Election Interference Is Just a Symptom. Evaporation of Trust is the Disease.

Joshua Geltzer and Jen Easterly wrote a piece for Just Security on electoral interference in the U.S.

Almost two years after the pivotal 2016 presidential election, America is finally piecing together what happened. Thanks to detailed indictments by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, bipartisan analysis by the Senate Intelligence Committee (validating earlier Intelligence Community reporting), and extensive testimony by tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg in the face of mounting congressional pressure, Americans are beginning to understand the full assault on the democratic processes directed from Moscow. With the midterm elections almost upon us and a political influence campaign again underway, this time at least there’s a sense of the threat we face.

But we will remain dangerously behind the curve if it takes two years for us to comprehend each new type of threat that emerges online. From China’s theft of sensitive information about U.S. government employees to Iran’s denial-of-service attacks on our financial institutions; from North Korea’s destructive hack of Sony Pictures to Russia’s interference with our elections; from international cyber criminals emptying our bank accounts to terrorists like ISIS leveraging the Internet to recruit and radicalize vulnerable youth, these cyber-enabled threats—and whatever’s coming next—are just symptoms. The underlying disease is an assault on trust in the digital age, indeed an assault on what’s arguably our most critical asset: our cognitive infrastructure.