Homeland and national security officials are worried about how Russia could significantly exploit US divisions over the November midterms, considering scenarios like Russia staging smaller hacks of local election authorities — done with the deliberate purpose of being noticed — and then using that to seed more conspiracies about the integrity of American elections.
These efforts, the officials said, would be designed to dovetail with the false doubts about the 2020 presidential election spread by former President Donald Trump and many of his allies.The five current and former US officials who spoke to CNN stressed that such a scenario remains hypothetical.
Although US elections have become more secure in recent years, officials say that an atmosphere of distrust in America’s elections, coupled with the sheer number of local election systems, means there’s no way to truly be ready for such a convergence of Russian asymmetric warfare techniques.