There is disagreement within the intelligence community over whether China sought to influence 2020’s presidential election as a newly released Intelligence Community Assessment concluded that it didn’t, while a minority view by the national intelligence officer for cyber argued that it did.
The report, which concluded that Russia sought to hurt then-candidate Joe Biden while Iran worked to harm President Donald Trump, was put together by the National Intelligence Council under the auspices of the national intelligence officer for cyber — which disagreed with the majority opinion on China and was backed by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe — and was drafted along with the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the National Security Agency. The report released by Biden spy chief Avril Haines is a declassified version of the classified report provided to Trump and congressional leaders on Jan. 7.
“We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. We have high confidence in this judgment,” the ICA stated. “China sought stability in its relationship with the United States and did not view either election outcome as being advantageous enough for China to risk blowback if caught. Beijing probably believed that its traditional influence tools, primarily targeted economic measures and lobbying key individuals and interest groups, would be sufficient to achieve its goal of shaping U.S. policy regardless of who won the election. We did not identify China attempting to interfere with election infrastructure or providing funding to any candidates or parties.”
But the report also indicated that “the NIO for Cyber assesses, however, that China did take some steps to undermine former President Trump’s reelection.” That officer is a leading intelligence official tasked with assessing foreign cyber threats and analyzing challenges to U.S. elections.
“The National Intelligence Officer for Cyber assesses that China took at least some steps to undermine former President Trump’s reelection chances, primarily through social media and official public statements and media,” read the ICA in a short two-paragraph summary of the minority view. “The NIO agrees with the IC’s view that Beijing was primarily focused on countering anti-China policies, but assesses that some of Beijing’s influence efforts were intended to at least indirectly affect U.S. candidates, political processes, and voter preferences, meeting the definition for election influence used in this report. The NIO agrees that we have no information suggesting China tried to interfere with election processes. The NIO has moderate confidence in these judgments.”
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The assessment defined election influence as activities “intended to directly or indirectly affect an election” and characterized election interference as “attempts to target the technical aspects of elections.”
The full report contended the intelligence community “assesses that Chinese state media criticism of the Trump administration’s policies related to China and its response to the COVID-19 pandemic remained consistent in the lead-up to the election and was aimed at shaping perceptions of U.S. policies and bolstering China’s global position rather than to affect the 2020 U.S. election.” The ICA indicated that “China has long sought to influence U.S. politics” but that “we did not, however, see these capabilities deployed for the purpose of shaping the electoral outcome.”
“We assess that Beijing’s risk calculus against influencing the election was informed by China’s preference for stability in the bilateral relationship, their probable judgment that attempting to influence the election could do lasting damage to U.S.-China ties, and belief that the election of either candidate would present opportunities and challenges for China,” it read.
The full report argued that “China probably expected that relations would suffer under a second term for former President Trump because he and his administration would press for further economic decoupling and challenge China’s rise” but that the Chinese government “probably also believed that China in this scenario could increase its international clout.” The spy agencies contended that “Beijing probably expected that President Biden would be more predictable and eager to initially deescalate tensions but would pose a greater challenge over the long run.”
But the national intelligence officer for cyber disagreed with the conclusions.
“This view differs from the IC assessment because it gives more weight to indications that Beijing preferred former President Trump’s defeat and the election of a more predictable member of the establishment instead, and that Beijing implemented some — and later increased — its election influence efforts, especially over the summer of 2020,” the report noted of the intelligence official’s views. “The NIO assesses these indications are more persuasive than other information indicating that China decided not to intervene. The NIO further assesses that Beijing calibrated its influence efforts to avoid blowback.”
The ICA also assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating” Biden’s candidacy and supporting Trump. The report also mentioned that the Iranian regime “carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut” Trump’s reelection prospects. There were no minority views on those conclusions.
Barry Zulauf, an analytic ombudsman and longtime intelligence official, issued a report to the Senate Intelligence Committee in January. He noted, among many things, that some analysts appeared to hold back information on Chinese efforts because they disagreed with the Trump administration’s policies.
“Given analytic differences in the way Russia and China analysts examined their targets, China analysts appeared hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. The analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree with the administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies,” Zulauf said.
Ratcliffe signed an unclassified letter in January contending that “from my unique vantage point as the individual who consumes all of the U.S. government’s most sensitive intelligence on the People’s Republic of China, I do not believe the majority view expressed by the Intelligence Community analysts fully and accurately reflects the scope of the Chinese government’s efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections.” The ombudsman report, Ratcliffe contended, “includes concerning revelations about the politicization of China election influence reporting and of undue pressure being brought to bear on analysts who offered an alternative view based on the intelligence.”
Zulauf said that “due to varying collection and insight into hostile state actors’ leadership intentions on domestic influence campaigns, the definitional use of the terms ‘influence’ and ‘interference’ and associated confidence levels are applied differently by the China and Russia analytic communities.”
“The media misses the nuances — on purpose. The report makes clear that once again the Russians pushed misinformation in the 2020 election,” former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell tweeted after the ICA was released this week. “Meanwhile, the report plays down China’s leverage campaign by using a different standard — they didn’t ‘change the outcome’ of the election.”
In his January letter, Ratcliffe said that “similar actions by Russia and China are assessed and communicated to policymakers differently, potentially leading to the false impression that Russia sought to influence the election but China did not.”
The ombudsman revealed two national intelligence officers wrote an “NIC alternative analysis memo” in October, “which expressed alternative views on potential Chinese election influence activities” but stressed that “these alternative views met with considerable organizational counter pressure.”
Trump administration officials contended China posed the biggest election meddling problem in 2020. Ratcliffe told the Washington Examiner in August that “China poses a greater national security threat to the U.S. than any other nation … and that includes threats of election influence.”
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Ratcliffe argued in his January letter that the ICA’s majority view “gives the false impression” that the national intelligence officer for cyber “is the only analyst who holds the minority view on China” and that “placing the NIO Cyber on a metaphorical island by attaching his name alone to the minority view is a testament to both his courage and to the effectiveness of the institutional pressures that have been brought to bear on others who agree with him.”
“I am adding my voice in support of the stated minority view — based on all available sources of intelligence, with definitions consistently applied, and reached independent of political considerations or undue pressure — that the People’s Republic of China sought to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections,” Ratcliffe said.
