Will U.S. Elections Become Cyber Battlegrounds?
With the Senate acquittal of President Trump, will presidential candidates now routinely tap foreign governments for help in our elections? It is unlikely any of the Democratic candidates that emerge from this year’s early primaries and caucuses would to it — norms against it are too deeply embedded in the culture of the party and Democrats have just spent the last year telling the country that such behavior is corrupt. Beyond this cycle, however, if Democratic candidates see Trump and his successors doing it, there is a real risk that it becomes a standard part of the presidential campaign playbook for both parties. In the Democrats case, they could come to think they were being played for suckers if they didn’t.
The newly blurred rules still probably put the words “quid pro quo” out of bounds, but there are plenty of ways that candidates can send the message that they are ready to deal. Foreign countries would get the hint that interference would be welcome and rewarded. Even if you buy that Trump wasn’t intending to send that signal to Ukraine, his administration’s behavior has now been ratified as allowable for whatever purpose it may serve.
Beyond party culture and ethics, Democrats are unlikely to see mirroring President Trump’s approach with Ukraine as fruitful this year. The Democratic equivalent would be to ask Scotland to investigate Trump’s alleged broken promises in connection to a golf course investment in that country, or call on the government of Saudi Arabia to investigate the push by top Trump administration officials to enrich Trump political allies by building nuclear power plants there. But given all the investigations closer to home, completed or ongoing, into shady practices of the president’s charity, alleged misuse of his public power for his own enrichment, tax schemes, obstruction of justice, his Ukraine dealings, etc. — Democrats are unlikely to see additional investigations by foreign governments as making much of a dent.
In any case, the biggest worry isn’t scurrilous investigations — it’s online propaganda and hacking such as the Russians did for the 2016 Trump campaign, according to U.S. intelligence agencies. Candidate Trump famously publicly asked for Russian hacking: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” Whether he was joking or not, after 2016 no one would think anyone saying such a thing is joking. But, as with asking for investigations, the bar has been set.
Although the cyber warfare focus has been on the countries most advanced in the art, the U.S., China, Russia, Israel and the U.K., Saudi Arabia’s recent hack of Jeff Bezos’s cell phone shows that countries the world over are increasing their capabilities. There are plenty of countries that have a wish list for an incoming American presidential administration, or concerns about how a new administration’s policy would affect them. We don’t know whether there’s a candidate in our future who would turn American foreign policy on its head in exchange for political favors — but there are many small things the U.S. can do that have a big impact on other countries. Ukraine is looking down the barrel of Russian military might — providing aid to Ukraine is a small portion of global U.S. foreign assistance but hugely important for Ukraine.
There is a great risk for our democracy if our political parties don’t pull back from this precipice. To put it at its most extreme, we could end up with our elections being decided by the relative hacking power of other countries more than the will of the U.S. electorate. When elections are close, it doesn’t take much to affect the outcome. A cyber-attack causing power outages at a few Republican dominated polling places in Michigan, or on traffic signals on roads leading to a few Democratic polling places in Pennsylvania, could turn an election — let alone direct attacks on vote counting or fueling a propaganda machine.
We can have laws that seek to stop this, we can invest in greater cyber security, but it will be hard to address every vulnerability. Domestic cyber-attacks are potentially a problem as well, but at least domestic actors are within the reach of our laws. We should not allow our elections to become proxy cyber wars between other countries — we want their outcomes to reflect the will of the American people. And we certainly don’t want a president beholden to another country in exchange for a political favor. What we need more than anything is a unequivical understanding that neither party will seek, or allow itself, to benefit from such interference.
