In July, President Donald Trump delivered a primetime address warning the nation that U.S. election infrastructure was vulnerable to foreign attack. He specifically alleged that China had sought to influence the 2020 election.
Trump did not provide any evidence that elections had been disrupted or that ballots had been miscounted. Instead, the Chinese actions he cited involved the legal acquisition of voter rolls. And despite the warning, Trump did not publicly raise the issue of China’s meddling in U.S. elections when Xi Jinping visited Washington, DC, last month.
Although Trump’s charges have receded from the headlines since July, foreign efforts to influence and potentially disrupt elections or change their outcomes remain a real concern. Russia has led the way over the past decade in using social media to amplify social and racial divisions in the United States—most famously with its effort to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton in 2016.
China has dabbled in influence operations as well, though at a smaller scale, and it has typically focused on down-ballot candidates who have criticized the Chinese government. Iran has been another culprit; it successfully hacked the Trump campaign in 2024.
All three countries are still pursuing influence operations and could be aided this time by the development of artificial intelligence, which could make such operations more effective and easier to conduct. In the nightmare scenario, these efforts could go beyond poisoning the information environment to disrupting an election or changing vote counts.
To limit foreign influence and election interference, the Obama, first Trump, and Biden administrations took steps to prevent foreign governments from exploiting social media and to shore up the integrity of U.S. election infrastructure. The second Trump administration, however, has rolled back many of these changes.
With the midterm elections less than four weeks away and control of Congress hanging in the balance, the stakes for the United States are immense. Democracies rest on the ability of their citizens to choose their leaders. If foreign powers can distort the public debate, or worse, change election outcomes, democratic governance is imperiled.
by James M. Lindsay/Council on Foreign Relations – Are the U.S. Midterms Vulnerable to Foreign Meddling?
