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“It was too quiet.”

That was the sentiment expressed by a number of the 45 election officials from 23 states who gathered earlier this month at Harvard for a Belfer Center Defending Digital Democracy (D3P) Midterm After-Action Conference to discuss problems around their November midterm elections.  Most said they experienced significant but mostly unintended misinformation – and some disinformation – along with a number of other challenges to their electoral processes, but not the extensive foreign cyber and other attacks that took place during the 2016 presidential election.

More than 120 election officials from 38 states gathered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this week to participate in role-playing exercises that provided them with tips, tools, and training to fortify their election systems against cyber attacks and information operations. Organized by the Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P) at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the two-day event featured a tabletop exercise (TTX) scenario for officials that simulated attacks on election systems ranging from hacks and social media misinformation to  manipulation of voter information and trust. The state and local election officials learned how to better prepare, defend, and respond to a range of attacks on the integrity of American elections and how to empower their colleagues back home with this knowledge as they prepare for the 2018 and 2020 elections.   

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks to Farah Pandith, senior fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project and adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, about the evolution of presidential rhetoric on acts of terrorism and the groups that perpetrate them.

Two days after presenting his credentials to President Trump, His Excellency Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, the newly appointed Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, expressed optimism about bilateral relations between the two countries. Respondent Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was more cautious in his assessment of the relationship after years of "reset."

Ambassadors Daniel Feldman, Marc Grossman, and Rick Olson, former Special Representatives to Afghanistan and Pakistan, spoke about the status of the conflict and made recommendations for current and future administrations.