Washington — China has stepped up its efforts to influence political processes in the United States during the 2022 midterm elections, according to a newly released declassified assessment, which suggests Beijing may perceive a growing advantage in exploiting divisions in American society .
THE 21 page assessment, released Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said the Chinese government “tacitly approved efforts to attempt to influence a handful of midterm elections involving members of both U.S. political parties.” The specific races were not identified in the report, which also said China believes Congress will maintain an “adversarial” view of Beijing regardless of which party is in power.
The 2022 results appear to mark a shift in Beijing’s calculus regarding U.S. elections. Similar intelligence assessment released after the 2020 presidential election, found that China “did not engage in interference efforts and considered, but did not engage in, influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the election.” “American presidential election”, judging that the risks of being caught in the act of interference were too great.
The most recent ODNI analysis indicates that Beijing may have been bolder in 2022 because Chinese officials “felt Beijing was under less scrutiny in the midterms and because they did not expect “that the current administration will respond as harshly as they feared in 2020.”
He also said Chinese officials view exploiting some of the divisive issues that rose to prominence in the 2018 election, including abortion and gun control, as an opportunity to model American democracy as “chaotic, ineffective and unrepresentative”.
The midterm assessment, a classified version of which had already been provided to Congress, also reveals that the Russian government “sought to denigrate the Democratic Party” before the elections in an apparent attempt to undermine support for Ukraine, primarily using social media influencer tactics.
And even though the overall scale and scope of foreign countries targeting the midterm elections was greater than seen in 2018, neither Russian nor any other foreign leaders ordered an influence campaign in the United States similar to the Kremlin’s sprawling, multifaceted effort in 2016, according to the report. said.
Intelligence analysts have also determined that foreign governments appear to be abandoning attempts to target U.S. election infrastructure, perhaps instead finding that online influence operations have a greater net impact. They also said greater U.S. resilience could have made targeting election infrastructure more difficult, according to the report, which reflects the consensus of several U.S. intelligence agencies.
U.S. officials and private companies have warned that many foreign actors, including Russia, Iran and China, have diversified their tactics to include the use of proxy websites and social media influencers to alter narratives policies.
“Although the activity we detected remains below the level we expect to see in presidential election years, the (intelligence community) has identified a diverse and growing group of foreign actors…s “engaging in such operations, including China’s greater willingness to conduct electoral influence activities than in past cycles,” reads a partially redacted portion of the assessment.
U.S. officials and cybersecurity experts say several countries will seek to engage in increasingly sophisticated influence efforts ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, which they see as pivotal in determining the direction of conflicts. worldwide. A Microsoft analysis said influencer efforts in 2024 would likely take place on different online platforms than those targeted in 2016 and 2020.
“As global barriers to entry decrease and accessibility increases, such influence efforts remain an ongoing challenge for our country, and an informed understanding of the problem can serve as a defense,” the intelligence director said. national, Avril Haines, in a press release accompanying the report.
