U.S. intelligence agencies reported Russian,
Chinese and Iranian influence operations
targeting last year’s midterms, and a senior
FBI official recently singled out Beijing as
a particular source of concern. Meanwhile,
Microsoft recently reported that Iranian hackers
had targeted an unidentified presidential
campaign along with government officials,
journalists and prominent expatriate Iranians.
Any foreign effort to interfere in the 2020
election won’t necessarily mirror Russia’s
attack in 2016, when Kremlin-linked military
intelligence officers hacked Democratic emails
and shared them with WikiLeaks to try to help
Republican Donald Trump defeat Democrat
Hillary Clinton.
More likely are the social media campaigns,
like the Russian-based one that shaped public
opinion in the 2016 election and divided
Americans on hot-button topics like race and
religion. Facebook announced recently that it
has removed four networks of fake, state-backed
misinformation-spreading accounts based in
Russia and Iran. The company said the networks
sought to disrupt elections in the U.S., North
Africa and Latin America.
A Senate Intelligence Committee report
described Russia’s social media activities as a
“vastly more complex and strategic assault on
the United States than was initially understood.”
A recent memo prepared by the FBI and
Department of Homeland Security warned
that Russia may use social media to exacerbate
divisions within political parties during
primaries or hack election websites to spread
misinformation on voting processes.