Whoever is responsible for trying to manipulate the U.S. midterm elections must face significant new sanctions.
Facebook’s announcement on Tuesday that it has detected and deleted “eight Pages and 17 profiles on Facebook, as well as seven Instagram accounts,” should serve as a wake-up call. Facebook says the deleted activity violated its “ban on coordinated inauthentic behavior.” But while Facebook doesn’t yet know which actor is responsible for the posts, it has clarified that the responsible party took significant steps to hide their tracks. Facebook also notes that it has shared its findings with the FBI.
That’s noteworthy because even though the culprits have tried to hide their tracks, the FBI and its intelligence community partners at the NSA are likely to be able to identify them.
So who might behind this incident? Well, while other international actors beyond Russia are interested in shaping U.S. election outcomes, Russia is the prime suspect here. First off, Russia’s aggressive efforts to disrupt the U.S. 2016 presidential election show that Vladimir Putin already has a track record in targeting U.S. elections. A senior U.S. official recently informed me of Russian cyber efforts to target Republican politicians in swing districts that might feasibly fall to Democratic Party opponents.
Second, only a nation state with advanced cyber competencies carried out the latest attack. Considering the technical sophistication involved here, it is highly implausible that it wasn’t a state actor.
Regardless of which state is responsible here, once they are identified they must face sanctions. That necessity is informed not so much by the measure of harm these particular cyberattacks might have inflicted on the U.S. election (a few fake profiles alone aren’t that big a problem), but rather by the precedent they set. Because they set the precedent that the U.S. democratic process is still a ripe target for hostile attack more than 18 months since the November 2016 presidential election.
For reasons of national defense and broader deterrent posture the U.S. must ensure that the attacker here is punished quickly and significantly. If not, that actor and other U.S. adversaries will double down on degrading our democratic system of government. That cannot stand.
