Spy community warns of Chinese ‘willingness to meddle’ in US elections

Jerry Dunleavy

March 09, 12:28 PM March 09, 12:28 PM

The U.S. spy community warned about the Chinese government’s “willingness to meddle” in U.S. elections in a new intelligence assessment laying out “malign” foreign influence operations by China and the broader threats posed by Beijing.

The annual threat assessment released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence this week placed China at the top of U.S. national security challenges, which U.S. spy chiefs testified about at length on Wednesday and Thursday before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.

EX-INTEL OFFICIAL STILL SAYS CHINA TRIED TO INFLUENCE 2020 ELECTION

“Beijing will continue expanding its global intelligence and covert influence posture to better support the CCP’s political, economic, and security goals,” ODNI assessed in its new report. “China is attempting to sow doubts about U.S. leadership, undermine democracy, and extend Beijing’s influence, particularly in East Asia and the western Pacific, which Beijing views as its sphere of influence.”

The intelligence community added: “Beijing largely concentrates its U.S.-focused influence efforts on shaping U.S. policy and the U.S. public’s perception of China in a positive direction, but has shown a willingness to meddle in select election races that involved perceived anti-China politicians.”

The 2021 intelligence community assessment on the 2020 election concluded that Russia sought to help then-President Donald Trump’s reelection chances and harm now-President Joe Biden’s candidacy, and that Iran sought to hurt Trump’s reelection efforts. The spy agencies had a split on China, with the majority view saying China did not deploy influence efforts in the 2020 election and the minority view assessing China did exactly that to hurt Trump’s reelection chances.

Christopher Porter, who was the national intelligence officer for cyber from 2019 until this summer, was the named author of the minority stance, which argued that "China did take some steps to try to undermine former President Trump’s reelection.” Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe released a Jan. 7, 2021 memo supporting the minority view on China, arguing that Beijing “sought to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections.”

Porter became head of Google Cloud Threat Intelligence in June 2022, and he has continued banging the drum about China's anti-Trump influence efforts during the 2020 election.

The FBI warned ahead of the 2022 midterm elections that it believed China had increased its efforts to influence U.S. elections. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced this week that he would appoint a special rapporteur to investigate a host of allegations that China meddled in Canada's 2019 and 2021 elections.

ODNI warned this week that “Beijing uses a sophisticated array of covert, overt, licit, and illicit means to try to soften U.S. criticism, shape U.S. power centers’ views of China, and influence policymakers at all levels of government.”

The spy community assessed that a growing bipartisan consensus against China on the U.S. national level has affected the thinking of China’s leaders, and that Beijing has “adjusted by redoubling its efforts to build influence at the state and local level to shift U.S. policy in China’s favor because of Beijing’s belief that local officials are more pliable than their federal counterparts.”

ODNI also warned that “Beijing is intensifying efforts to mold U.S. public discourse — particularly by trying to shape U.S. views of sensitive or core sovereignty issues, such as Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong — and pressure perceived political opponents.”

The spy community added that “Beijing’s growing efforts to actively exploit perceived U.S. societal divisions using its online personas move it closer to Moscow’s playbook for influence operations.”

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testified on Wednesday that the DragonBear alliance between Russia and China is “continuing to deepen” in “every sector” amid “real concern” about Beijing assisting Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine.

In an early January 2021 memo, Ratcliffe referenced a report put together by Barry Zulauf, an analytic ombudsman and longtime intelligence official, who said there was a split in how the intelligence community handled Russia versus China.

“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 [Trump] administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies,” Zulauf concluded.

The ombudsman report, Ratcliffe said at the time, "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.”

The U.S. intelligence community argued this week that Russia “presents one of the most serious foreign influence threats to the United States because it uses its intelligence services, proxies, and wide-ranging influence tools to try to divide Western alliances and increase its sway around the world.” ODNI said the Kremlin’s goals included “attempting to undermine U.S. global standing, sow discord inside the United States, and influence U.S. voters and decision-making.”