Spy agencies’ foreign influence hub says it is issuing more private warnings

The U.S intelligence community’s hub for fighting election interference by foreign adversaries has issued warnings to more targets of such campaigns over the last year than since it was established in 2022, according to officials.

The uptick in private notices by the Foreign Malign Influence Center coincides with the 2024 presidential race — which national security officials say faces threats from a diverse group of adversaries using emerging technologies like generative artificial intelligence. The warnings go to political campaigns, companies and other organizations.

Recorded Future News first reported that Jessica Brandt, a disinformation expert, had been picked to lead the center in late 2023, along with a new deputy who also serves as the intelligence community’s “election threats executive” — the office that first began the notification process in 2019. The hub, housed in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, does not track domestic actors or groups.

Despite the leadership moves, Senate lawmakers last month voiced bipartisan concerns that the U.S. national security apparatus is ill-prepared to deal with the multi-faceted dangers and urged key leaders to make sure there are processes in place when foreign influence campaigns are detected.

Russia is the “primary threat” to Election Day, an ODNI official told reporters on Wednesday. Officials “fully expect” that Moscow will seek to undercut American support for Ukraine, as well as undermine the public’s faith in U.S. institutions and the election outcome.

Meanwhile, China is “more cautious” and is cognizant of the potential blowback if Beijing is caught trying to shape the country’s political opinions, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the center’s work. 

The hub is also focused on Iran’s role as a “chaos agent,” using disinformation to possibly promote physical violence. Tehran was responsible for the only public warning issued to date when officials announced Iranian hackers were behind threatening emails sent to some voters ahead of the 2020 election.

“We’re taking a very proactive approach,” the official said.

A second ODNI official declined to say how many private warnings the center has provided through its “notification framework” and stressed the hub only offers information to political candidates, companies and others but doesn’t take further action itself, leaving it to other agencies, like the FBI, that could pursue criminal charges.

Nonpartisan process 

Officials explained the vetting process for what is shared. The intelligence must meet a set of criteria, including originating from a foreign source, being “severe” in nature — a subjective determination — and actionable and specific. It is then passed to a “credibility assessment group” that digs into the material’s sourcing.

If it doesn’t pass muster, the process stops there, the first official said. But if it does, it is then given to a group of “election security leads” — senior career civil servants from across the government selected to keep the process nonpartisan.

That group meets regularly, including a two-hour session on Wednesday. If further action is required it then gets kicked up to the “leaders group,” made up of the heads of various federal entities and helmed by DNI Avril Haines. 

The second official said notification system, which has been approved by both the Trump and Biden administrations, has “come a long way” and that the window from the material’s initial nomination to a decision to give a warning is about a week but can be sped up to less than 24 hours if the threat is imminent, as was the case in 2020.

The first official pushed back against recent Senate criticism that the framework is a “bureaucratic nightmare,” arguing the spy community shouldn’t rush to judgment but instead act “thoughtfully and carefully.”

“We go where the intelligence takes us.”

As part of its work, the influence center relies on an interagency consortium of media forensic experts, who use a mix of proprietary and commercially available tools and open source intelligence, to examine pieces of media and discern if they have been manipulated.

Barreling toward Election Day 

The malign influence center is prepping a “summer of exercises” to get ready for November, the second official said.

Plans include rehearsing processes with the agencies that participate in the notification process, such as the Homeland Security, Treasury and Justice departments. There will also be specific exercises on authentication, such as spotting deep fakes, and regular media briefings focused on threats.

In addition, the center will work with the Cybersecurity and infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to bolster its ties at the state and local levels — as down ballot races increasingly become a target for influence campaigns — and build a “war room” for Election Day itself.

However, even with all the preparation the second official admitted it is “impossible to measure” if an uncovered foreign malign influence campaign was ultimately successful or not.

Editor's Note: Story updated 4:15 p.m. Eastern, June 13, with additional details about the history of the program, and to clarify the explanation of the program's process for sharing information.