JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The whole world is watching this year's presidential election. Some countries are even trying to shape the outcome. The U.S. government has disrupted Russian influence operations targeting U.S. voters, and it says Iran is behind attempts to hack the campaigns of both presidential candidates. We're joined now by NPR's Shannon Bond and Jenna McLaughlin to talk more about interference in the 2024 elections. Hi to both of you.
SHANNON BOND, BYLINE: Hey there.
JENNA MCLAUGHLIN, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: Shannon, I want to start with you. I mean, it's kind of hard to believe it, but we're 39 days out from Election Day. I know that you've been covering foreign influence operations for a while now. Where do things stand now in terms of what other countries are doing?
BOND: Well, intelligence officials say there are three major threats here, right? It's Russia, Iran and China. And they are all increasing their efforts to sway voters and target divisive issues here in the U.S. in this final run-up. And in broad strokes, when talking about what they're doing, Russia is boosting Donald Trump, as it has done in past cycles, and also attacking Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Russia's broad goals remain to undermine democracy and erode support for Ukraine.
Now, when it comes to China, officials say they are not targeting either presidential candidate. They're actually more focused on down-ballot races and where they can find influence there. And then there's Iran, which seems pretty set on undermining Donald Trump.
MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah. Juana, actually, a reminder there - there's a real backstory between Iran and Trump. The Trump administration ordered the killing of the very important Iranian general Qasem Soleimani all the way back in January of 2020. There have been threats to Trump officials ever since, and the campaign's been highlighting those threats to Trump himself recently. But this has been an ongoing thing.
SUMMERS: Jenna, I want to stay with you for a minute. What more can you tell us about Iran's apparent efforts to hack into both presidential campaigns?
MCLAUGHLIN: Right. It appears that they've been targeting both campaigns. It doesn't appear that they got into Biden or Harris' campaigns. They had more success, though, with Trump campaign emails. They've allegedly been sharing some of what they stole with journalists, including research on Trump's running mate, JD Vance, and also, most recently, the September letter from Trump's lawyer to The New York Times.
Actually, today is the first time we've seen a journalist publish the Vance dossier in full. It was on an independent Substack, and the argument was that it sheds light on the Trump campaign's perceptions of Vance's weaknesses, and, you know, the public deserves to know. Though, the blogger, Ken Klippenstein, conceded that the information in the document is pretty much public already.
SUMMERS: Wait. Why is that, Jenna? Why hasn't it been widely reported on?
MCLAUGHLIN: I think there's a couple things to pack there, Juana. I think, first, journalists have changed the way they approach these hack-and-link operations after Russia's success in 2016, when they leaked all those Clinton campaign emails. They're a little bit more hesitant to tweet and write about every single leak document, whether it's the perfect risotto recipe or a legitimate policy, at least without relevant context.
I think ultimately here, it's about newsworthiness. This information has already been public. The Trump campaign hasn't really hidden its frustrations with Vance. And it took Iran a pretty long time to find a journalist who was willing to publish it. Meanwhile, this isn't a super impressive hacking feat. Campaigns are really big. The odds of someone clicking on a phishing email eventually are pretty high.
SUMMERS: Right. And, Shannon, Jenna just mentioned Russia's past meddling attempts, so can you just tell us what we're seeing now?
BOND: Yeah. I mean, Russia is widely considered the most prolific actor when it comes to these sort of foreign interference efforts. I mean, that's why we've seen these aggressive moves recently by the U.S. government to counter and disrupt some of these Kremlin attempts. So we saw the DOJ indict two employees of state broadcaster RT in this alleged scheme to funnel $10 million to pro-Trump American influencers who were posting, you know, anti-Ukraine videos, among other things. The government's also seized domains spoofing U.S. news outlets that Russian operators were using to spread fake news stories.
But that's not all Russia has been doing. It's been using AI to fake audio, video, images and text. And it's been pushing manipulated videos of Harris, including a video - the staged video accusing her of a hit and run that never actually happened.
SUMMERS: Right. Jenna, it does sound like we're getting a lot of information about these attempts at election interference, but can you just tell us, what else are U.S. officials worried about as we move forward?
MCLAUGHLIN: A fair amount. I'd expect ongoing intelligence gathering efforts. You know, every foreign country out there is going to want to know what these candidates are planning to do if they become president. As Shannon mentioned, Russia is extremely capable. They can target voting infrastructure or do more cyber damage, but they are distracted with the war in Ukraine, and there's only so many resources over there.
As far as Iran goes, I talked to Chris Krebs. He's the former head of DHS' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. He said he's worried that Iran's hacking efforts might eventually break through to the mainstream. But he was actually the most concerned about what happens after the election, as the votes are getting counted. If adversaries like Iran can make people think that the voting machines are hacked or the results aren't legitimate, that could cause chaos and even some violence.
SUMMERS: That was NPR's Jenna McLaughlin and Shannon Bond. Thanks to both of you.
MCLAUGHLIN: Thanks.
BOND: Thanks so much, Juana.
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