[silence] im going to call this hearing this order and welcome today witnesses and warn them that outset we have finished up one vote and well have another one and work through that process. But people are slipping in and out, i think you understand. Our Witnesses Today are director of National Intention jen easterly cybersecurity and agency and assistant director of the National Security branch at the fbi. Welcome to all of you. Todays hearing build on this committees bipartisans efforts since 2016. To educate the public on the heintentions of foreign adversaries seeking to undermine the integrity of our democracy systems. And to ensure that u. S. Government is postured to protect our elections from those foreign threats. Abroad inner Agency Task Force tasked from protecting from two forms of election interference weve seen since 2016 interference efforts often cyberenabled that target election infrastructure, and separately, influence efforts that seek to affect elections through covert or other illegal tactics. Since 2016, we have held both open and closed hearings ahead of each federal election, featuring testimonies from u. S. Officials social media executives and open Source Research executives. This isor the first open hearing of this campaign season. But more will be coming. Now, i want to start by recalling the fact that i fear at times since particularly 2016 cycle was so long ago that the Public Perception passed foreign election meddling has too often been treated as something that was trivial or not of major league. But as this committee is exhausted bipartisan investigation into russian meddling in 2016 election showed, and as declassified Community Activity showed foreign influence, foreign influence effortses go well beyond simple online trolling for traditional propaganda. For an election efforts in the last eight years, have among other things involved. Effortsed to infiltrate both online and in person a range of u. S. Organizations on both side toto the political spectrum with promoting social and rainfall strife. Weve seen this as well successful impersonation of political and u. S. Organizations. With the russian ira memorably back in 2016 with twitter and Facebook Accounts for the tennessee gop and black livings matter both of those accounts were actually bigger than the real organizations. Weve seen harassment and sting operations against u. S. Candidates. Particularly when we saw just last cycle prn influence operatives bully and humiliate a congressional candidate of chinese heritage weve seen successful efforts to actually organize real world political rallies. Back in 2016 again, with one almost coming to real life violence russian had simultaneous rallies in houston one with antimuslim event taking place at the same time and place as a muslim cultural events roughly Law Enforcement intervened. We haveti also seen personalized emails sent in 2020 by iranian influence actors posing as proud boys which Trump Administration leadership did a good job of pointing out globally many of the same foreign influence actors aggress evely meddling in the election of our democracy allies. The prc influence actors aggressively sought to shape the outcome of Taiwan Election earlier this year. Includingm promoting narratives that thelu election has been rigged as election day neared. More recently literally last few weeks, czech and belgium officials have operaive its to shape outcome of junes eu elections with the goal of undermining european support for ukraine. Or and a wide range of media open Source Research and other sources as similarly pointed to russianco influence operations d one of theco cases i think thats particularly interesting a country that when russia invaded 25 plus supported ukraine. A few years later, due to russian efforts, now has a prorussian present in literally 55 have been told saying they think that the United States started the war in ukraine. Weve seen recently as well deep of the president have been widely circulating, and fresh off the presses just a couple of hours im not going to ask our witnesses to testify. But a new russian effort geared at somehow saying that zelenskyy and cia are working to undermine all elections in this year. The barriers to entry for influence have unfortunately become incredibly small. Since 2016 weve seen declassified intelligence assessments name a whole host of influence actors who have engaged in or at least contemplated election influence and interference activities. Not only russia not only iran or prc but also cuba venezuela terrorist organizations like hezbollah and range of foreign activist and profit motivated cybercriminals. One of the things why i think this hearing is so important in many ways our adversaries could be more sophisticated and aggressive in both scale and scope and this election even than in prior years let me tell you why i think thats the case. First our adversaries are more incentivized than ever to intervene in all elections because they can understand that it could affect their particular national interest. Inis the case of russia, putin clearly understands that influencing Public Opinion and shaping elections in the United States is a cheap way to erode american and western support for ukraine. Similarly, we have seen the conflict between israel and hamas has been Fertile Ground for disinformation since october 7th. Second, the scale and sophistication of these sorts of attacks against our elections can now be accelerated by a. I. Tools. The truth is the kind of audio and video manipulation that even as recently as four years ago and clearly eight years ago still a challenge now can happen at a speed and scale due to a. I. Tool thats unprecedented literally not a week or month that goes by that a. I. Video and audio tools dont continue to improve. And i just on a personal note i feel that congress inability to pass any new guardrails in the last 18 months for a. I. Enabled mischief could pose a huge problem. Weve seen fake video president trumple, embracing dr. Fauci seen audios of President Biden telling people to use a dirchts voting day in New Hampshire truth is these tools are out there and growing in their danger. Third, we seen unfortunately increasingly large number of all americans of political stripes across the political spectrum who dont trust u. S. Institutions from federal agency and to here to main Mainstream Media rely on those that pop up on the web and since 2022 theres a Litigation Campaign that is sought to undermine the federal governments ability to share on any kind of voluntary basis vital threat information, with social media platforms. Unfortunately since 2022, weve seen from some of the same social media platforms considerable disinvestment and certain cases utter disinterest iny platform integrity by some f those social Media Companies. And area where the vicechairman have worked close together weve seen the rise of a dominant social media platform tiktok with ownership based in the country that is clearly adversarial in terms of their intense on our elections. It is these kinds of attempts by foreign actors and adversaries to sew disinformation undermine confidence in election and feed discord that americans can expects their federal agencies both Law Enforcement and intelligence to help defect detect and defeat. Weve got to do a better job of making suree americans of all political stripes understand what is very probably coming their way over the next less than 16 months less than 16 months i hope today witnesses can provide comprehensive overview of these and current threats and anything that may be emerging and what we can do in a Collaborative Cooperative bipartisan way to make sure that public is aware of this i think dramatic threat to our democracy with that ill turn it over to vicechairman. Funk for calling this hearing and thank you for being here on this important topic and for the next quarter century but it is hopefully one we get to learn from experience on. I think it is important that the outset because i know this will be discussed as a election threat to the election and the broad topic and bifurcated in hacking into the voter database or messing with early voting unofficial reporting system of a state things of that nature thats more easily understood. And then theres this whole topic of influence. And it is not just an election but also in our debates, i mean, we saw elements of that during covid and during policy debates here. On a range of topics, the propaganda has been always a weapon of war i think you can do it at scale more convincing in ways that it is spread in our difficult to contain in particular and weve seen this globally. Weve seen increasing amount of damage thats being done to the reputation of the United States and parts of africa. Byre very active effort to undermine make life very difficult if our diplomats to serve and russians have moved in and gained greater influence so all of that is happening at a global scale and the chairman has talked about some of the countries that are faced efforts to meddle in their election and steer outcome in somer cases successfully. But today i think the focus is going to be on how this could be used in a election and focus on elections for a moment, and the reason why, i want to really focussen that i think well hear a lot about the tools that are available. The at capabilities that someone has to put out a. I. Video to to spread narratives that are difficult to knock down and so forth. The weaponization of the information, what i think i hope toth learn a little bit more abt is when this happens, if this happens, who is in charge of responding to it . Have we fought through the process of whatt do we do and oe of the h scenarios occurs becaue i dont think eve a clear understanding of who is in charge and how we would respond who would take the lead . I know if a hurricane is headed to the United States and National Hurricane center, is going to put meteorologist on the air who are going to describe to us this is a hurricane. This is what it looks like this is how strong its going to be when it gets here and put out forecast. It is beginning to issue warnings and people republicans democrats and vote for are going to take the appropriate steps if Something Like that were headed towards our election i dont know who is in charge of putting it out there. More importantly, i think no matter who puts it out there, the candidate or issue on the other side of it, their followers are going to request whether it is goth interfering in election themselves and it is not helpful and i use this as an example because it is recent when whole laptop situation happened and hunter biden laptop a number of former intelligence officials i get former no longer employee ofel any of the agencis but that title carries weight all signed a letter saying this is all of the hall marks of russian Disinformation Campaign. We know now that it was not a Disinformation Campaign. I want to get into the particulars of what was on. Im saying we know that it was not a russian Disinformation Campaign. But the result of it was. That social Media Companies wouldci not allow anyone to post the articles and there was a media blocker couldnt be reported in except for one place. So what happens as a result of that whether influence on election or not result of this is a segment of the country who repeatedly says thing like the Intelligence Community interfered etch though formers. But that title so why that is relevant here is because, no matter who the Disinformation Campaign is geared after. The other side is going to say, the people issuing the warnings are people that are interfering in the elections on behalf of the candidate they favor. So were in a but we have to understand if something were to happen if tomorrow that was a video very convincing video of a candidatelet not say president but lets say u. S. Senate or congress and video comes out with 72 hours to go before election day, of that candidate saying some racist comment or doing something horrifying. But it is fake. Whong is in charge of letting people know this thing is fake . This thing is not real. So that we can have people go to the ballot box believing something thats not real is real thats influencing our election. Especially a close one and i ask myself whoever is in charge of it what are we doing protect credibility of the entity what is whoever it is in charge of saying it so that the other side does not cool out and say, our own government is interfering in the election. So i think were going to be struggling with this for a very long time because russians are best at it and doing it a long time so they know and perfected it. But every election cycle more and more cast a characters are joining the parade here in terms of getting intore this business. And thing in the years to come were going tong see more and me nation states and maybe nonstate actors begin to not just come after us in our elections and our political process. But those of other countries as well so this issueue is not going away y time soon but only going to accelerate and get worse and we really need to begin to lay out parameters aboutce how were gog to respond to these things in a coordinated way that we know aheaded of time opposed to the basis in which this has been handled in years past in terms of responding to the disinformation piece of it. So it is a tough one to handle but one thing we have to get a handle on. I agree. Try to doctor youre going lead us off. Sounds good thank you Ranking Member wariner, rubio members of the committee i really appreciate having the opportunity to brief you on the Intelligence CommunityElection Security work alongside my colleagues. Significant fbi leading efforts to secure actions to secure elections alongside extraordinary state and local officials who are on the frontlines of this work. The u. S. Governments efforts to protect our elections have improved significantly since the 2016 president ial election. And even as a Threat Landscape is becoming increasingly complicated, it is my view a tht the u. S. Government has never been better prepared to address the challenge. Protecting our democracy processes from foreign influence or interference is an absolute priority foror the Intelligence Community. Our efforts are effectively organizedor by Foreign Malign Influence Center or fmic which houses election threats executives, and the election threats executive leads coordinate and integrates the activities initiatives and programs in this realm and fundamentally we support the federal government particularly fbi as they work secure our elections as well as state and local Election Officials across the country who actually manage and secure the election infrastructure on a daytoday basis. We do so by ensuring that our resources are aligned to promote collection and analysis so that were going to able to mitigate elections and mitigate to our federal partners to you in congress, to state and local officials and to the American People. We also facilitate a notification framework that ensure when is relevant intelligence is collected concerning foreign influence operation aimed at our election, appropriate notice is given to those who are being targeted. So that they can take action. And while most of the notifications are nonpublic already as you both indicated scenarios in which public notifications are appropriate and doing so would render less effective that is part that have mandate. Of course, exposing a foreign actors efforts is only one way in which we counter election threats we support the Law Enforcement community as they disrupt election influence operations. Through legal action including the disruption of elicit financial networking and we also support cybercom as it conducts range of cyberoperations to ensure that foreign adversaries not use our Digital Infrastructure to attack our elections. Using every tool we have is critical as the challenge is expanding. Over the last several years weve seen really three trends that make the Threat Landscape more diverse and more complex. First there are increasing number of foreign actors including nonstate entities looking to engage in election influence activities. Second, there are more commercial firms through which state actors are able to conduct election influence activities often increasing the sophistication of such activities making it more challenging to track down the original incity and third most Relevant Technology general areb ative a. I. And Big Data Analytics enabling proliferation of influence actors who can conduct target campaigns reducing number of relatively sophisticated influence operations, and content and further complicating and with content adapted for other cultures and, in fact, seen generative a. I. Used in context of foreign elections in september 2023 two day before the parliamentary elections which chairman youay noted, a fe audio recording was releetsed online in which one candidate discussed how to rig upcoming election with journalist. The audio was quickly shown to be fake. With signs of a. I. Manip