Securing Democracy Dispatch

ASD’s Co-Managing Director Rachael Dean Wilson and Senior Fellow Bret Schafer will join World Affairs Council Pittsburgh for an in-person discussion of threats to the 2024 US presidential election and lessons in resilience from around the world. Join us on September 25 and find out more here!

The contested election in Venezuela last July revived false narratives online about voter fraud in past and future US elections, Senior Fellow Bret Schafer finds in ASD’s first analysis in a series covering online conversations related to the security and administration of the 2024 US elections.

“People need to understand the complexities of the information space, and then interact with these platforms and their phones differently”, Co-Managing Director Rachael Dean Wilson said during a panel discussion at the McCain Institute about defending US democracy in the digital age.

Russian diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week:

• US Allegations Against RT: Russian propagandists responded with a predictable blend of sarcasm and moral indignation to the US Department of State’s allegations that RT is coordinating influence operations around the globe. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the accusations “xenophobia, racism, and Nazism in its purest form” and an “attack on press freedoms”. RT employees took a different tack, with RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan sarcastically stating that RT employees were “broadcasting from KGB headquarters” and “running out of popcorn … watching what else the [US] government will come up with”. After Meta (which is banned in Russia due to alleged “extremist activity”) banned Russian state media from its platforms, the Kremlin said that the action would “complicate normalization of relations” and that Meta is “discrediting itself”. 
• Trump Assassination Attempt: After news broke that Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspect in a potential assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, was potentially motivated by his support for Ukraine, the Kremlin responded that there are “consequences for playing with fire”. Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev, echoing claims made after the July attempt on Trump’s life, went a step farther, suggesting that Routh could have been “hired by the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev for this assassination attempt”. Russian embassies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs took the opportunity to lob a broader attack against Western volunteers in Ukraine, with Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokeswoman Zakharova referring to them as “inveterate swindlers and fraudsters”.  

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week: 

• Exploding Pagers: PRC state media extensively covered the explosion of hundreds of pagers in Lebanon in what appears to be an attack by Israel targeting members of Hezbollah. On September 17 and 18, CGTN and its various affiliates posted 11 videos about the incident on YouTube. Xinhua and the People’s Daily relayed condemnations by  Iran’s Foreign Minister denouncing “terrorist action by Israel”. On X, CGTN reporter Shen Shiwei implied that iPhones might be next, while China Daily EU bureau chief Chen Weihua wondered whether US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken lied when telling reporters that the United States was still gathering facts about the incident.
• Socialist Democracy: Last Saturday was the 70th anniversary of the National People’s Congress, the PRC’s legislative body. For the occasion, PRC leader Xi Jinping gave a speech hailing the “whole-process people’s democracy in China”. PRC state media outlets interviewed several expats and foreign experts praising the superiority of the PRC’s governance model. In particular, Xinhua sat down with an American expat deploring that “in America, my vote sometimes doesn’t matter”. Similarly, the Global Times argued that “efforts to impose so-called Western-style democracy” have harmed the “Global South” and that “political violence has always been part of American politics”.

United States warns that Russia deploys RT for intelligence operations, military procurement: The US Department of State declassified US intelligence findings that show that Russia has maintained an intelligence-gathering unit within its state media outlet RT to conduct covert global influence operations and procure military equipment on crowdfunding platforms for Russian units in Ukraine. The State Department also announced a campaign to inform countries worldwide of RT activities and their risks. Senior Fellow Bret Schafer told the Dispatch, “RT has framed these allegations as an effort to suppress ‘dissenting voices’ and an attack on press freedoms, but it has long been obvious that RT is not, in any traditional sense, a legitimate news-gathering organization. In the past two months alone, ​RT employees have been implicated in three separate cases involving covert influence campaigns targeting the United States. Throughout Russia’s war with Ukraine, RT has been an outlet for leaks clearly directed by Russian intelligence. These are not, to put it mildly, normal journalistic activities.” 

Ariz. systems error puts eligibility of almost 100,000 voters in limbo: An Arizona state systems error, discovered by an elections worker, related to how the Motor Vehicle Division relays drivers’ license information to the voter registration system could impact the voting eligibility of nearly 100,000 Arizonans. With an emergency petition from the Maricopa County Recorder’s office, the question of whether or not affected voters must show proof of citizenship to vote on the full ballot in November is now before the Arizona Supreme Court. Co-Managing Director Rachael Dean Wilson said, “The best election officials know that their job is to catch errors and correct them quickly and transparently. That is exactly what happened in this case in Arizona. This is a long-running systems error that could feed into false narratives about non-citizen voting, but action was swift once it was discovered. The clear communication and transparency from state and county officials, as well as the petition for a quick ruling, could actually increase trust among some.”

In Case You Missed It

• Iranian-backed actors emailed information stolen in a hack of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to US President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign earlier this summer, though no Biden campaign officials opened the message.
• Meta banned RT and other Russian state media networks from its platforms amid revelations that their organizations were used for Russian foreign influence operations.
• Kremlin-aligned groups disseminated a video online featuring an on-screen actor falsely alleging that Vice President Kamala Harris hit her in a hit-and-run car accident 13 years ago, according to Microsoft.
• US authorities are investigating suspicious mail sent to election officials in at least 17 states, some of which contained unknown substances and led to building evacuations.
• Election officials have warned that ongoing issues with the US Postal Service could delay the receipt and counting of mailed ballots.

Отставки в Украине. Зеленский о переброске войск. RT под санкциями. Школьная трагедия в Джорджии (Resignations in Ukraine. Zelenskyy on the transfer of troops. RT is under sanctions. School tragedy in Georgia). Senior Fellow Bret Schafer interviewed on Russian Service of the Voice of America

中共建西藏国际宣传中心 分析: 好故事遮不住残酷现实 (The Tibet International Propaganda Center of the CPC Analysis: A good story cannot hide the cruel reality). ASD/Brookings Institution research/“Winning the Web” highlighted in VOA Chinese

“It is just round one of a much longer fight.”

—US FBI Director Chris Wray, announcing a successful operation to take down a PRC-sponsored hacking network targeting US critical infrastructure on September 18.

The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the author alone.