Boing Boing Staging

Top Trump officials says U.S. under information warfare attack now, Russia wants to 'weaken,' 'divide' ahead of midterms

Xeni Jardin

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, FBI Director Chris Wray, Secretary of State John Bolton, and NSA Director General Paul Nakasone spoke today as a group for the first time about “election meddling” — the information warfare attacks being carried out against the United States right now, a little more than 90 days before the midterm elections, by the adversary we all know is Russia.

As DHS, DNI, FBI, and the Pentagon come together before the public to say Russia is actively attacking our midterm elections, as we have long been warned they’d do, please remember that exactly 2.5 weeks ago Donald Trump stood next to Russian President Vladimir Putin, refused to confront him on the 2016 inforwar campaign our intelligence officials all say happened, and called Putin’s denial of the 2016 infowar “strong and powerful.”

Seeing all the intel chiefs on stage say one thing, and knowing the President — who wasn’t there? — believes another was weird.

All of the directors seemed to be saying they believe the nature of the attacks was overwhelmingly psyops, or online campaigns intended to influence opinion and voting choices, rather than direct attacks on voting infrastructure. But those who were worth listening to also said, anything unexpected could happen at any time.

One piece of cyberwar news stands out from this briefing: NSA and CyberCom Director General Paul Nakasone said the U.S. is prepared to conduct operations against foreign actors who are seeking to interfere in US politics.

That is news.

Nakasone warned “foreign adversaries” sternly:

“U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency are tracking a wide range of foreign cyber adversaries and are prepared to conduct operations against those actors attempting to undermine our nation’s midterm elections.”

“Our forces are well-trained, ready and very capable. I have complete confidence in the forces under my command,” he added, “We continue to bring our full power to bear on foreign adversaries.”

Those are not meaningless words.

Nakasone also said NSA is acting in a new capacity this year, by offering intelligence, information support, and technical expertise to local election officials throughout the USA.

“Our support is ongoing and will continue through the midterms,” Nakasone said, “We are providing intelligence and information leads to FBI on a wide range of foreign adversaries.”

DNI Dan Coats, when asked about this current campaign at the press conference:

“It is not the kind of robust campaign we saw in the U.S. 2016 presidential elections… they stepped up their game bigtime in 2016. We have not seen that kind of robust campaign from them so far. But we’re only one keyboard click away.”

Are the Russians targeting a particular party?

Coats wouldn’t reply directly, but wishwashed with something about infowar affecting all parties, and an intent to sow chaos.

Asked if he understood what happened at the Trump-Putin meeting, Coats said he was “not in a position to understand fully.”

“We are not seeing the same kind of campaigns to attack voting infrastructure” as in 2016, said FBI Director Chris Wray, “but malign influence operations to influence opinion.”

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