Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world
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Debora Plunkett
Opening Statement
Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Collins and Distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today to discuss potential security vulnerabilities of our election systems and political campaigns, and solutions to mitigate those vulnerabilities.
My testimony today will focus on identifying and recommending solutions to protect democratic processes and systems from cyber and information attacks. Concrete solutions are needed to address this urgent problem. Foreign nations and non-state actors are not backing down in their efforts to hack systems, alter the outcome, and undermine confidence in our elections.
Our democracy is under attack and at risk. Threats to elections is a national security issue. We must take bold, decisive and expeditious steps to address them, and then assume that they are insufficient given the rise of nation state capabilities and intentions, and the relative known insecurities of elections systems. Threats to campaigns and candidates is also of grave concern as malicious actors have discovered and are exploiting weaknesses in the communications and technology security for candidates. Finally, there are almost certainly election system weaknesses that either have yet to be discovered or even vulnerabilities that have yet to be created, reinforcing the need for constant monitoring. All of these threats must be addressed in order to insure secure and trusted U.S. election processes.
A PDF of Plunkett's testimony is attached. Watch the complete hearing here.
The full text of this publication is available via Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School.
