The U.S. intelligence community is ramping up its work with tech companies ahead of the 2024 election, as cybersecurity professionals search for new ways to combat foreign threats to the American electoral system that appeared unthinkable just four years ago.
The threats are changing, fueled by a raft of new artificial intelligence tools, and the intelligence community is teaming with many new partners as it works to thwart foreign interference in U.S. elections, The Washington Times has learned.
America’s intelligence agencies are turning to cybersecurity companies like never before for help protecting a wide array of infrastructure as the November elections approach.
In 2020, the intelligence community and law enforcement officials huddled with tech platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and others. But these relationships have been damaged by the social media platforms’ politically fraught censorship decisions and by ongoing litigation contending that the Biden administration is trying to pressure the platforms to police political speech online.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber agency had no communication on election interference issues with the social media platforms from July 2023 through at least mid-January 2024, according to Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner.
The Virginia Democrat blames the frozen relationships on cautious Biden administration lawyers who have helped put the U.S. in a worse cyber posture than in 2020. He said at a gathering of cyber professionals on Tuesday that such icy partnerships are thawing.
“Now we’ve shaken up the lawyers enough and that is starting,” Mr. Warner said at the CrowdStrike Gov Threat Summit. “But I think again, those channels of communication, and not only with the social media platforms, but frankly with the outside researchers, with private-sector entities like you guys who are identifying this kind of misinformation and disinformation and election tactics, I don’t think we’re as far along.”
While private talks with the social media platforms went dark, the intelligence community’s interactions with cybersecurity companies lit up.
The NSA’s Morgan Adamski has led the codebreaking agency’s effort to build up its Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, started in 2020 as a venue for America’s spies to turn their unique insights over to trusted tech companies.
“We started with one partner about four years ago, as of today we have over a thousand different partners that we talk to 24/7 through 800 collaboration platforms at any given time,” Ms. Adamski said at CrowdStrike’s event on Tuesday. “It has been game-changing for us from an NSA perspective.”
While the NSA looks outward at foreign threats, the tech companies look inward at what they see on their domestic clients’ networks. CrowdStrike Senior Vice President Adam Meyers said Tuesday that NSA officials had “sent us a lot of stuff” as part of the firm’s participation in the NSA initiative and CrowdStrike collaborated on matters involving election security and threats to the financial sector.
Budgetary challenges
Not every anticipated partnership with the intelligence community goes as planned, however.
The National Intelligence University, which exclusively trains military and government officials with classified security clearances, wanted to work with Taiwan AI Labs on a matter involving election integrity, according to the lab’s founder Ethan Tu. The lab run by Mr. Tu, a top Taiwanese tech expert and former Microsoft manager, built a diagnostic tool for nontechnical users to spot evidence of cognitive warfare on social media.
According to a presentation shared by Mr. Tu, the concept for the collaboration with the spy school was to “examine AI models that have shown promise in evaluating misinformation and disinformation.” The collaboration would create a new working environment for his lab with the U.S. specifically for a “current effort that is focused on protecting election integrity.”
Mr. Tu told The Times that the spy school’s budgetary woes stalled the planned cooperation. A top NIU administrator identified in Mr. Tu’s presentation did not respond to requests for comment. An ODNI spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday that the intelligence community does not have an agreement with Mr. Tu’s lab.
American spy agencies say they are leaving no stone unturned to understand technology’s future effects on elections. For example, former CIA officer Karan Sondhi told The Times he recently spoke to his former colleagues at CIA on blockchain technology and its applicability to elections. He said the technology is used in elections overseas.
“I did a huge talk over at the CIA just a month ago saying, ‘The tech exists for us to give you a receipt and have an immutable record of your vote going onto a ledger,’” Mr. Sondhi said in February. “We could do it today very cheaply.”
Mr. Sondhi, now chief technology officer at cybersecurity company Trellix, said the reception from the CIA was great but one person noted his enthusiasm for the cutting-edge tech’s potential was not enough to keep him working for the spy agency.
The CIA declined to comment.
Intelligence agencies focused on foreign threats such as the NSA and the CIA leave domestic issues to their counterparts at FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, including the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The NSA and U.S. Cyber Command activated their Election Security Group last year to mobilize information from planners and operation specialists to fight against foreign threats to America’s voting process in 2024. The group is focused on foreign threats and leaves related domestic work to the FBI and DHS.
While cyber threats to the homeland are multiplying and concerns about election meddling abound, cybersecurity professionals express greater concern about foreign influence campaigns targeting public opinion and debate than on efforts to hack the voting mechanism themselves.
Mr. Warner said Tuesday that America’s election machinery appears to be in “pretty good shape.”
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.