Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testified at a Senate hearing earlier this month. At a hearing on May 15, she considered Russia to be the biggest foreign threat to this year’s U.S. election.
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Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testified at a Senate hearing earlier this month. At a hearing on May 15, she considered Russia to be the biggest foreign threat to this year’s U.S. election.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
U.S. elections face more threats than ever from foreign actors due to rapid advances in artificial intelligence, the nation’s top intelligence official told lawmakers on Wednesday.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Senate Intelligence Committee during a hearing on risks to the 2024 elections that federal, state and local officials charged with protecting voting integrity face “diverse and complex situations.” threats. But she also said the federal government has “never been better prepared” to protect elections because of lessons learned since Russia’s attempts to influence voters in 2016.
This year, “Russia remains the most active foreign threat to our elections,” Haines said. Russia uses a “vast multimedia influence apparatus” that includes state media, intelligence services and online trolls, with goals “including eroding trust in U.S. democratic institutions, exacerbating U.S. sociopolitical divisions, and undermining Western support for Ukraine “.
But it’s a crowded field, with China, Iran and other foreign powers also trying to influence American voters, Haines added.
In addition, she said, the rise of new artificial intelligence technologies that can create realistic “deepfakes” of candidates and commercial companies that foreign actors can use to launder their activities makes it more complex and harder to attribute. large-scale influence operations become possible.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee chairman, said Wednesday’s hearing was the first in a series focused on the election as lawmakers sought to avoid a repeat of the mistakes of 2016, when Russia The intervention has unnerved lawmakers, officials and social media executives.
Since then, “unfortunately, the barriers to entry for malign foreign influence have become very small,” Warner said. He added that foreign adversaries have more incentives to interfere in U.S. politics to shape their own national interests, while Americans’ trust in institutions across the political spectrum is eroding.
The committee’s top Republican, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, questioned how those responsible for protecting elections would themselves be treated in a climate of distrust. In the days leading up to the November election, he raised concerns about false videos targeting himself or other candidates.
“Who is responsible for letting people know that this thing is fake and not real?” he asked. “I ask myself, whoever is in charge, what are we doing to protect the credibility of this entity…saying this so that the other side doesn’t come out and say, ‘Our own government is interfering’ in the election?”
Haynes said that in some cases it makes sense for her or other federal agencies to debunk false claims, while in other cases it might be better for state or local officials to speak out.
