What Is China Doing 'To Try To Influence United States Public Opinion?’: Lankford Grills Officials

3 months ago

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing earlier this month, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) questioned officials about China’s attempts to influence US public opinion and the need to secure election systems.

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00:00 I'll take that. Thank you. Thanks, y'all, for your testimony. You were just speaking to

00:04 Senator Bennett about Russia and some of the influence that they have targeted and the ways that they're doing it.

00:09 Can we switch sides and actually talk about China? What is China doing currently to try to influence the United States public opinion?

00:17 Yeah, I if it's alright with you, sir, I'll just I'll mention what they're doing here

00:23 but also what they're doing abroad because we're seeing it on a broad range of things. I think they're growing.

00:28 We assess really increasingly confident in their ability to influence elections

00:32 but remain concerned about the possibility of blowback should they be discovered. And the PRC has made

00:38 improvements to its influence operation tools

00:41 using artificial intelligence, big data analytics. Their tactics globally include bankrolling candidates

00:50 they prefer, using deepfake technologies to generate content,

00:54 collecting polling data to determine targets for them,

00:58 conducting social media influence operations. For example, the PLA will take over

01:03 and operate social media accounts on a number of different platforms.

01:07 We look to disclose that and tell companies about that when it happens to promote disinformation

01:12 across the board. And they also target their diasporas and we've seen them obviously

01:18 seek to influence elections not only in the United States in the context of congressional candidates.

01:23 Generally, this has been one of the things in a different levels and spaces, but also

01:27 elections in Taiwan, in Australia, and in Canada. So a pretty

01:33 significant portion.

01:35 How do we expose that? How do we put the word out attributions to the challengers?

01:39 We've already talked about already. Once it starts to get out there on social media and other places,

01:44 how is that exposed most effectively if it's discovered on the federal side?

01:51 I'll start, but I think my colleagues may wish to amplify certain aspects of this.

01:56 I mean, we obviously put in our annual threat assessment some of the things that we're seeing

01:59 the PRC engage in in terms of influence operations, including in these spaces. And when we get intelligence that indicates that the PRC is,

02:07 for example, taking on social media accounts or things like that in a platform,

02:12 we then pass that information through the FBI is able to provide that to the companies to take action.

02:17 A general statement if they're going to do it is different than a

02:21 example to say here's an example of a post that we know was created by or was amplified by

02:26 China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, whatever it may be.

02:29 2016 and 2017, we're able to pull exact examples and to be able to list them, post them, and say this was Russian created.

02:38 Here's where it started. Here's where it came from and to be able to expose it.

02:41 How do we do that now as we're approaching this election and foreign actors are trying to influence?

02:47 We will do just that. So essentially the same

02:50 playbook in that sense that we are identifying specific credible intelligence.

02:55 We are passing that to the companies or exposing it publicly as the case may determine.

03:00 Okay, let me keep going because I'll be limited in time, though

03:04 I have mercifully seven minutes to be able to walk through this, but I'll still run out of time on this.

03:08 Since we passed the Help America's Vote Act, HAVA, as it's all called at this point,

03:14 there's been perpetual funding that's been sent out to multiple states to be able to improve their systems. It's been interesting. I pulled new numbers

03:22 because every state says we can't improve our election systems. We don't have enough money on it.

03:27 So we pulled the recent spending and what people have and what they haven't spent already.

03:31 Colorado, my colleague Senator Bennett just left, has received 15 million dollars,

03:37 has only spent 27 percent of that money.

03:41 Hawaii has received 8 million, has spent 26 percent of it.

03:44 Louisiana has received 14 and a half million dollars and has spent zero of that so far.

03:49 Maryland, 17 million, has spent 37 percent. Minnesota, 16 million, has spent

03:55 41 percent. Not to leave my own state out, Oklahoma has received 11 million.

04:00 We've spent 23 percent of that. Now other states have spent more on it,

04:04 but this money has been sitting there for years. This is not money that was allocated in three months ago.

04:09 Quite a bit of this funding was allocated to them years ago, and they have not actually spent it. So my question is,

04:16 essentially on this,

04:18 how do we encourage states to be able to up their game on a couple of areas?

04:23 One is learning the lesson of the unofficial results in their own websites and how to be able to protect those systems.

04:29 That's an obvious area of creating distrust on election night if those are actually interfered with. The second one is old-school paper

04:37 ballot backups. So if there's a problem with the machine,

04:40 everybody can verify it with a piece of paper.

04:42 When we have states that have literally millions of dollars sitting there saying we don't have enough to be able to do this,

04:47 when most of them do,

04:49 how do we advance this?

04:52 Yeah, thanks for the question, Senator. So I can't speak to those statistics, and I'm happy to follow up on that,

04:57 but I will say what we provide as the Sector Risk Management Agency are no-cost services and no-cost training.

05:03 So many of the states, in fact,

05:06 thousands of jurisdictions take advantage of the cybersecurity assessments, the free cyber hygiene scanning we provide,

05:13 the endpoint detection and response that we have, the malicious domain blocking. So all of that is in place

05:21 across the country.

05:23 So I know they're taking advantage of that, and that has significantly raised the bar from a cybersecurity perspective.

05:29 I think your points about

05:31 election night reporting are very good ones.

05:35 One of the things that I think it's really important for everyone to remember is that those are all

05:41 unofficial results, right? And they need to be canvassed, and you need to be certified, which takes days to weeks.

05:47 Right, but if it's announced on election night who won, and then a week later the state announces, "Oops,

05:53 no, a different person won," that shows incredible distrust.

05:58 I agree.

05:58 Where now no one trusts the election results anymore, and while the election results were unofficial,

06:05 if those are interfered with, that's a real vulnerability to building trust among the American people.

06:10 I agree with that, sir. As I said in my opening statement,

06:13 you know, these systems are more secure than ever before, and

06:18 election officials, to include Paul Xerox, who's your state election director,

06:22 are terrific, are working incredibly hard to make sure that every one of their citizens' votes are

06:29 counted as cast, and I think it's really important that we focus on them, because they're the true election

06:35 experts, and we listen to their voices and what they say, and so I would hope that

06:40 anybody who is providing unofficial results would make sure that that state election director

06:45 gets a voice in that to say, "It's not canvassed. It's not certified yet, so let's wait until it's certified."

06:51 Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I'm just going to ask a follow-up question on this, and then we're going to have it done.

06:56 Mr. Knapp, as far as the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office is following up on a criminal offense of

07:02 voting, if you're not legally present in the country and you're voting in a federal election, that is a federal crime.

07:08 What I'd love to be able to know, and I've not been able to get the statistic on, is how many

07:12 prosecutions do we have across the country for a federal election crime?

07:17 Is that actually being followed up on? Do we have a good number of both charges being filed and

07:23 actual prosecutions on that for a federal election crime? I know in my state,

07:27 we talked about Paul Xerox in my state, and what our

07:29 district attorneys are doing in the state, if someone votes twice or whatever it may be, the prosecution's there,

07:34 and they have a good history on that. I don't know on the federal side. Can you all provide that to me?

07:38 Sir, thank you very much for the question. What I do have in front of me right now is how many cases

07:44 have been charged through the Department of Justice

07:48 task force on election security. What I don't have is that second part,

07:52 but I can at least give you a general number right now.

07:54 So right now the task force has charged 17 cases with the resulting 13 convictions, but with respect to your subset question,

08:01 I'm happy to take that back to my team and get you a more complete answer. Thank you.

08:05 I think those HAVA numbers are pretty

08:08 remarkable. I'm glad you shared those.

08:11 Some states have spent 70-80% of them. Quite a few of our states have spent 50% or less on the HAVA numbers,

08:19 and these are the most recent from just a couple of months ago.

08:22 That's a very fair question. I do think, on your question about how many federal violations, I thought there was

08:28 something in that range. I thought after the 2000 election, I thought there was a canvas

08:36 that had a relatively small, small number, but I think that might have been both state and federal.

What Is China Doing 'To Try To Influence United States Public Opinion?’: Lankford Grills Officials

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