Analysis & Opinions

A colleague and I recently published an op-ed in Svenska Dagbladet, one of Sweden’s leading daily newspapers, about Russia’s attempts to influence elections in democratic countries. Among the Russian tactics we described was the use of “troll factories” to distribute misinformation. So perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised when we were attacked online, probably by Russian trolls, after our article posted.

Bailing out uneconomic power plants would do nothing to improve cyber security for the energy sector. In fact, it wouldn’t even improve cyber security at the subsidized plants themselves. Meanwhile, it would siphon off much-needed resources from the real work of protecting our energy grid.

President Trump’s effort to improve the climate for dialogue with Putin may be commendable, but his reluctance to object to Russia’s offensive digital campaigns targeting democratic processes is a cause for concern. The indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers is a sharp reminder of Russian capabilities for coming elections, writes two Swedish researchers at Harvard Kennedy School.

Experts have warned a major attack in Britain is a matter of ‘when, not if.’

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.

On Dec. 21, all eyes were on the Republican bill to cut taxes. Yet a bipartisan group of six senators also had their eyes on the far less sexy (but still important!) topic of election hacking. They quietly introduced a bill called the Secure Elections Act that, if passed, would be a good down payment on improving the confidence we can have in the integrity of our elections. This short, stocking-stuffer size review will: review some of the core questions around election security, assess the bill’s provisions to improve information sharing, its grant program, and its bug bounty, and conclude with some tough realism about additional work that needs to be undertaken to protect our elections.

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