A new report from Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center lists no fewer than 45 specific steps the federal government, states, counties, campaigns, social media platforms and news media can take.
Here’s one: “From the top down, including most importantly from the president, the U.S. government must demonstrate a clear, credible and consistent commitment in response to future attempts at election interference.” OK, some ground to make up there.
As an initial, cost-free step, Trump could promise that his campaign won’t use stolen information from foreign entities, like the Democratic National Committee emails that the FBI says Russia hacked in 2016.
Democratic presidential campaigns have taken that pledge. The Trump campaign has not. On Friday, spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said the campaign would handle foreign offers on “a case-by-case basis.”
I asked Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow who headed the Stanford project, what worried him most about next year’s election. He named three potential problems.
First, he said, “Russia might try to influence the Democratic primaries. They like some candidates better than others. Biden is probably their least favorite, because he was the point person for the Obama administration for Ukraine.”
Second, he said he fears a “flood of disinformation” on social media, not only from Russia.
But his greatest worry is that Russian agents may “do something disruptive on election day to undermine the integrity of the election,” he said. “Imagine the chaos if there was some doubt raised about the vote count.”
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na- ... story.html
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