The chaos surrounding last week’s Iowa caucus could fuel enemies’ election interference agenda this November, the head of U.S. counterintelligence said Monday.
A technical glitch delayed finalized raw vote and delegate tabulations at last week’s Democratic presidential contest in Iowa for nearly a week. Director of U.S. Counterintelligence William R. Evanina told reporters that he was less concerned about the technical malfunction than the potential for the ensuing headache to be weaponized by adversaries.
Mr. Evanina said his concern is, “How can our adversaries take what happened in Iowa and pour gasoline on that?”
“Election interference is not something that just happened in 2016,” he said.
In detailing the federal government’s new counterintelligence strategy released Monday, Mr. Evanina said the intelligence community cannot afford to chase its tail on the 2016 election. He said the federal government must take what it has learned in 2016 and 2018 to create an “aggressive predictive analysis” of Russia and other foes’ likely behavior in 2020.
Mr. Evanina said foreign influence efforts aimed at elections are “dramatic” and it is critical that Americans are not dissuaded from voting and have confidence that the election voting systems are viable. He said the Internet and social media are equivalent to political leaflets airdropped from foreign nations aiming to influence world events.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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