Banning Bots, Punishing Troll Farmers, and Hardening Voting Machines: Here’s How to Stop Russia From Wrecking Election 2018

Clint Watts, Daily Beast; original article contains links.

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Excerpt:

Over the past year, I’ve testified four times to Senate committees regarding Russian influence operations and briefed nearly every arm of the government on what the U.S. could do to protect itself against Kremlin meddling moving forward. There are a variety of ways in which American companies and the American government could meet Vladimir Putin’s challenge—from hardening our electoral systems to banning social media bots to imposing sanctions on the Russian troll farmers. ...

The director of the national response to Kremlin’s assault on America would create a national implementation plan, assign tasks across the interagency, report progress directly to the White House and would in the second year establish an enduring plan and organizational structure for countering foreign information warfare on Americans.

The end results would be a standard playbook for responding to foreign influence efforts, a strategy for reasserting America’s footing in public diplomacy, responsibilities in information warfare across the interagency, and options for asymmetric counterattacks against those that seek to undermine democracy via cyberspace, whether it be hacking or influence.

This may sound simple—remedial, even. But I can’t tell you how many folks in government still aren’t quite sure if this is their job—or if anyone is really in charge.

Even if the federal government fails to designate a task force to mitigate Russian influence, many agencies could immediately take actions to deter the Kremlin. The FBI could develop a hacking response playbook for Russian breaches seeking not only to determine the source of a breach but the potential for which stolen information might be used as kompromat in a Kremlin influence campaign.

The State Department internationally, and the Department of Homeland Security domestically, should create a rapid response system refuting falsehoods levied by the Kremlin and others spreading bogus conspiracies undermining trust in American democratic institutions. Responses would not be done through public press conferences, but via rapid social media responses and direct refutations in real time similar to successful counterpropaganda efforts employed against al Qaeda in Iraq during the 2000s.

The National Security Agency, U.S. Cyber Command, FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security should collaboratively and aggressively detect and notify American targets of hacks. (Currently, victims are simply told that they’ve been targeted. They should be told who has likely breached them, and their vulnerability to compromising smear campaigns as part of a coordinated nation state effort.)

The Department of Defense’s combatant commands should reinforce alliances with NATO and the European Union sharing intelligence on both hacking and social media signatures, as well as the tactics, techniques, and procedures the Kremlin’s trolls employ on democratic citizens and online communities.

Preparing defenses against the Kremlin’s propaganda playbook, once accomplished, will open the way for countering Russian interference. If U.S. intelligence and the national security adviser do believe Russia continues to interfere in American democracy, then they should respond in kind and without hesitation.

The U.S., however, should not copy the Kremlin’s influence operations approach on Russians. Stealing and releasing the personal information of hundreds or thousands of Russians, invading their social media platform VKontakte with false Russian personas, or spreading false information to malign Russian leaders undermines the democratic principles America stands for.

Instead, the U.S. should focus on two avenues of counterattack: oligarchs and activists. ...