With all of the controversy surrounding election day, one claim not being made so far is that of foreign interference from countries like Russia, China, or Iran. US officials are claiming they thwarted foreign interference in the election by going on the offensive.
US Cyber Command Chief Gen. Paul Nakasone issued a statement late Tuesday night that said the US took action against “adversaries” to prevent election interference.
“I’m confident the actions we’ve taken against adversaries over the past several weeks and months have ensured they’re not going to interfere in our elections,” Nakasone said. “When it comes to those who threaten our democratic processes, we are equal opportunity disruptors.”
Anonymous officials told The Washington Post that the US undertook a cyber operation within the last two weeks against Iran. In October, US officials claimed Iran was behind a few hundred threatening emails sent to voters in Florida, Alaska, and Arizona.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe also claimed Iran and Russia obtained voter registration data used to send the emails. But officials from the three states targeted by the emails said their voter databases had not been compromised, suggesting that any data that had been obtained was public information.
US intelligence agencies claiming cyber attacks from so-called adversary nations has become a regular occurrence. But locating the source of cyber activity and hacks is difficult, and the agencies rarely offer evidence to back up their claims.
The Iranian email scheme was attributed to Iran within 27 hours, which is the fastest attribution in history, according to The Washington Post. Trying to explain the quick attribution, anonymous officials told Reuters that the hackers made a “dumb mistake” that revealed their IP address.
For their part, Iran denied being responsible for the email scheme and summoned a Swiss envoy to voice their objection to the US. Since Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic ties, Switzerland acts as a mediator between the two countries.
It’s tough to know if there is any truth to US claims about cyberattacks attributed to countries like Iran. What is known is that the US military and intelligence agencies have been going on the offensive in the cyber realm.
In September, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Senate hearing that the FBI has been feeding intelligence to the Pentagon and other intelligence agencies to carry out offensive cyber operations. “An important part of fighting back against our foreign adversaries in the cyber realm is offense as well as defense,” Wrath said.
In July, Yahoo! News reported that President Trump authorized the CIA to conduct offensive cyberattacks in 2018. Sources told Yahoo! News that the CIA has used the authority to carry out attacks on Iran and other adversary nations.
Hmmm
Given that by far the greatest interference in our election process has been at the hands of Facebook and Twitter, why haven’t their corporate charters been revoked? Clearly, they are operating contrary to the public good. More importantly, they now represent a threat to US National Security. Of course it goes without saying if they were owned/controlled by Iranians or Palestinians, who were pushing a Pro Palestinian/Iranian agenda instead of israeli, they would have been labels subversive, terrorists even, and taken down years ago…
No, previous American so-called leaders have done by far the greatest interference in our election process, gerrymandering districts to their own partisan advantage, and enacting systematic policies to disenfranchise minority voters in the name of securing the vote against threats that barely exist. Is it pure white supremacy, or just anti-democratic political hackery? Trump was right when he said our elections are fraudulent, but it’s his party that has most shamelessly undermined democracy a little at a time over many years.
Hmmm
I stand corrected, you are absolutely right, historically speaking. The long and sordid history of Gerrymandering is fundamentally different in one key respect however; Historically speaking, it has been a decidedly bi-partisan effort. Your assertion to the contrary, naming the Republics as the villains, simply isn’t supported by Historical fact.
But during this election cycle, Face Book Twitter and the MSM have, and continue to act quite literally as members of the Biden election campaign….
Which begs the more relevant question no one is asking: What group has a stranglehold on US Main Stream News, Social Media and Hollywood and which party has essentially adopted their political platform, particularly foreign policy? (hint: ” I am a zionist” Joe Biden voted yes to every single military conflict that came down the pike while he was in office) and is therefore culpable in all this? In short, this group has subverted our electoral process reducing the outcome to a meaningless farce. Heads they win, tails America and the American people lose….
Yes, the partisan war has two sides, and arguing over who started the gerrymandering insanity matters little. The coherent effort at racist disenfranchisement is clearly a central GOP strategy for dominance, in violation of our national principles. And tech companies have sided with fact, not the Biden campaign, as far as I’m aware. Hannity and Limbaugh’s juggernaut of coast-to-coast vitriol tiptoe on the verge of treason on a daily basis too, though, which certainly sows disunity.
Of course. If Biden wins, no stain is to be put on the election. So, the spooks are rather optimistic in the outcome. It is amazing to see media like CNN so partisan and so reckless in reporting.. They are calming down a bit as Biden’s path to victory seems assured.
Tinfoil hat idiocy like this is THE political problem of America.
Right. Your hat.
Thank you for clarifying this to me. Your superior intelligence deduced that this is not THE political problem?
Noooo!
Us, tin-hats do notice such minor things — like the disintegration of journalism into for hire pathetic infomercials.
No stain?
Not in the NYT or WaPo.
But here in Michigan? We’ve got a fraudlent Senator and a fraudulent President. We’ve had an election stolen.
Worse, it was done along racial lines. The theft came from inside the Democratic machines in Detroit.
This will have racial consequences. It will be awful for people who had nothing to do with it.
And the next “election?” I wonder how it can be done.
You know what I meant. WaPo and NYT will give credit to spooks and military for saving us from aliens bent in destroying our democracy.
In another wonderful democratic state — household members got TWO mail ballots in their name. I am sure we could not be the only ones. Clearly, the senders are absolved from penalty, and it is up to individuals to commit fraud.
I am surprised that the elections weren’t supervised by the OSCE or the OAS. No wonder nobody seems to trust the results.
This election was not about foreign interference.
It was about widespread and elite sanctioned electoral fraud.
This must have serious consequences. It is inevitable. It has done far more damage than anything Trump did, or anything and foreign interference ever did.