Increased Foreign Interference in 2022 US Midterms, Intelligence Finds

On 18 Decem­ber 2023, CNN report­ed that a declas­si­fied intel­li­gence assess­ment revealed increased for­eign inter­fer­ence in the 2022 US midterm elec­tions com­pared to 2018, with Chi­na, Rus­sia, Iran, and Cuba involved. Unlike Rus­si­a’s com­pre­hen­sive cam­paign in 2016, no for­eign leader ordered a sim­i­lar effort in 2022. The report detailed Chi­na’s tac­it approval of influ­enc­ing select races, focus­ing on can­di­dates whose views align with Bei­jing’s inter­ests. Chi­na aimed to por­tray US democ­ra­cy as chaot­ic and high­light divi­sions on issues like abor­tion and gun con­trol. Microsoft ana­lysts not­ed Chi­nese oper­a­tives using AI-gen­er­at­ed images to mim­ic Amer­i­can vot­ers online. Rus­si­a’s efforts, assessed with high con­fi­dence, aimed to den­i­grate the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and under­mine con­fi­dence in the elec­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly to weak­en US sup­port for Ukraine. Russ­ian oper­a­tives tar­get­ed spe­cif­ic US demo­graph­ics and nar­ra­tives, empha­siz­ing ‘tra­di­tion­al val­ues.’ The intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty also observed Iran’s attempts to exploit social divi­sions and under­mine con­fi­dence in US demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions, though these efforts were lim­it­ed by inter­nal challenges.