The US is still unprepared to deal with foreign election meddling, a full year after the US intelligence community found with high confidence that Russia attempted to interfere in US elections in 2016. A new report, put together by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, found the US still lacks, “a coherent, comprehensive and coordinated approach” to dealing with foreign meddling, from Russia and elsewhere.
The 200-page report details how Russia, over the last two decades has developed and perfected tactics used to undermine democratic institutions throughout Europe, and ultimately, the US. The report is only the work of the Committee’s Democrats, but committee staff believe that Republicans will ultimately endorse many of its findings. The report gathered information from more than 50 US allies, the State Department, and both government and civil representatives in the US and in Europe.
The report includes dozens of recommendations to help bolster US security against such threats, including creating an interagency task force similar to the National Counterterrorism Center to respond to such attacks, deploying FBI investigators to vulnerable European countries, and creating a new designation similar to State Sponsor of Terror for countries that use cyber attacks against another country’s elections.