A practical training video for campaign staff and volunteers from all political parties, "Five Things" was produced by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs' bipartisan Defending Digital Democracy Project to help campaigns understand the importance of cybersecurity and learn what they can do about it.

It is a war game with a twist. Instead of army officers, election officials are in charge. Instead of battling against an enemy armed with missiles, defences are choreographed against hackers hidden behind foreign computers. With the US midterm elections fast approaching, more than 160 election officials from across the country have just months to learn how to defend democracy.

When the stolen information was exploited to generate news coverage or concoct “fake news” – such as that Democratic operatives were running a sex ring out of a pizza parlour – we learned some hard lessons in why privacy really matters. I worry the current rhetoric around encryption is ignoring that lesson.

To mark their states' candidate-filing deadlines, Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic Secretary of State of Kentucky, and Mac Warner, the Republican Secretary of State of West Virginia, are distributing the "Cybersecurity Campaign Playbook" to candidates in their states seeking to be on the ballot in 2018.

SPOILER ALERT: Foreign intervention in American politics is as old as our republic. John Adams warned about it in his inaugural address in 1797.

The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School launched a new, bipartisan initiative today called the “Defending Digital Democracy” (DDD) Project.