‘Every single American’ a target of election interference, former DHS official says

Foreign adversaries aiming to influence next week’s election and sway the outcome of the presidential race are targeting “every single American” in their efforts, a former Department of Homeland Security official warned Thursday.

Suzanne Spaulding, who led the predecessor organization under DHS that later became the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said that nations including Russia and Iran are ramping up operations because the U.S. election is an existential issue for their position on the world stage.

“We are the target, and Americans should not take that lightly,” Spaulding, now a senior homeland security policy adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on an election security panel at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C.-based national security think tank. “[Americans] should be demanding of policymakers that they have a vigorous response to counter this activity.”

Foreign election disruption efforts have accelerated in the weeks and months leading up to the Nov. 5 presidential election. They’ve been conducted by Russia, Iran and China, the latter two of which have successfully compromised tangible confidential data or communications of the two major presidential campaigns that are deadlocked in national polls.

Russia, meanwhile, has conducted complex and prolonged disinformation campaigns to sway Americans in favor of voting for former president Donald Trump, according to intelligence assessments.

Adversaries will likely amplify disinformation campaigns about election results after Nov. 5 and may focus on domestic efforts to encourage physical violence between next month and Inauguration Day in January, officials warned last week.

“Americans should be confident about the legitimacy of [the election] process and the security of that process, and that’s an important role that CISA plays,” Spaulding said. “CISA makes it very clear that Americans should look to authoritative sources, and to me, that is sources with first-hand information” about developments, she said, encouraging Americans to lean on local officials administering the election next week.

CISA Director Jen Easterly on Wednesday said the agency has “not seen any evidence of foreign adversaries getting into our election infrastructure,” a statement that’s lined up with earlier public assessments from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.