The U.S. intelligence community is keenly tracking foreign maligned influence campaigns ahead of November’s elections.
The number of these foreign influence campaigns that have been flagged is higher now than it was before the 2020 or 2022 elections, an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters on Wednesday.
“There have been more nominations [of potential influence campaigns] than we have ever seen,” the official said, declining to provide more data or other details, though they attributed the increased number of campaigns at least in part to the fact that “presidential elections draw more attention from our adversaries.”
When an official nominates intelligence for review, it will usually take about a week, though it can be done in a day if there are external time constraints, such as if it was flagged right before the election.
The official said, “We do consider Russia to be our primary threat for this election,” and described China as taking a “more cautious” approach, while they expect Iran to operate as a “chaos agent.”
The ODNI has an office known as the Foreign Malign Influence Center that deals specifically with foreign threats. This office does not investigate domestic campaigns. They will inform targets of a malicious foreign disinformation campaign, though this notification can happen either publicly or privately depending on the specifics of the case.
The official would not say how many private warnings they have delivered to candidates, political organizations, or local election offices during this election cycle. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines is involved in determining whether a public warning should be issued.
Federal officials have only issued one public warning, and that was in the lead-up to the 2020 election when they warned that groups linked to Iran sent emails to suspected Democratic voters in an effort to intimidate them into voting for then-President Donald Trump.
Last month, lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee expressed concerns about the growing threat of election interference during a hearing with Haines and other senior officials.
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“We’ve got to do a better job of making sure Americans of all political stripes understand what is very probably coming their way over the next … less than six months,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) said. He argued that they have seen “utter disinterest” from social media platforms.
The ODNI official also warned about artificial intelligence and deepfakes, both of which have surfaced in recent elections across the globe.