The Real Hacking Threat

“AHEAD OF THE 2020 U.S. ELECTIONS,” National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina declared in an Aug. 7 statement, “foreign states will continue to use covert and overt influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters’ preferences and perspectives.” Such activities may be less dramatic than an armed attack, but they’re even more sinister. And although there are ways to counter them, the United States is running out of time to get it right.

In the run-up to the November vote, the United States’ rivals, Evanina explained in his remarks, will try to “shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people’s confidence” in their democracy. In his agency’s assessment, while China works to discredit U.S. President Donald Trump, Russia is aiming to undermine Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

But “it’s not about that election or the other, that candidate or the other,” Marko Mihkelson, a member of parliament for Estonia’s liberal Reform Party, said in August. Mihkelson