What if Election Interference Becomes Impossible to Trace?

The New York Times is reporting that China is interfering with upcoming elections in Taiwan. The point is to undermine Taiwanese democracy and nudge it toward dictatorship. The NYT characterizes the Chinese operation as “still largely unverified.” The NYT calls the Chinese effort “a multipronged effort to finance pro-Beijing candidates, buy off voters and sow disinformation on television channels and on the internet.”

A NYT story from a couple of weeks ago described the situation:

“A man claiming to be a disillusioned Chinese intelligence operative has told the Australian authorities that China’s military intelligence agencies were directly intervening in politics in Hong Kong and Taiwan, buying media coverage, infiltrating universities, funneling donations to favored candidates and creating thousands of social media accounts to attack Taiwan’s governing party.  

So far, some Western diplomatic officials believe the claims by an asylum seeker named Wang Liqiang to be reliable at least in part, according to two people briefed on the matter. While some of his details appeared speculative and impossible to verify, the officials were taking his claims seriously, the people said.”

This sounds very familiar because it is what has been happening in the US at least since 2014. About that time, the Russian government ramped up its endless disinformation campaign to divide Americans and prod them into irrational distrust, fear, anger, bigotry, disgust and other fact- and logic-killing emotions. Russia’s goal for the US is the same as China’s goal for Taiwan -- destroy democracy and the rule of law and replace it with corrupt tyranny and mass oppression.

A growing problem is proving the scope of Chinese and Russian involvement. As time passes, these kinds of attacks will become harder to trace and prove. Both China and Russia deny any interference in the US despite contrary evidence. There is good reason to believe that over time external enemies will become both more effective in their propaganda and harder to trace, maybe impossible.

In July of 2018, Robert Mueller indicted 12 named Russian intelligence agents as responsible for interfering with the 2016 US election. According to the NYT, the Russian effort included “phishing attacks to gain access to Democratic operatives, to money laundering, to attempts to break into state elections boards, the indictment details a vigorous and complex effort by Russia’s top military intelligence service to sabotage the campaign of Mr. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.”

New York Times - July 13, 2018

No doubt that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was very unhappy, maybe furious, to see how much detail US intelligence could gather on his intelligence agencies and their activities. That situation will probably not be allowed to happen again without some people being shot for failing to hide well enough. Mueller’s indictment not only named names, it also specified days on which some attacks occurred and the role that the indicted officers played. For example, the Mueller indictment included this: “Defendant VIKTOR BORISOVICH NETYKSHO (HeTanmo BHKTOp Bopnconnq) was the Russian military officer in command of Unit 26165, located at 20 Komsomolskiy Prospekt, Moscow, Russia. Unit 26165 had primary responsibility for hacking the DCCC and DNC, as well as the email accounts of individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign.”

The day will probably come when it will no longer be possible to trace the origin of Russian and Chinese attacks on democracies. That day may already be here. Invisibility of attacks adds to the plausibility of the plausible deniability that China and Russia routinely deploy to try to deceive the world and their own people about how they operate and what their goals are. To the extent that China, Russia and other hostile nations are able to hide and deny their online activities, that adds to the pressure on open democracies to somehow defend themselves against the onslaught of tyrants.

It is not clear to what extent our president’s refusal to accept the reality of the situation damages American security and democracy. Given that Russia has been relentless with disinformation campaigns against the US for decades, one could credit them with some of the blame, e.g., maybe about 20%, for the rise of the anti-fact, anti-reason, pro-distrust mindset that has poisoned American conservatism and populism. And, it may be beginning to poison the rest of American society, if it hasn't already accomplished that to some extent.