Securing Democracy Dispatch

News and Commentary

DOJ forms cyber task force: Attorney General Sessions announced that the Department of Justice is forming the Cyber-Digital Task Force to “better combat global cyber-threats, including efforts to interfere with elections or damage critical infrastructure.” The task force, which will include various branches of DOJ, will “examine use of the Internet to spread violent ideologies and recruit followers, how hackers breach private corporate and government data, and law enforcement challenges posed by strong encryption.” The task force’s findings are due in June. (Reuters, DOJ, The Wall Street Journal)

Twitter cracks down on bots amid new analysis of the platform: Twitter announced Wednesday that it is making “changes … to limit the ability of users to perform coordinated actions across multiple accounts” in an effort to crack down on the use of bots on its platform. The new rules will “not allow people to use software to simultaneously perform other actions such as liking or retweeting from multiple accounts,” a practice that gives “a false impression of how viral it is among real people.” Yoel Roth, part of Twitter’s policy team, said that “These changes are an important step in ensuring we stay ahead of malicious activity targeting the crucial conversations taking place on Twitter — including elections in the United States and around the world.” New analysis of the reach of Russian trolls during the 2016 president campaign conducted by Adam Badawy of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles finds that “U.S. conservatives spread tweets by Russian trolls over 30 times more often than liberals,” with “the most retweets of troll content … from Tennessee and Texas.” According to Badawy “text analysis on the content shared by trolls reveals that they had a mostly conservative, pro-Trump agenda.” And Rob Barry in The Wall Street Journal finds that Russian trolls were tweeting long before the 2016 U.S. election about “contaminated water” and “tainted turkey” as “practice for the political season.” According to Keir Giles at Chatham House, “They were doing test runs of what happens if we launch this kind of Twitter attack or attempt to start this kind of panic. Sit back, refine your results, see what works and what doesn’t.” (Twitter, Reuters, TechCrunch, Technology Review, The Wall Street Journal)

Calls to counter Russian interference before 2018 midterms: Congressional Democrats proposed providing the FBI $300 million to “fight potential foreign interference in this year’s midterm elections.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer write “Congress must respond immediately to attacks on our democracy by a foreign adversary.” They propose using the funds to counter foreign interference on social media platforms, and call to increase funding for DHS and the Election Assistance Commission to “work with state and local governments to bolster the security of election infrastructure.” The Washington Post Editorial Board calls on the GOP to “do something about” Russia’s continued interference, stating “President Trump has shown an alarming unwillingness to respond to Russia’s hostile influence campaign during the 2016 election and to counter its effort to interfere in this year’s vote. That means Congress and the states must step in …” The Ed Board calls on states to “prioritize replacing voting machines that leave no physical paper trail with machines that do,” as well as conduct regular audits of sample paper ballots. Robert Blackwill and Philip Gordon call on Congress to conduct “rigorous” oversight of the Executive Branch to ensure CAATSA sanctions are implemented; our elections infrastructure is safeguarded; campaign finance laws and those regulating online ads are updated; and “fully fund, and even go beyond, the administration’s request for an additional $4.8 billion to bolster the NATO presence in Eastern Europe.” On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of former national security officials, including Alliance for Securing Democracy Advisory Council members Mike Rogers and Rick Ledgett, sent a letter to Congress asking Senators to pass the Secure Elections Act sponsored by Senators Lankford and Klobuchar. The Act would “empower states to address rising cybersecurity risks to American elections without undermining their control over the administration of those elections.” And Clint Watts in The Daily Beast calls on the U.S. government to “standardize and improve cybersecurity of digital voting machines and voter databases,” and “institute paper ballot backups that provide a verifiable audit trail to confirm results.” Watts calls on Congress to pass the Honest Ads Act and levy more sanctions against Putin and his inner circle. (The Washington Post, The Hill, GMF, The Daily Beast)

Experts weigh in on countering Russian active measures: Writing about the Mueller indictment, Alina Polyakova finds that it “provides the clearest blow-by-blow assessment of how Moscow has adapted its influence operations for the 21st century. The basic tactics are straight from the Soviet ‘active measures’ playbook: a continuous spread of disinformation during the Cold War to discredit American political leaders (including Martin Luther King, Jr.), fuel ethnic tensions and undermine trust in U.S. intelligence agencies.” Joshua Geltzer and Charles Kupchan write in The Washington Post that “Washington has been focused on countering Russia’s geopolitical resurgence while doing little to address the equally pressing threat posed by Moscow: its success in sowing discord within and among Western democracies,” calling on the U.S. to “be as vigilant in countering Russian interference as we are in countering terrorists.” The Economist reminds readers that while “The cyber elements of such activities get the most attention … much of Russia’s activity consists of techniques from the pre-digital Soviet manual: marshaling human assets, be they active spies or sympathetic activists; funding organizations that may be helpful; and attempting to influence the media agenda.” Further, according to The Economist, extremist political parties throughout Europe have ties to Russia, but “strikingly lax election-finance laws” make it difficult to attribute direct funding of the parties. And Richard Haass  advocates for a stronger response in Project Syndicate, writing “Americans must recognize that defense is not enough;” the government must “find its voice and criticize” Russia, and academics, journalists, and foundations must “publicly detail the corruption that characterizes Putin’s rule.” (Axios, The Washington Post, The Economist, Project Syndicate)

RT and Sputnik foment disinformation around the Mueller indictment: As DRF Lab reported previously, “much of the information offered in [the Mueller] indictment was already available in open sources,” including the existence of the IRA which journalists had uncovered four years ago. However, DFR Lab finds that just moments after the Mueller indictment landed, RT and Sputnik “published material, which followed a familiar pattern of dismissing, distracting, distorting, and denying allegations made in Mueller’s indictment,” which the U.S. fringe media picked up and incorporated into its reporting. While this may not indicate “command and control between the groups,” it does show “overlapping objectives in messaging” and is another indication of Russian-backed disinformation making its way through the media ecosystem. The three main themes promoted by the outlets included: “it has no effect,” “scope blown out of proportion,” and “not pro-Trump,” which was combined with a denial by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. RT and Sputnik also published articles to distract attention away from and to distort the indictment itself. (DFR Lab)

Governments respond to Russian meddling: The Washington Post this week reported on efforts by Sweden to inoculate its upcoming elections against Russian interference, including training local election workers, efforts by tech companies to combat disinformation, and improving cybersecurity measures, with Swedish officials claiming “their preemptive actions may already have dissuaded the Kremlin from interfering.” According to Mikael Tofvesson, head of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, which was designed to protect Swedish society from interference, “It would be very risky for a foreign nation to do this now … It could risk a backlash. It would be an exposure of their methods.” Canada’s Karina Gould, minister of democratic institutions, called for greater dialogue between the tech community and government in the coming months, following a report from Canada’s Security Intelligence Service which states that “Increases in data transmission capacity coupled with a shift toward programmatic advertising have resulted in a precipitous decrease in the ability of traditional journalism to mediate the quality of public information … Conventional journalism has been partially displaced by a torrent of data from an infinite number of originators. Within that torrent is a current of lies and distortions that threatens the integrity of public discourse, debate, and democracy.” Gould asked "Are we going to see something more robust in the next six months? If we don't see something more robust in the next six months, then we need to take action," which could mean more regulation of the social media companies. (The Washington Post, CBCNews, The Toronto Star)

Chinese influence operations again front and center: As Australian PM Turnbull met with President Trump on Friday, Senator Marco Rubio called on the leaders to “develop joint strategies to counter China’s growing political interference,” stating the Chinese are “in the long game to fundamentally reshape the postwar liberal order.” Josh Rogin writes in The Washington Post that “China’s massive foreign influence campaign in the United States takes a long view, sowing seeds in American institutions meant to blossom over years or even decades,” and urges lawmakers to pay attention to the “Confucius Institutes, the Chinese government-sponsored outposts of culture and language training.” In a new book by Australian intellectual Clive Hamilton, “Silent Invasion: How China is Turning Australia into a Puppet State,” Hamilton claims that Chinese agents have “infiltrated” Australian society which include “billionaires with shady histories and tight links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), media owners creating Beijing mouthpieces, ‘patriotic’ students brainwashed from birth, and professionals marshalled into pro-Beijing associations set up by the Chinese embassy.” Most concerning is his claim that Chinese-Australian academics are transferring “potentially sensitive security-related research — into space, artificial intelligence, and computer engineering — from universities to the Chinese military.” And a U.K. parliamentarian Conservative Bob Seely is asking for Australia’s help in fighting Russian interference given its own “experience in trying to counter Beijing's ability to shape Australian politics.” (The Australian, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, The Sydney Morning Herald)

Our Take

Laura Rosenberger and Jamie Fly teamed up for Susan Glasser's Global Politico podcast to discuss the Kremlin's disinformation campaigns, in which they encourage a bipartisan response to Russia's activities as they state, "America is under attack, has been under attack, remains under attack, and … the U.S. government is not doing enough about it." (Politico)

Laura Rosenberger and Jamie Fly write in Foreign Affairs about the role of the tech sector in protecting our democracy, finding that social media “platforms have an incentive to ensure authentic communication can continue on their platform. Otherwise users will begin to lose trust in the platform as a valuable forum, and advertisers will begin to doubt the efficacy of spending resources on.” Their recommendations include calling on the “tech companies to admit that an ongoing problem exists, accept help from the government and independent researchers, and expose challenges in a timely manner … [and] develop a mechanism to share threat information about foreign interference and coordinate responses with each other.” (Foreign Affairs)

Bret Schafer spoke about the strategic use of Russian-linked accounts on NPR’s morning edition, discussing how the Hamilton 68 dashboard tracked Russian-influenced accounts promoting extreme positions after the Parkland shooting in order to inflame the gun control debate, a key divisive issue in the United States. (NPR)

Dave Salvo appeared on WBUR’s “On Point” following Mueller’s indictment last week of 13 Russians and 3 entities to discuss how Russian meddling in our democracy did not start with the 2016 election, nor did it end there. (WBUR)

Hamilton 68 dashboard

Hamilton 68 dashboard: On Wednesday morning, a flurry of accusations spread across Twitter accusing the platform of banning accounts based on their political leanings. For the next two days, #twitterlockout was the top hashtag on Hamilton, as Russian-linked accounts (and, it should be noted, RT) helped promote the narrative that Twitter was engaging in a “thought crackdown.” Our research, however, showed that most of our monitored accounts as well as many of the most vocal critics of the “purge” lost less than 1 percent of their followers — suggesting that the lockout was likely nothing more than a cleanup of the most obvious bot accounts.

Quote of the Week

“These are deeply disturbing attacks ... and one reason why the Kremlin is emboldened is because there has been no serious pushback from the U.S. ... This kind of interference undermines American democracy, and we cannot allow it to continue to happen.”

- Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Dartmouth College, February 20, 2018

Worst of the Week

As students of the Parkland shooting rallied behind gun reform last week, conspiracy theorists swarmed online, pushing multiple “false-flag” narratives and accusing the students of being “crisis actors.” While all of these narratives originated in the U.S. media, Russian-linked accounts helped promote many of them, with no fewer than five conspiracy-laden articles appearing among the top ten URLs on Hamilton 68 during the course of the week. From accusations that the students were under the control of George Soros (a favored Kremlin boogeyman) to claims that one of the students was coached by the FBI and CNN in advance of the shooting, Russian-linked accounts cherry-picked the worst-of-the-worst stories circulating around the Internet. (Gateway Pundit, The Hill)