Partnerships with tech companies aim to help U.S. secure elections

The U.S. intelligence community is ramping up work with technology companies ahead of the November elections as cybersecurity professionals search for new ways to combat foreign threats to the American electoral system that appeared unthinkable four years ago.

A raft of new artificial intelligence tools are fueling the changing threats to U.S. elections, and the intelligence community is finding partners to thwart foreign interference, The Washington Times has learned.

U.S. intelligence agencies are turning to cybersecurity companies like never before for help protecting various forms of infrastructure.

In 2020, the intelligence community and law enforcement officials huddled with technology platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. These relationships have been damaged by the social media platforms’ politically fraught censorship decisions and by ongoing litigation contending that the Biden administration is trying to pressure the platforms to police political speech online.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security’s cyberintelligence agency had no communication on election interference issues with the social media platforms from July through at least mid-January, said Sen. Mark R. Warner, Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Mr. Warner blames the frozen relationships on cautious Biden administration attorneys who have helped put the U.S. in a worse cybersecurity posture than in 2020. He said at a gathering of cybersecurity professionals on Tuesday that such icy partnerships are thawing.

“Now we’ve shaken up the lawyers enough, and that is starting,” Mr. Warner said at the CrowdStrike Gov Threat Summit. “But I think again, those channels of communication, and not only with the social media platforms, but frankly with the outside researchers, with private-sector entities like you guys who are identifying this kind of misinformation and disinformation and election tactics, I don’t think we’re as far along.”

While private talks with the social media platforms went dark, the intelligence community’s interactions with cybersecurity companies lit up.

Morgan Adamski has led the NSA’s effort to build up its Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, which started in 2020 as a venue for U.S. spies to turn over their unique insights to trusted technology companies.

“We started with one partner about four years ago. As of today, we have over a thousand different partners that we talk to 24/7 through 800 collaboration platforms at any given time,” Ms. Adamski said at the CrowdStrike event. “It has been game-changing for us from an NSA perspective.”

While the NSA looks outward at foreign threats, the tech companies look inward at what they see on their domestic clients’ networks. CrowdStrike Senior Vice President Adam Meyers said NSA officials had “sent us a lot of stuff” as part of the firm’s participation in the NSA initiative and CrowdStrike collaborated on matters involving election security and threats to the financial sector.

Budgetary challenges

Not every anticipated partnership with the intelligence community goes as planned.

The National Intelligence University, which exclusively trains military and government officials with classified security clearances, wanted to work with Taiwan AI Labs on a matter involving election integrity, according to lab founder Ethan Tu, a top Taiwanese technology expert and former Microsoft manager. The lab built a diagnostic tool for nontechnical users to spot evidence of cognitive warfare on social media.

According to a presentation shared by Mr. Tu, the concept of the collaboration with the spy school was to “examine AI models that have shown promise in evaluating misinformation and disinformation.” The collaboration would create a working environment for his lab with the U.S. specifically for a “current effort that is focused on protecting election integrity.”

Mr. Tu told The Times that the spy school’s budgetary problems stalled the planned cooperation. A top administrator at the university identified in Mr. Tu’s presentation did not respond to requests for comment. An ODNI spokeswoman confirmed that the intelligence community does not have an agreement with Mr. Tu’s lab.

American spy agencies say they are leaving no stone unturned to understand technology’s future effects on elections. Former CIA officer Karan Sondhi told The Times that he spoke to his former colleagues at the CIA on blockchain technology and its applicability to elections. He said the technology is used in elections overseas.

“I did a huge talk over at the CIA just a month ago saying, ‘The tech exists for us to give you a receipt and have an immutable record of your vote going onto a ledger,’” Mr. Sondhi said in February. “We could do it today very cheaply.”

Mr. Sondhi, now chief technology officer at cybersecurity company Trellix, said the reception from the CIA was great but one person noted that his enthusiasm for the cutting-edge technology’s potential was not enough to keep him working for the spy agency.

The CIA declined to comment.

Intelligence agencies focused on foreign threats, such as the NSA and the CIA, leave domestic issues to their counterparts at the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The NSA and U.S. Cyber Command activated their election security group last year to mobilize information from planners and operation specialists to fight foreign threats to the U.S. voting process this year. The group is focused on foreign threats and leaves related domestic work to the FBI and the Homeland Security Department.

While cybersecurity threats to the homeland are multiplying and concerns about election meddling abound, professionals express greater concern about foreign influence campaigns targeting public opinion and debate than on efforts to hack the voting mechanism.

Mr. Warner said the U.S. election machinery appears to be in “pretty good shape.”