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"Specifically, Russia remains the most active foreign threat to
our elections," Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines
said. "The Russian government's goals in such influence
operations tend to include eroding trust in U.S. democratic
institutions, exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the
United States, and degrading Western support to Ukraine."
Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the Senate Intelligence
Committee's chairman, said declassified intelligence assessments
identified not just Russia, China and Iran but also Cuba,
Venezuela, Islamic militants "and a range of foreign hacktivists
and profit-motivated cybercriminals" as seeking to influence
U.S. politics.
"The barriers to entry for foreign malign influence - including
election influence - have become almost vanishingly small,"
Warner said.
The senator listed foreign efforts to influence elections and
public opinion, including harassment operations against
candidates and impersonations of U.S. organizations, such as
Russian imposter social media accounts purporting to represent
the Tennessee Republican party and the Black Lives Matter
movement.
"We've witnessed increasingly large numbers of Americans – of
all political stripes – who simply do not trust U.S.
institutions, from federal agencies and local law enforcement to
mainstream media institutions, coupled with an increased
reliance on easily manipulated internet media platforms," Warner
said.
Congressional committees began looking into reported foreign -
particularly Russian - efforts to influence American public
opinion after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that entities
backed by the Kremlin had sought to boost Republican Donald
Trump's chances of winning the White House in 2016.
Moscow has denied involvement.
Trump is running for reelection this year against Democratic
President Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020.
As the election approaches, officials also are increasingly
worried about the risks that artificial intelligence poses to
elections, including by the use of convincing "deepfakes" that
trick voters.
Separately, a bipartisan group of senators, including Senate
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, called on Congress on Wednesday
to approve $32 billion in funding for AI research to keep the
U.S. ahead of China in the powerful technology.
Wednesday's hearing was the intelligence panel's first open
hearing on the subject during the 2024 U.S. election cycle, with
more scheduled, including a session with unspecified technology
companies.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, additional reporting by Zeba
Siddiqui; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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