released. Have you done any polling on that? Like, has the—is he getting some credit for his role in that—those discussions to release hostages? TELHAMI: We haven’t done any polling on that. I probably will when I do my next poll. But here’s my instinct. My instinct is, no, he’s not getting credit for it, except among those who already support him. This is a talking point, not an opinion shifting point. Because the people who bought into the paradigm of criticism are looking at the destruction that’s already been done. And part of the narrative is this offer of hostage exchange was on the table much earlier. Hamas had referred to an exchange early on. The question is, of course, whether it could have been done. I mean, obviously, but nobody had tried it. So whether you needed the kind of destruction that already happened—and, again, let’s talk about magnitude here, OK?  We are talking about more than 15,000 people killed, thousands of children. Most of the 15,000 are children and women. We are talking about 80 percent of the population rendered homeless. We are talking about destruction, according to the U.N., of up to 50 percent of the structures. So damage or destruction. We’re talking about the dropping of bombs over Gaza that are equivalent to more than two nuclear devices, on a very small population over a period of a month and a half. So we’re talking about an enormous amount of devastation. That’s what’s registering, not what you might get out of it now. And, by the way, you have prisoner exchanges. It’s a good thing. It’s necessary. Hamas taking hostages was a war crime. You do not—especially civilian children and woman. I mean, that is an awful thing and needed, obviously, to be addressed. And they need to all come back home to their loved ones. But the Israelis have also taken prisoners in the West Bank, obviously not in the same way. But nonetheless, if you look, for example, at the prisoner exchanges, you’re talking about for—you might end up with maybe a hundred Israelis—150 Israelis released. I hope all are released. In exchange for maybe three times as many Palestinians. But there are 7,000 Palestinians held by Israel under occupation. And just since the war started on October 7, the Israelis are said to have arrested 3,000 people, just since October 7. Three thousand people in operations in the West Bank. Most of them are said to be under administrative detention, meaning they’re not facing any charges.  So this is a—obviously, the exchanges are important. Even a single one coming home is important. But I don’t think those people who are assessing Biden policy are going to reward him for the outcome so far. They might, if there’s some other huge deal coming out that we don’t know about. But for now, I don’t think so. That’s my assessment. Obviously, I could be wrong. Sometimes I’m surprised when I do a poll, and I’m making an assumption, and it turns out I’m wrong. And that does happen—though, not frequently, I must say. FASKIANOS: I was just going to say, I don’t think it’s that frequent. (Laughter.) I’m going to go next to Monica Byrne, who’s an undergraduate student at Bard College, and really focusing on the campus: This conflict has comment from every corner, even those with only a glancing acquaintance of the history or the complexities involved. Right now, especially on campuses the conversation is a binary one, you’re either for Palestine or for Israel with no nuance or understanding. How can we raise the level of dialogue and amplify more diverse voices who are interested in solutions? TELHAMI: Yeah. I really appreciate that. I mean, my initial reaction when this—I started speaking out very early, as you can imagine, talking all over the country at various academic institutions and the media on this issue. And my take, I look at it, obviously, as somebody who’s been studying this issue for decades. And I’m also a student of war, broadly. And what I have put out there is that, look, I mean, we do know that wars harden the hearts and they fog the minds.  And so—and it doesn’t matter who it is. It’s not just the Israelis and the Palestinians. You know, when you have family members, or relatives, or loved ones who were killed in an awful way and you feel helpless, and it comes as a surprise and you feel vulnerable, many of us have come under these kinds of situations, you want to lash out. You want to—you start demonizing the other. You start seeing every signal from the other as something—they’re all alike. They all want to kill us. They all want to do this. And it happens on both sides, and they both have a long history that leads to demonization. And so that’s why—one reason I’ve been critical of Biden administration. That’s because when you are in the middle of something like that, and you know the urge for vengeance—and, yes, everybody wants self-defense. But you know that the urge goes well beyond self-defense, even under the best of circumstances. And these are not the best of circumstances, with leaders whose aims go well beyond self-defense. And we know that. That’s where you need a better conversation outside. That’s why you need international leaders to speak out with a moral authority. That’s why you need restraint, handholding, yes. Empathy is important. Empathy is part of what is needed in times of pain, for sure. But what you need is empathy for both sides. What you need is also a bit of restraint. What you need is create an environment that allows for more clarity than is allowed typically by the hardened hearts that you face. And we need to do that in academic institutions. We need to do that in every arena that we have. And we haven’t seen that. We haven’t seen that. The president, I think, supported the Israelis. It worked for him, in the sense that Israelis really, really like him now. He could even get elected if he were running for prime minister of Israel. But he did it in a way where he failed to express even minimum empathy with—even in the face of horrific Palestinian casualties—in a way that lost him a whole generation of people. And now, nothing he will say will be trusted by the people on the other side. It’s not as if he can put a plan on the table. They’re going to say, are you kidding me? You’re the one who allowed this. You’re going to—because they blame him for enabling what transpired. So, yes, we need space. We need it in academic institutions, particularly. We need it in the public discourse. We need it in the media. But the signals come from our leaders. And that’s why I think—the fact that the president is the highest authority in giving signals. I happen to think that his discourse initially dehumanized Palestinians, even though he was warning from day one Hamas is not Palestinians, don’t take it out on Palestinians, don’t take it out on Muslims, don’t take it out on Arabs. He was saying that, to his credit. But what people are hearing through the signals when he’s condoning the kind of mass destruction and killing that’s taken place, and in his news conference even dismissing it, saying, well, this is what happens in war, rather than saying I feel for them, initially. Or even challenging the numbers when, in fact, his own officials were saying they’re probably even higher than Hamas is revealing. And so that is dehumanizing. And that kind of dehumanization, we do know there’s rising antisemitism, for sure. We’ve seen it, as a result of this as well. But there’s been a rise, with the three students who were just shot in Vermont—Palestinian Americans who were shot in Vermont in an apparent hate crime. And so I think the dehumanization that has come out probably has more impact than the verbal saying, oh, don’t take it out on these people. And so that’s why I think, yes, it is important to set a different tone in our discourse than we have set for ourselves. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next spoken question from Ashley De Oliveria. If you can unmute. There you go. And tell us what your affiliation is. Q: I’m about to start graduate school at Florida International University in cybersecurity technology policy. And my question is related to the cyberattacks that I have found in my own research that are currently going on. Immediately after October 7, after the Hamas attack, there were cyber disinformation attacks by—suspected to be from Russia, China, and Iran, by foreign actors on social media, which we’re seeing across Twitter, Facebook, TikTok. And don’t you think that there could be a correlation possibly between the sharp inapproval (sic) and drastic shift in public opinion, especially, again, to younger people who are the biggest consumers of social media, corresponding to the polls you referenced, which you said showed a decrease in Israel support within a week after the beginning of the war, and then I believe you said another poll, which showed a gradual increase for the support of Muslims and on their—on that side of the dispute over the course of the conflict?  So are you considering that a lot of what we’re seeing is the result of both long-term and short-term foreign policy—or, short-term foreign influence of cyber disinformation campaigns across social media? Because especially in TikTok, I think there’s been, really—the algorithms have shown a sharp increase in what they are putting out. And the younger people are the ones who don’t seem to have a grasp of the—a lot of the history coming from the beginning of this situation and the influences also that fascism has on the dispute at the origins of this. Because it just goes back a long way. And I feel like there’s a drastic misunderstanding of some of the history. And I feel like this is really being amplified right now by social media in a big way. So I would like to know if you consider that an influence on the situation. TELHAMI: Sure. FASKIANOS: Thanks, Ashley. TELHAMI: So let me just give you a kind of—a bit of a take on this. I mean, obviously, I don’t know the exact— the question that you said about particular cyberattacks or state-sponsored manipulation of social media, which, of course, exists. I worry about it tremendously. As you know, we worried about it here in the election campaign because of what we thought was Russian influence early on in the campaigns during the Trump era in the previous election. We still worry about it now. I actually held a conversation about it at Maryland with General Hayden a couple of years ago, with the head of the NSA and CIA, as well as Dana Priest of the Washington Post, and my colleague at Maryland. So I certainly take that seriously, and I worry about it now with the introduction of AI as another factor that we all are worried about in terms of impacting the social media. I want to say that everybody’s doing it, right? So the Israelis are doing their own, right? So this is a media war. This is an information war. So everybody is—we know that we have bots, we have all kinds of attempts at creating the narrative on the social media. Which one is working? Which one is not? It’s hard to tell.  My instinct, though, on the shifts that have happened related to Israel-Palestine in recent months, is probably not a function of—or, not mostly a function of direct manipulation by particular players, like China or Iran. Why do I say that? Because it’s just consistent with the trends that we have seen about sort of the basis of the information they have and why they attribute certain—why they hold certain views, what are the issues that matter to them, and what is their value system that leads them to take a particular position? So I don’t find it at all surprising that we see what we see in the trends. It’s exactly what I would have expected, with or without any attempt at manipulation of social media. But, of course, I don’t know. I mean, as I said, we’re in a game where these factors are increasingly important. None of us know exactly how important. And we need to study more rigorously. FASKIANOS: I’m going to take the next question from Steven Shinkel, who is a military professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. It has five upvotes: Do you have any insights on the feeling about Hamas being allowed to stay in power or perceptions about Palestinian control of Gaza without Hamas? TELHAMI: Well, let’s put it this way: There was—when I talked to the Biden administration people from day one, both in the White House and the State Department. I’m not going to talk about—at a pretty high level. Let’s put it that way. And clearly, one of the views that they had was, let’s tell people—the Palestinians, and the Arabs, and Muslims, we’re really only against Hamas. And Hamas is responsible for your misery. And Hamas is responsible for what the Israelis are doing. And so blame Hamas. Don’t blame the Israelis. Don’t blame the U.S. And I thought from day one that is just a naïve approach. It’s just like telling the Israelis, blame your government for the occupation. Don’t blame Hamas for attacking you, and don’t go after Hamas. I mean, nobody’s going to buy that. Even people who hate their government, they rally behind the flag. They feel for the—they will go after the people who actually fired the shots and people who actually carried out them. And they see that as their priority. They think they have another battle to be had. Like many of the liberals say: We need to fight this fight against Hamas now, and then we’ll go on and maybe revisit the issue about who’s responsible among us for this or that. You see the same thing among the Palestinians. So among Palestinians, there is no doubt—whether it’s in Gaza, in the West Bank, in the Arab world, the Muslim world. The blame is principally going to Israel and going to the U.S., and not to Hamas, even among people who don’t want Hamas, don’t like Hamas ideologically. People who are secular, people who don’t want to anything to do with it. So the idea that you create this separation, particularly, of power, who’s not trusted to begin with, that they’re going to listen to you and your pitch on this is naïve. And I put it that way to high-level officials in the U.S., naïve. I used even the term “naïve” for doing that. Now, what might happen afterwards? I have never believed that the idea, quote, of “destroying Hamas” was an idea that was coherent, because I don’t really know what that means, honestly. I mean, if you mean destroying their infrastructure, and destroying most of the weapons, killing most of their leaders, it’s probably achievable but at the cost of destroying Gaza, all of Gaza. Maybe a couple of hundred thousand casualties, and everybody’s displaced, and maybe becoming refugees. A) That’s a war crime. B) It’s totally immoral, aside from whether it’s a war crime or not. And, three, it generates far more not just misery, but a huge political problem. Because for every Hamas member you’re killing, you’re generating twenty others whose families have been destroyed, and you’re planting the seeds of more violence down the road. So it’s a crazy idea. It just has no meaning whatsoever. And in any case, it’s not just in Gaza. Hamas has supporters in the West Bank. They are in Lebanon. And whether or not it’s that particular organization, that organization emerged in a vacuum, in part because of the weakening of the PLO, which was the principle Palestinian representative organization. And it was encouraged initially by Israel, who wanted and saw the PLO as the main threat to Israel and wanted to weaken it. So they allowed Muslim Brotherhood to rise and create something like Hamas. Obviously, not exactly anticipating the same outcomes. And in recent years, as the Israeli press has been full of stories, the Netanyahu government has kind of had—was happy to have Hamas—of course, not expecting the kind of attack they carried out on October 7—as something they can scare people with, as something that is a barrier to having a two-state solution, which obviously the government doesn’t want. So it’s much more complicated than we think. And I think that’s why, to me, when the president embraced the idea that Hamas must be destroyed, I didn’t think that was a coherent idea that was vetted through the system. And it needed to be vetted through the system. And it has consequences, because if you carry it through, all the way through until they really are destroyed, you’re going to have the devastation that we’ve seen, and more. And, of course, it could draw Hezbollah, it could draw Iran, could draw us into the fight. And so I am very concerned about this posture. FASKIANOS: Well, with that, we are at the end of our time. I am sorry that we had so many questions and raised hands that we could not get to them all. But sadly this issue is not going away, and we will need to continue to have discussions on it. Shibley Telhami, thank you so much for everything that you—all the work that you have done. We will send out a link to the website—to this discussion and transcript, as well as links to some of the polls and other writings that Dr. Telhami has done. Is the correct URL for your polls CriticalIssues.UMD.edu? TELHAMI: Yes. And also Sadat.UMD.edu, both. FASKIANOS: Both. So you can go there for a full listing of all the polls. And I encourage you to do that, as well as follow Dr. Telhami on X, the app formerly known as Twitter, at @ShibleyTelhami. And so I hope you will do that as well. We just announced the winter/spring Academic Webinar lineup in the November issue of the CFR bulletin. So if you’ve not already subscribed, you can sign up by emailing us at [email protected].  I also encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/Careers. And you will see there the international affairs fellowship that was referenced at the top. And please do follow us at @CFR_academic and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Again, thank you for this conversation. Shibley, we really appreciated it. And, to all of you, good luck with your finals and the end of semester work. And we look forward to reconvening in 2024. (END)  

Jocelyn Benson, Michigan secretary of state, and Marc Rotenberg, executive director and founder of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, discuss how officials can prepare for challenges posed by AI in U.S. elections. A question-and-answer session follow their opening remarks. TRANSCRIPT FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations State and Local Officials Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR.  CFR is an independent and nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher focused on U.S. foreign policy. We’re also the publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine. And 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. We’re delighted to have close to five hundred participants from fifty-one states and U.S. territories for today’s conversation, which is on the record. And we will share the video and transcript after the fact at CFR.org. We are pleased to have Secretary Jocelyn Benson and Professor Marc Rotenberg with us today to talk about “Elections in the AI Era.” And Secretary Benson is joining us from a car. She’s very busy, so we are happy—thank you very much for doing this. She is currently serving as Michigan’s forty-third secretary of state. She has received multiple national awards for her work to ensure the security and fairness of Michigan’s 2020 and 2022 general elections. Secretary Benson recently launched Michigan’s Truth Tellers Task Force, comprised of community leaders who speak with voters about their election and misinformation concerns, build trust before and after elections, and provide transparency in the electoral process. Professor Marc Rotenberg is an adjunct professor of privacy law at Georgetown University, and the founder and executive director of the Center for AI and Digital Policy. He has served as an expert advisor on artificial intelligence to many international panels, organizations, and Congress. And in 2018, he helped draft the Universal Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence, a widely endorsed human-rights framework for the regulation of artificial intelligence. So thank you both for being with us. Secretary Benson, I will begin with you, if you could tell us about the threats you see as you look ahead to the 2024 elections and what steps you are taking and you would share with other election officials to ensure that elections are secure and accessible, especially given these new challenges posed by AI. BENSON: Yes. Thank you for having me. And it’s a critical discussion on a number of fronts. I would say, you know, since the 2020 election, the—American voters and election administrators American democracy writ large has been through a lot. And we’ve also learned a lot, as well, about who our adversaries are, what their tactics are or will be, and what their goals are. And so we’re going to leverage a lot of that intelligence, that information to prepare for on all fronts to protect and secure our elections in 2024. But there are three sort of emerging issues that are new on our table that we are particularly concerned about. One, of course, are emerging technologies, which I know we’re going to talk about—artificial intelligence, the newness of it, the new frontier, and all of the panoply of possibilities it creates for election malfeasance, and interference, and confusion. Second is the additional collapse, I guess you could say, of social media and other ways of getting information or spreading misinformation, which has opened new doors and more doors than ever before for the spread of the misinformation that particularly is enabled by the new and emerging technologies that heretofore—up to this point are highly unregulated in terms of their usage. And then the third piece—and this is, to me, the most important element of this—is that our adversaries—the adversaries to democracy, I would say—have more of an incentive than ever before—than they did in 2016 and 2020 and 2022—to actually interfere with our elections, because the outcome of the presidential election in America in 2024 will have a direct impact on wars against democracy overseas, particularly in Ukraine. And so Russia, Iran, China have a greater incentive than ever before to try to influence our elections process. So new or perhaps more highly incentivized adversaries; new and emerging technologies; and a collapse of trusted sources of information, and—i.e., social media in particular, have set us up to have a real challenge in 2024. But the good news is we’re ready. We’ve been through this in many ways in 2020, overseeing in Michigan the highest-turnout election and a successful, secure election in the midst of a pandemic. So we have the tools and resources and the brainpower and grit, frankly, to overcome these new and emerging issues that are going to plague our elections in ’24, but it’s not going to be easy. We have to be preparing and planning now with all partners a whole-of-society approach, from academia to the federal government, executive branches in every—to local governments in every state, even candidates and voters who need to be empowered and prepared to ensure that the, let’s—for lack of better words, weapons of choice for our adversaries to interfere with our elections, be it technology, AI, misinformation writ large, are all totally unsuccessful. And so I’m happy to talk about what we’re doing on that front to ensure they’re not successful, but I’ll—and I’ll emphasize, too—I’m sure we’ll go into greater depths on that in our discussion, but I’ll just emphasize two things at the out front. One, we know the goals of adversaries to democracy, and particularly American democracy, are three things: to create confusion—confuse voters, cause them to disengage; to create chaos—chaos that would, similarly, cause citizens to say I want to give up on democracy altogether, it’s not working; and to create fear—if I vote, if I participate, something bad might happen. So chaos, confusion, and fear are the goals. So our response needs to be rooted in giving the American citizens, no matter who they vote for, confidence, clarity, and certainty that democracy will work, and our elections will be secure, and that their vote will count. And we have to back that up with real action at the federal and state level on all fronts to recognize that in everything we do we have to give voters confidence; we have to create clarity as to what happens when you vote, how to trust you vote and all the rest; and ensure certainty on the outcomes and on the procedures in voting as well. The last thing I’ll mention on all those things is that the messengers—developing stronger, trusted messengers of the truthful information about our elections—how to vote, how to trust our results, how to respond to misinformation—that’s going to be crucial as we enter into this election season. And that’s a role that everyone can play on various forms. And so I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit more about that, but proactively educating voters through trusted messages is our best antidote to misinformation that will flow into our communities in the months ahead, and I know you all have—doing that. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much. That was great. Marc, over to you to give your perspective. ROTENBERG: Well, thank you very much, Irina. Nice to be with you, Secretary. I think this is a great topic that we’re discussing today. I was listening to Senator Schumer earlier. He was describing the AI agenda in the U.S. Senate and the various bills that have been introduced, but he said the one issue that we need to prioritize now concerns AI and election security because 2024 is such an important year—which is true, by the way, not only in the United States, but also around the world. You have elections in Mexico, in the EU, and India, and elsewhere. So people are very focused on this issue. I also want to say that me and my team at the Center for AI and Digital Policy have been working with several international organizations over the last few years to help develop frameworks for the governance of AI. And the phrase that you see reappear in many of these governance frameworks is trustworthy. People want to ensure that there are standards and norms established to ensure trustworthy AI. But with the emergence of generative AI, which is essentially an elaborate statistical technique for inferring outcomes based on large datasets, if I might put it that way, we’re also creating new tools that we don’t fully understand even in the creation of the voice and the—and the video and the text. Campaigns are now experimenting with these tools, but they’re not entirely sure what the consequences will be. And I think that should give us pause. It actually reminds me a bit of the early days when people were talking about online voting. Online voting continues to raise, of course, a lot of concerns for American voters about security and reliability, and we need that careful technical assessment to determine how best to manage some of these techniques that are now being deployed. I think the secretary makes an important point also when we think about these new techniques and some of the vulnerabilities it’s not simply in the context of trying to influence others as to how someone may vote. As a general matter, we don’t, you know, oppose the use of radio and television or the internet to get political views out, but it’s an entirely different matter when you’re dealing with foreign adversaries whose goal may simply be to disrupt an election, to reduce public trust, to create outcomes where democratic states are less confident in their own governments. And so I think we need to be looking at this challenge through that lens as well. Now, we have sent statements and recommendations to the—to the Senate Rules Committee, to Chairman Klobuchar and Ranking Member Fischer. We’ve made comments recently to the FEC regarding a proposed rule to extend some of the limitations on campaign advertising to include, for example, the deceptive use of generative AI techniques, because it is remarkably easy now with some of these tools to have your political opponent speak words that, in fact, she never said. And this can be done quickly, it can be done at scale, it can even be personalized. I’ve been reading, for example, about one of the key techniques with chatbots is the ability to engage in a profile-based dialogue where you know something about the individual, you engage with them online, and you continue a conversation with the aim of trying to persuade them as to an outcome. Now, some, you know, experts in the campaign field will say, well, of course, you know, over many years campaigns have learned to target certain groups based on certain interests, so of course that’s a familiar strategy. But what I don’t think people fully appreciate is that’s essentially a once-in-time communication, whether it arrives as an email, or a text message, or a pamphlet under the door. What ChatGPT makes possible is actually the ongoing engagement with the voter, with the aim of trying to persuade and doing so in a way that we’ve never seen before in elections. So I think state election officials are going to have a lot of challenges ahead as they try to assess these new techniques. One of the themes that we see in many of the governance frameworks for artificial intelligence is a strong emphasis on transparency. People should know when they’re interacting with an AI tool. They should know the source of the message so that they can verify it if they need be. And I would even, you know, propose a bit of a warning to the campaigns that are experimenting with these techniques. I would encourage you to really make sure you fully assess the outputs that the techniques are generating because we have seen in the last several months, of course, many of the leading experts in computer science working closely with generative AI techniques have actually been surprised—surprised by the results that they can produce that weren’t predicted and maybe in some instances a bit troubling. I will say also that we raised some of these issues earlier this year in a complaint that our organization filed with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission regarding OpenAI’s product ChatGPT. We pointed to some of the risks regarding the use of ChatGPT in elections. I’ve done similar complaints to the FTC in the past, but what was striking about this particular complaint is that OpenAI itself, in its technical self-assessment known as the system card, actually describes the risks—the risks of using ChatGPT for influence operations, not only the profiling and targeting but the ability to use the technique to disseminate misinformation. And so I think we’re in a moment, as I said, where we’re going to face new challenges. I think the work of election officials is about to enter a new phase. And the phrase I hear oftentimes from the experts in the field is that what we’re seeing is a rapid acceleration at scale, so the conversation we are having today may not even be the conversation we’re going to be having in spring of 2024 as we get closer to the elections. I would recommend, as I said earlier, more transparency, more accountability, notification as appropriate, and also of course training election officials to put in place the necessary safeguards and to identify the risks that could arise from the use of AI techniques for misinformation and disinformation. Trust is absolutely central to the democratic process, and we need the ability to ensure that the outcomes that are produced through our elections are outcomes the public accepts and respects. It’s not at all clear in this—at this moment that generative AI is going to take us closer to that goal, and I think that is the challenge. FASKIANOS: Thank you so much. So we’re going to go to all of you now for questions and comments. So you can raise your hand, you can write your question in the box, and I will read it. Secretary Benson has to depart in ten minutes or so, so let’s prioritize raised hands for questions for her and then we’ll go to Professor Rotenberg as well. But while we’re waiting for questions to queue up, Secretary Benson, you talked a little—you said you would talk in the discussion about what—the steps you’re taking to protect elections. Maybe you could share some of the things you’re putting in place, especially given what Professor Rotenberg has said. BENSON: Yes. I think the protections—and we need legislative changes in order to do a lot of them. But the protections, there’s a few that are legislative and one that is administrative. On the legislative front, you know, we recognize that the federal government is proposing legislation to protect elections from deceptive AI. We’re working with and to look at what states like Minnesota and others have done to develop two bills in Michigan or two policies in Michigan, one that will require instant disclosure or disclaimers anytime any type of communication involves AI, period, whether it’s deceptively used or not. And so disclosures and disclaimers is one. And then criminal penalties for when there is AI utilized in an effort to deceive, particularly to intentionally deceive voters about an election policy, or how to vote, or when to vote. You know, if we see—or whether an election is canceled, or election-related information. So criminalizing or providing criminal penalties for individuals who intentionally use AI to deceive voters about their rights, about the actions they can take to vote, and then also getting legislation that would require disclaimers and—of any use of AI communication on any political communication as even just issue discussions. So those two pieces of legislation have already been introduced. They’re working their way through the legislature. And other states are following suit. Minnesota has also just passed or was considering some legislation. And of course, the Rules Committee has also had a hearing in the U.S. Senate on similar legislation. The third thing we need to do is prepare voters to know that this is coming. And while we typically are educating voters about the whens and the hows and the—and the whats to actually cast your ballot—where to get your ballot, where to return your ballot, what early voting is, how to register to vote—we now have to add a component to all of our voter-education pieces through all of the voices—the myriad of voices from faith leaders to community leaders to sports leaders to educational leaders about AI and its potential harmful effects on democracy. We have to empower and equip voters with the information they need ahead of time so that when AI does land—and we have to anticipate it will—that we can—that they’re equipped and empowered to know what it is and to not trust it, in a way, and to be critical consumers of information in this election cycle. So I think those three things will put us—along with working with our partners in the federal government to ensure that we’re partnering with CISA and the other agencies for any foreign interference and all of that, and consequences there—will also continue to be at the forefront. And the last thing I’ll emphasize on that is that we—you know, federal law and the laws coming out of Congress would apply specifically to federal candidates, not to state candidates, not to local candidates. And so just because the federal government is acting or does act on this front, it doesn’t—every state should still be looking at it. It doesn’t, you know, absolve the states for the role and even local governments in the role we need to play in enacting disclosure/disclaimer regulations, as well as criminal penalties for those who would seek to deceive voters about their rights. FASKIANOS: OK. Thank you. I’m going to go take the first question from Councilmember John Jaszewski, who has raised his hand, if you can accept the unmute prompt. Q: Is that it? Did I get it? FASKIANOS: Yes. Q: OK. My question is simple. You know, the bad actors speak the loudest. They have the loudest megaphones and therefore seem to dominate sometimes the discussion. Are there any specific things that local officials like myself, small communities, can do to, you know, overpower that bad actor, that loud voice from the bad actors? BENSON: Yes, there are. In fact, I would argue you have perhaps one of the most critical roles to play, because you are as a local official closer to the ground, real—there in real-time, and a trusted voice in your community. So, one, I would say preemptive or proactively preparing your constituents to know this is coming, to know what they can do to report it, provide a way that they can report it. We have in Michigan a portal to report any type of misinformation, including AI-driven misinformation, which is an email and a portal on our website that people can use to report it so that we know about it and we can respond to it as well and debunk it. But you are a connector to the citizens who are targeted by deceptive AI. And you can use that connection and your trusted voice to them to help them be prepared now for what’s coming. Have a town hall talking about this. Invite other experts to talk about what AI is going to mean for every voter, how to intercept AI on social media, how to push for the state and federal changes we need to require disclaimers, and disclosures, and criminal penalties. And then, you know, be there throughout the cycle to identify AI, report it, call it out, and equip voters to do the same so that we proactively are able to be ready for when those hits come. And through education and empowerment, and clear to-dos of what to do when it when it hits, have everyone part of intercepting AI before it can have its intended impact of deceiving voters and causing chaos and confusion around elections. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question from David Burnett. Q: Thank you. We were talking about deceptive practices with AI. We’ve already seen an example where one candidate for president used an AI-generated voice to verbalize a statement of his opponent, which the opponent had made but in written form only. So that’s a bit of a nuance of whether or not that’s actually deceptive to use for audio ads, something that the candidate did say but not verbally. BENSON: I think that’s why it speaks to the need to have a disclaimer and disclosure for the use of any AI, so the people know that artificial intelligence has been used to make this commercial. That is our first step in equipping voters. Not getting involved in the intent or deception sort of piece when AI is used, and giving voters that basic information. And certainly, the criminal penalties involved in intentionally using it can come later, or as the process plays out through, you know, accusations of intent and all the rest. But I would argue the example you gave should have a disclaimer on it for voters to know at the very least that this was AI-generated audio. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next, I’m going to take a written question from County Commissioner Nikki Koons: Can either speaker go more in-depth on how AI would be able to be used in an election process? I live in a very rural area and am not hooked up to the internet during voting. Are we just talking about AI generating any type of information prior to the election? BENSON: I think I mean—go ahead. ROTENBERG: Well, I was just going to say that even if you don’t have internet-based voting, you likely do have internet-connected voters who are receiving advertising and communications online. And, of course, campaign ads through internet websites are one of the most popular ways today in the United States to reach voters. And I think you should anticipate that those online campaign ads will reflect some of these new generative AI techniques. And, again, it will sort of maximize the opportunity for misinformation that’s also highly targeted, because you take the profile of voters that you know and you’re able to extend that over a period of time, which was not something that was possible in the past. FASKIANOS: Secretary Benson? BENSON: Yes. Yeah, so I certainly think and we’re anticipating the use of AI to be part of what interferes with election processes as well. This could include the creation and spread of localized misinformation on election day, putting out information saying there’s—you know, falsified—making falsified claims conditions at the polls, even perhaps suggesting violence in certain precincts as a way of deterring—you know, falsely claiming that—as a way of deterring people from showing up to vote. Knowing that there are a handful of states, and in particular you could argue in Wisconsin and others even just a handful of precincts, that could directly influence the outcome of the presidential election.  There’s a way to potentially target different areas with that misinformation to drive voters away and to dissuade voters from showing up to vote at all with misinformation around wait times, closures of polling places, and other types of things. You should see it as a potential voter suppression tactic that can be easily deployed on election day. That is where it’s most likely to interfere with the operations of elections itself, and why we need to, in some cases, have an operation in place to rapidly respond to information that gets out there.  And we already do that in Michigan in general, because misinformation can be generated by humans on social media. And so we already have a rapid response network in place to identify, source, and respond to misinformation about polls closing or violence at the polls. And so we have to expand that in that regard. But we certainly have to anticipate that the use of AI could, even if it’s not—and this has not really been the tactic of foreign adversaries anyway, to actually interfere with the hardware of elections. It could interfere with the people that make elections, both voters and election administrators, come to fruition. And that’s going to be their most likely target. And it’s going to be a target that is about creating that chaos and confusion and fear among voters, and even among election workers who may fear threats that could interfere with their ability to oversee a presidential election. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to Lanette Frazier. Q: Thank you so much. I would like to know, as a city councilperson, what—is there already some kind of verbiage out there that we can use as far as language to create a disclosure disclaimer scenario, and also some kind of legislation to criminalize AI that we can use instead of starting from scratch? BENSON: Yes, I’m happy to—I’m happy to share with you the information of the bills we’ve introduced in Michigan. There’s federal legislation as well that has language that we borrowed from. And Minnesota and a few other states have already proposed or enacted legislation. So there are sample bills out there. And perhaps—I’m happy to get them to you in terms of what we’re doing in Michigan through CFR. And I hope, you know, organizations like NCSL and others that typically compile these model laws and policies will also include this in their portfolio. But in the meantime, we’re happy to get you the language that we’re using in Michigan. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. And we can share that with the whole group, as well as a contact at NCSL with whom we work. I’m going to go next to Christian Amez. Q: All right, so just kind of piggybacking on that previous question but a little bit more detail. You know, what kind of, you know, criminal penalties are—you know, should be included in state legislation to kind of prevent people from using generative AI, deep fakes, et cetera during these elections? Because, you know, one thing that I’m worried about is that the sort of penalties are so low or just become the cost of doing business when it comes to running elections and campaigns. You know, how do we—what’s the bar that we should set to make sure that it becomes prohibitive to use this sort of technology in a misleading way? BENSON: Think if you have identified—if anyone has identified that bar, let us know. I mean, we’re in a new frontier here. You know, certainly, this is a new, emerging, advancing technology that is advancing so quickly. As was said earlier, what even what we know is possible now could change in six months. And the collection of ways in which bad actors can take advantage of this new and emerging technology, particularly in the time where they have such a high incentive to do so, is in many ways limitless. So we know that disclosure of, you know, particularly AI-generated deep fakes and other content that could mislead voters is one of our—you know, disclaimers on that information is one of the ways that we can equip voters with the information they’re going to need to know what to trust and what not to trust. And then certainly penalties for intent to deceive are going to be evolving as the attempts to deceive evolve as well.  So I think the most important thing in this moment is that we prioritize to collectively solve this problem, which we’re starting to do. And I think Senator Schumer’s comments particularly are really well taken and appreciated. And it seems to be a bipartisan prioritization. And then to create, as we’re doing in Michigan, expert-driven workgroups to help us track the evolving and emerging threats as the technology evolves and emerges, knowing that, again, our information, and even the use of the technology is going to be very different, likely, one year from now when the election is happening than it is even right now. So we have to build up an infrastructure to adjust and adapt as well and evolve and develop new solutions as we go along. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. And just to say, Lanette was from Arkansas and our last question came from New York. I’m going to go next to a written question from Mike Zoril, who’s a supervisor in Rock County, Wisconsin: Can AI algorithms be developed to both detect voter fraud in real-time by analyzing patterns in voting data, and also allow citizens to verify that their vote was counted accurately? Marc, I don’t know if you can speak to that.  ROTENBERG: Right. So that is actually a very interesting field right now, particularly with regard to generative AI and establishing techniques for watermarking. There were at the White House now I think fifteen companies that have pledged to incorporate watermarking in the creation of generative AI output, which includes the text and the audio. I’m not quite sure how it’s going to work with audio, but also video. And that can reduce the likelihood of using generative AI without detection. But, of course, there will always be countermeasures. And people will try to evade detection on try to evade some of the compliance requirements. There is a phrase I’d like to just share with everybody that that we have used repeatedly to try to help people understand what the unique challenge is with generative AI in the election context and other contexts as well. We say that generative AI can both mimic and manipulate human behavior. Which is different, I would say, from how we’ve oftentimes thought of computer systems and simple issues, let’s say, of security or accurate vote tabulation. Because with a generative AI, you’re now producing a text, a voice message, that sounds familiar and sounds convincing. And once that conversation and point of contact is created, then there’s the opportunity for persuasion. And that’s what I think election officials need to be on the lookout for. FASKIANOS: Thank you. OK, so with that I’m going to—we’re going to keep going with Professor Rotenberg, but Secretary Benson does have to go. She’s on her way to an appointment. So I want to thank you, Secretary Benson, for your time with us today, for all that you have done in defending democracy for the country. And we will circulate the resources that you mentioned to the group. So, again, thank you for being with us today. And we really appreciate you wedging this into your very busy schedule.  BENSON: Thank you, all. Thank you. It’s been wonderful. Thank you for this discussion. It’s so important. And I look forward to more discussions in the future. Thank you. FASKIANOS: Thank you. All right, Marc, we are going to continue on with you. And I’m going to next go to—let me see—John Bouvier. And if you could identify yourself, that would be great. Q: Yes, thank you. My name is John Bouvier. I’m a councilman with the town of Southampton. And my question—I’m an engineer, so forgive me for thinking in the other direction. But I see that AI potentially has a use in voter verification and particularly in the technology of collecting votes. And it seems to be at the discretion of a lot of different boards of elections across the country, on who they hire, what equipment they use. I’m wondering how that’s—how we protect against that in the sense that AI could be—could be a useful tool in that respect. But how do you guard against its misuse, particularly when it’s being used in equipment and computer systems that are identifying voters’ signature recognition, all that kind of thing? And it’s my push to standardize, I think, to make a standard on how that’s done, because it seems to be at such local discretion that the voter is sort of left in a state of mistrust as a result of things like AI as well. ROTENBERG: John, it’s a great question. I think it actually takes us back to some of the foundational issues around election integrity and the importance, for example, of using paper ballots that can be properly tabulated, or retabulated if necessary. Many of the concerns with digital voting, I suspect, will be amplified with AI, because there’s more opportunity for manipulation and for mischief. So there is a lot to be said for voter verification techniques that rely on, you know, paper documents. Not to discourage some of the more innovative approaches I know states are taking, but to have that as a backup and a reliable source of voter identification I think is a good foundation. And I think it’s also key to how we think about the vote tabulation process itself. FASKIANOS: Great. Let’s go next to—I’m going to go to City Attorney Carrie Daggett’s question for the city of Fort Collins in Colorado: What kind of practical suggestions do you have for detecting, proving, and enforcing the requirements for disclosure and prohibiting the use of AI? ROTENBERG: Yeah, not a simple question you just asked. I think, you know, and I’m saying this only half-joking, because, you know, many of the leading computer scientists have actually said that we need a six-month pause on this technology precisely because they can’t fully audit and assess the outcomes that are being produced. So I think—and maybe the secretary has some further information on this or NCSL, which is a very good resource, can provide some technical support. I do think it will be helpful for state and local election officials to establish your online presence as a trusted source of information so that as these questions arise if you need to flag, for example, particular campaign communications, there’s a way to convey that information to the public from a familiar source and from a trusted source. Because, of course, part of manipulation also is the effort that people sometimes make to present trusted sources. FASKIANOS: OK. I’m going to go next to—we’re coming to the end of our time, and so many questions. But I’m going to go next to Tim Duey, who works in the office of Senator Kathleen Kauth in Nebraska. Let’s see: I’m glad we’re discussing the dangers of AI abuse in elections, because it does seem like a big problem. I did want to ask though, couldn’t this be a game-changer for candidates in local down-ballot races, where there’s one person who needs to engage with many thousands of voters, if AI isn’t used deceptively or in an unscrupulous manner? MR. ROTENBERG: I’m sorry. I didn’t hear the question. FASKIANOS: Could it be used productively for a candidate in a local down-ballot who might not have the resources to, you know, get the word out about their campaign? Could AI take the place of volunteers to communicate their platform to voters that they would have never been able to reach otherwise? ROTENBERG: Yes. So, you know, it’s a good exercise, actually, to go online and try ChatGPT, and say: Draft talking points for me as a candidate. I intend to emphasize these three issues and here are the constituencies I’m trying to persuade and see the output. I think you’ll be surprised and impressed. As a first draft, the conversational AI models actually produce very good text. But over time, you know, they need to be interrogated and the risk of misinformation needs to be addressed. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take, I think, probably the final question from Evan Collier, a raised hand. Go ahead, you’re unmuted now. I think we’ll be able to hear you, hopefully. OK, we seem to be having technical difficulties. Maybe we can go next to Commissioner Kevin Boozel from Pennsylvania. Q: Can you hear me? FASKIANOS: Yes. Q: OK, perfect. You know, this has been a wonderful session, I got to say. My name is Kevin Boozel. I’m Butler County Commissioner in Pennsylvania. And I also sit as chairman of our County Commissioners Association. Elections have been extremely, extremely hostile in last couple of years. This is not going to help us. I appreciate the fact that the policies are coming from the federals. I would like to have those sent to us so that we can advocate for them for all of the counties. And, you know, this AI is beyond probably 90 percent of our brains. This is not something we deal with every day. But I think that the literature, educating the public of what to look for. You know, I’m on social media a lot. That’s about as far as I go. But a lot of the misinformation is on there, and then it’s removed. But it says: removed because inaccurate information, or something on the social media. I’m assuming that that’s because of bad actors. I don’t know that for sure. Some people get what’s called Facebook jail, they’re not allowed to post anything for a while. And this is all interactive. So how do you—how do you manage all these social media sites with one system, I guess is my question? And how do we hold people accountable? Because they created such a stir in our elections office in 2020. They over-sent out the applications to people, potentially from third parties. You know, it’s so hard to get a hold of this stuff. And I think AI is generating a lot of this mail in some fashion. I could be wrong. I don’t know. But this mail that people do. And maybe it’s just bad actors doing it by hand. I don’t know. But I just looking for policy. And I’m looking for the information that I can hand to people that are questioning what—the accuracy, again, and what they should do about it. How do they prove it, or how can they report it? ROTENBERG: Well, Commissioner, I have good news and I have bad news. I mean, the good news is I see that Andrew Morgan just posted in the chat the new report from NCSL on AI regulation in the state. So I’m sure that’s going to be a useful resource. But the bad news is that, you know, all of the major companies are dealing now with the—with the concerns around misinformation being amplified through generative AI. And the focus is, of course, the electoral process, because that will be the target for so many deployments over the next year. So you are literally on the front lines. I do think some of the challenges are going to be new and different. And you’ll need to communicate rapidly with your colleagues as these issues emerge. That’s certainly what we’ve experienced over the past year working on AI policy with the computer scientists. And they continue to be astounded. So I imagine there are a few surprises ahead. FASKIANOS: Marc, are there any closing thoughts you want to leave us with? ROTENBERG: Well, as I said at the outset, we’ve done a lot of work with international organizations on AI policy frameworks. And I don’t think there’s any doubt that ensuring trustworthy AI systems is the essential goal. The governance frameworks, the regulatory standards, the technical standards all need to be pursued with that as the—as the central mission. And, you know, it’s very encouraging, listening to the secretary and hearing these questions, the work that’s already underway. And I just, you know, wish you the best, because I know there will be some challenges ahead. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. So thank you, Professor Marc Rotenberg and Secretary Benson, who had to leave. Again, we will share this recording as well as the transcript with all of you, and some of the resources that were mentioned. You can follow Secretary Jocelyn Benson on X at @JocelynBenson, and Professor Marc Rotenberg at @MarcRotenberg. And, as always, we encourage you to visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for the latest developments and analysis on international trends and how they’re affecting the United States. And, as always, we welcome your suggestions. You can email [email protected], as well as thoughts, feedback, and anything else. We always love hearing from you. And thanks for all the important work that you are doing in your communities. This is—it really takes everybody putting their hand in this to make sure that we safeguard our democracy. So thank you again to everybody. ROTENBERG: Thank you END