US State Department Offers $10 Million Reward for Info on Foreign Election Interference

US media is report­ing that the US State Depart­ment is offer­ing up to $10 mil­lion for tips about for­eign inter­fer­ence in US elec­tions, includ­ing ille­gal cyber activ­i­ties. Accord­ing to a report by the Record:

July 1, 2022 The State Depart­ment announced on Thurs­day that it is offer­ing up to $10 mil­lion for tips about for­eign inter­fer­ence in U.S. elec­tions, includ­ing ille­gal cyber activ­i­ties.  The cash, offered through the department’s Rewards for Jus­tice pro­gram, would be for any infor­ma­tion that leads to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or loca­tion of any for­eign per­son or enti­ty “who know­ing­ly engaged or is engag­ing in for­eign elec­tion inter­fer­ence.”  Such con­duct includes “covert, fraud­u­lent, decep­tive, or unlaw­ful acts or attempt­ed acts, or know­ing use of infor­ma­tion acquired by theft… to influ­ence vot­ers, under­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in elec­tion process­es or insti­tu­tions, or influ­ence, under­mine con­fi­dence in, or alter the result or report­ed result of a gen­er­al or pri­ma­ry fed­er­al, states, or local elec­tion or cau­cus,” the depart­ment said in a state­ment.  Actions also include “vote tam­per­ing and data­base intru­sions; cer­tain influ­ence, dis­in­for­ma­tion, and bot farm cam­paigns; or mali­cious cyber activities.”

Read the rest here.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report has exten­sive­ly report­ed on for­eign elec­tion inter­fer­ence in the US, iden­ti­fy­ing Rus­sia, Chi­na, and Iran as the main actors involved. A March 2021 assess­ment by the US Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence con­clud­ed that Rus­sia and Iran car­ried out elec­tion influ­ence cam­paigns in the US, while Chi­na ulti­mate­ly decid­ed not to deploy such efforts. While Iran­ian cam­paigns tar­get­ing US elec­tions aimed to pro­mote Iran’s broad inter­ests as opposed to secur­ing a par­tic­u­lar result, Russ­ian inter­fer­ence tried to under­mine trust in US author­i­ties, stoke polit­i­cal resent­ment, and crit­i­cize politi­cians who Moscow views as anti-Russia.