Dr. Ken Brown

Abstract

During recent presidential elections, Russia launched an aggressive campaign to influence the outcome in favor of the Republican candidate. While components of this campaign involved the same methods the Soviet Union employed during the Cold War, the scale was unprecedented. Unlike in the past, the Russians used social media trolls and sophisticated hacking methods based on complex codes and network penetration that lasted at least a year. Whether Russia’s actions changed the election results is impossible to say, however, since they led to the resignation of National Committee leaders, exacerbated rifts within the parties, undermined trust in the Intelligence Community, and raised questions that continue to reverberate, they clearly had an impact. The recent influence campaigns were not isolated events but part of a broader trend in which state and non-state actors are exploiting the rapid advancement and proliferation of cyber technology to disrupt, manipulate or undermine state decision-making processes and the people involved. Instances such as the Chinese hackers’ theft of sensitive records on over twenty-five million US government personnel, Russian cyberattacks that shut down the Estonian government for three weeks, and the Stuxnet malware attack on Iran’s nuclear program that destroyed over 1000 centrifuges, are all indicators of a broader trend that has accelerated over the past decade. 

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