U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency will not identify the latest leaders of their joint election security task force, in part to shield them from the threats and harassment other election officials have received for merely being associated with such work.
In a departure from previous election cycles, neither organization will publicize the names of the co-chiefs of the Election Security Group (ESG) because of the often-hostile environment surrounding U.S. elections since the 2020 presidential race, Recorded Future News has learned.
The identities also are being withheld, government sources said, as part of a larger push by top U.S. national security and law enforcement officials to convey that election security is a whole-of-government effort and therefore public messaging on the charged topic should be driven by agency chiefs — such as the Director of National Intelligence or the head of the FBI — and not bureaucratic entities or career employees.
The shift in strategy and the heightened concern for the safety of officials both come as the Biden administration warns of potential foreign interference in the November elections as well as dangers to individuals who help run the system.
The warnings are on top of longstanding concerns about potential cyberattacks targeting voting infrastructure, or human errors becoming amplified in influence operations that undermine confidence in election outcomes — especially with the rise of commercially available artificial intelligence tools that can assist an array of attacks at scale….