Unspoken Security Ep 23: Foreign Nations are Attacking Our Elections. Now What?

When incidents are happening, it takes time to investigate attribution. So if somebody's coming out within 24 hours and saying, "This was this party," or, "This was the fault of this candidate," be wary. Wait, be patient. It takes time to figure these things out. But it is in our adversaries' toolkit to deflect blame onto the victims and somehow create further division.

Welcome to Unspoken Security, the raw and gritty podcast for security professionals who are looking to understand the most important issues related to making the world a safer place, including intelligence-driven security, risks and threats in the digital and physical world, and discussions related to corporate culture, leadership, and how world events impact all of us on and off our keyboards. In each episode, host AJ Nash engages with a range of industry experts to dissect current trends, share practical insights, and address the blunt truths surrounding all aspects of the security industry.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Unspoken Security. I'm your host, AJ Nash. I spent 19 years in the intelligence community, mostly at NSA, and I've been building and maturing intelligence programs in the private sector for about 8 years now. I'm passionate about intelligence, security, public speaking, mentoring, and teaching. I also have a master's degree in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University. Go Zags! And I continue to be deeply committed to servant leadership. The reason I mention all that is this podcast brings all of those elements together with some incredible guests to have authentic, unfiltered conversations on a wide variety of challenging topics. This is not gonna be your typical polished podcast. My dog makes occasional appearances, although I'll be honest, both dogs are out of the house today at daycare, so If they show up today, it's very surprising. Our guest has dogs, so they may make an appearance. We'll see. This is not gonna be a typical Polish podcast. Like I said, people are gonna argue. We're gonna debate. We might even swear here. I definitely swear. And that's all okay. You gotta think of this podcast as a conversation. You know, it's, it's, if you were at one of the bars after a long day at one of the large cybersecurity conferences, this is the conversation you might overhear in the booth next door. Basically, these are the conversations we usually have when nobody's listening. So today I'm joined by my good friend Charity Wright. Probably doesn't need much of an introduction. Most people know her, I think. She's a principal threat intel consultant at Recorded Future. Charity's been focused on intelligence and security matters for about 17 years now. Sorry for calling you out on that one, Charity. We're all getting old. Starting as a linguist in the US Army. So we were both linguists, although she would pick the lesser service. It's okay. And continuing with stops at such well-known places as Hilton Worldwide, Ernst Young, and Insights before joining Recorded Future. A little over 4 years ago now. Charity is one of the foremost experts on cyber threats, particularly related to China. So Charity, is there anything I left out that you want to add to that?

I think you covered it all. I'm old, I'm an Army vet, and I do cyber.

Well, I wouldn't say you're old. I mean, I can't, I can't, because I'm quite a bit older, I think, still. But experienced. I like the word experienced. It's a lot, it's a lot more flattering, right? You know, we've, we've got, we've been around a bit. We've, we've seen a few things. And so, I mean, genuinely, you're one of the brightest stars in the industry. I know that sounds so cliché and bullshit, but, but it's true. Uh, I was a fan before we ever met and I'm still a fan. Like, I follow you on LinkedIn and, and, you know, pay attention to your stuff cuz you're just really smart and you're really good, especially with things related to China. And China's a big problem, right? For the US at least. And so in fact, today's topic is about foreign nations. You know, the topic specifically is foreign nations are attacking our elections. So now what? And we know China's a big part of this, right? I mean, we've seen this going on. It's not, we're not just gonna talk China, of course, but, uh, obviously they're a big part of this, you know? So let's jump right into it. First question, what have we learned from 2016 and 2020 in terms of the election cycles there? What did we learn then? And, and before you answer this, just to, to make it easier for you and, and everybody listening, listen, we're not, this is not gonna be about politics. All right? You can, we all have political opinions. It's fine. I can give you all mine. I think most people know if they follow Twitter, they probably know my political opinions pretty well. I want to deal with intel here. We're intel professionals. We want to deal with facts and data and evidence and things that are real versus things that are not real. All right, when I'm not going to get into a whole debate or discussion, thankfully there's no audience here, but we're going to talk about what we've learned based on evidence, based on intelligence. So, you know, for those who have issues with election denial and things like that, this probably isn't going to be the show for you, and that's okay. But if you want to hear what intel professionals have actually seen and can document, then this is a great show to listen to. So, all right, with that preface, I want to hear from you, Charity. What, what have we learned from, from the 2016 and 2020 election cycles?

Right. Well, you know, thinking back to the last two general election cycles, immediately Russia comes to mind. And yeah, I'm a China expert, but I've worked in election security and disinformation for the past 3, 4 years. So a lot of that time was focused on what's going on during that time period, but also learning about previous elections and what we had learned about what adversaries are doing to target our elections. And a lot of it revolves around Russia. Now, I think it's important to kind of zoom out and look at it from a strategic perspective. First of all, a lot of people believe that election interference is conspiracy or conspiracy theory, but we have actual evidence that Russia has directly intervened and tried to interrupt and disrupt our democratic processes. So even bigger than elections, we're talking about how our society operates, how we communicate with each other. And Russia's goal has always been to divide Americans. A house divided will fall. Basically is, is their kind of strategy. Now, people may not understand why do foreign adversaries want to get involved? Why do they care enough and put all these resources towards dividing us? They know that their best chance of dominating us or somehow winning their battles, strategic or tactical, will be to divide us and make us weaker. They know our vulnerabilities are our democratic processes. So if you think about what makes a democracy a democracy, we're talking about people representing people, having our voices heard, having individualism, being able to have the freedom of speech and having a free press. All of these aspects are foundational for democracy and for having free and fair elections. And they know that if we can target their elections and cause chaos politically, we can divide this country and keep them from passing laws that will support Ukraine or whatever else they're trying to fight. So it's important to think about What does Russia have a stake in? What do they care about? We didn't know back in 2016 or even in 2020 that they were going to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but they had their own strategies and plans leading up to Ukraine being one of their goals. So, you know, what we've learned in the past is that they do have a stake. They do try to disrupt our elections. The way they do that is through multiple means, including cyberattacks, hack and leak operations, and disinformation campaigns. And they're especially good at imitating Americans on social media and in news. Maybe not as much mainstream news, but they're very good at standing up fake news sites that imitate real news. So just flooding our information environment with falsities and conspiracy theories and all types of nonsense that makes it very difficult for not just Americans, but anyone around the world to differentiate truth from fiction.

So that's what we've learned. Yeah. And that's a good point when you talk about not just Americans, right? So, you know, first of all, you made a lot of good points, but I think, I think it's important to see the strategic picture, right? I think a lot of people, it's easy for us to get wrapped up in whatever our own political position is. And therefore push back against anybody who's, you know, attacking our chosen candidate, our chosen positions. This isn't just about us. This isn't even just about America. Like, and, and it's not just Russia, obviously. It's Russia, it's China, it's to a lesser extent I hear Iran in there, but they're, they're impacting elections around the world. You know, we aren't the first ones. You know, we're the, we're the bigger picture, us, Great Britain, you know, getting involved in our elections cuz we're the larger, more powerful democracies of the world. But it didn't start with us. Like the Russians have, there's plenty of evidence of them undermining other elections around the world. You know, their democracy is a threat to countries that are anti-democratic. I mean, Russia on, on the surface has a democracy, right? Putin's elected to office. He's elected sort of like Saddam Hussein was getting elected though. You know, it's massive numbers and it's funny if, if, if anybody steps up who might be a legitimate opponent, they just sort of disappear and end up in a jail and then they die. So there's sort of a democracy, but tyrants and, and dictators and strongmen or whatever terms you want to use, they don't want democracy to succeed. Uh, they want to be able to undermine it everywhere because of a couple things you pointed out. If, if Americans are busy fighting each other, if they're able to undermine our systems, then we don't focus on the threats of our adversaries and we don't focus on strategic considerations like supporting Ukraine. Because if Ukraine falls, the Russians have an opportunity to move towards closer to NATO and, and, you know, try to retake some of the former republics and, and they have larger goals and aspirations. Putin is old school Soviet and would certainly love to see the Soviet Union become what it was. But, you know, so they keep us from focusing on, on some of those other issues, right? As, as we divide against each other. So, I mean, that's, that's a winning strategy that's gone on forever. You know, divide and conquer is, is not a new concept, right? So I think it's interesting to, to talk about those bigger pictures that people miss, that it's not just about America, it's everywhere. It's about democracy, but it is very advantageous for them if they can keep the world's strongest countries busy fighting each other. And convinced that we should be fighting each other, that while that's happening, they're able to actually accomplish their strategic goals because they are in a weaker position. To me, it feels a little bit like, I don't know if you, if you'll agree with this or not, and you're, you're free to tell me I'm stupid for this, but it, it almost feels a little bit like asymmetric warfare, right? So large countries, US, Soviet Union in the past, the reason Afghanistan's so hard to, to dominate as a country is because of asymmetric warfare. They're really good at Vietnam, was good at asymmetric warfare, right? They don't fight by the same rules. They're not gonna line up like the old, you know, I don't know, the constitutional armies, right? And in the, in the, uh, revolution, right? You don't line up and just shoot at each other. You're not gonna try, try to take each other on evenly. And it, this feels a little bit like asymmetric warfare. Mm-hmm. In an information world where they know they can't beat us directly as a country, so they need to use other tactics. And it's working from what I can see. You know, I, I'm curious, uh, about the comparison if you think that, that makes sense. And, and how you think they've succeeded so far, because 2016, you know, like you said, we didn't know what Russia was looking to accomplish in 2016 and 2020 necessarily. I don't honestly think they cared who won in 2016 as much as making sure that whoever won wasn't considered legitimate. I think the goal really was just to undermine the election process. I think at some point they had a chosen candidate too, but I don't think anybody expected the result of 2016. I think the goal was just to undermine. Clinton because they were worried about Hillary Clinton's policies towards them in the future. But what are your thoughts on like asymmetric warfare and, and, and what Russia accomplished, you know, in 2016 and 2020?

Yeah, you're right. It is asymmetric warfare. If you put yourself as a good threat intel analyst or researcher, we have to put ourselves in the adversary's mindset. Put, put yourself in their shoes. Maybe they can't compete militarily. Maybe their economy is weaker. Maybe they have a smaller population. They might be weaker in other areas, but they examine us and go, where is America weak? Where can we get in and divide them? We have very loose laws around social media and use of technology. We have a lot of vulnerabilities when it comes to cyber threats and our infrastructure being vulnerable. So they identify our vulnerabilities and weakness and find ways to exploit that. And it's very easy to exploit our social issues in the United States because we are so diverse. It is a diverse country built on the back of immigrants. And that is not a political statement. That is what we stand for. That is what we were created for. Our adversaries know that we are politically divided. Basically 50/50. So what they're able to do is determine what divisive issues can we exploit and propagate throughout social media. How can we stir them up and make them more angry at each other? And people need to understand when it comes to politics, they're not necessarily saying, oh, we side with Republicans or we side with Democrats. Our adversaries are looking at how they can exploit political actors in our system towards what they want. So that's always the angle. And you have to place yourself in their, in their shoes, in their mindset and go, okay, we may not have all this strength, all this money, etc., but we can use little ways to make big impact. And one thing I say quite often is comparing the United States to China, China has the Communist Party that is all one direction, one strategy. All of our resources are funneled towards this forward movement. And yes, they have political infighting internally. Of course, they're human beings. But it's not like in the United States where we can barely get laws passed because of vetoing and because of this and that. Checks and balances are set up for a purpose, but also just parties and political actors trying to stop each other from pushing forward their policies. And so our adversaries know it's very easy to target us in these ways.

So yeah, I mean, it's a good point. Listen, I obviously, I'm a big fan of democracy and our system of government versus others. And by the way, for anybody who's thinking, well, we're not a democracy, we're a republic, listen, keep that shit to yourself. I don't want to hear about it today. All right, let's we are a democracy, right? Yes, we're a republic. We're a representative democracy, right? We are a representative democracy. We are not a direct democracy, but republics are still a democracy. So if that's on your mind, just stuff it, you know, in a sock someplace and think about it later. We are, we are a democracy. I'm not going to go down that path every time I have this discussion and try to explain representative democracy versus direct democracy. And it's, we're a democracy, but that said, it's not the most efficient way to get things done. Like it's great. It's, it's representative. It's what we want. It's good for people. Yeah, listen, the system the Chinese have, really efficient. I mean, it may not work well in terms of human rights, you know, and it's certainly going to limit the power to a small number of people. Same story with what's going on in Russia. But they are very efficient. You know, there's something to be said. And obviously, for anybody who's thinking this, I'm going to pull it out of context. I'm not advocating for these countries or these systems. But what you said, there's less to divide, right? Unified, one direction. It's, you know, it's the way you can really move forward quickly as long as you just don't give a shit about people. Or rules or laws or, you know, any of those things that are pesky and getting in the way, then, then you can just drive forward, right? But it does create our challenge. We talk about how our diversity is our strength, which I truly believe, you know, we do end up with more innovation and more creativity and more ideas, but it's also a vulnerability, you know, that people can exploit. There's a chance to split people up because we aren't all very, very similar across the board. You know, we, we look very different. We sound very different. We speak differently. We have different languages in the country. We have different backgrounds. We have a ton of immigrants. Listen, anybody who thinks otherwise, That's foolish. Almost everybody here, everybody's going to listen to this, is probably an immigrant or a son or a daughter or a grandson or grand— I keep going. I bet almost everybody who's going to hear or see this is an immigrant. Unless you're a Native American all the way through and through, you're an immigrant. All right. So it doesn't matter if you're first, third, fifth generation, you're an immigrant. We all came here from someplace else. And, and that's, again, that's our strength. But that's what other opportunities exist for, for other nations to take advantage because there are a lot of ways to split and divide us. And we've seen it. You know, you mentioned, I, I skipped my earlier, but I wanna come back. You mentioned some of the activities we'd seen, you know, going back to 2016 specifically in this case with, you know, the hack and leak, right? So it was a big story a million years ago for those who, who remember Russia hacked the Democratic, uh, National Committee. And by the way, again, this isn't political. This is a fact. Like there's, there's no debate. I was in the intelligence community at the time. All right. This is a fact. There was a report, a unified report from multiple agencies high confidence assessment, Russia attacked the DNC. And I can tell you, it happened. What people didn't talk a lot about is Russia also attacked the Republican National Committee. And that just didn't come up as a big story because the DNC story became big because then a whole bunch of things got leaked out. Well, the Russians also attacked the RNC and nothing seemed to get leaked out. Now, I've given my assessment on this in the past, but you're the guest. So I'm going to ask you if, if an adversary attacks two sides, and leaks a bunch on one side and holds back everything they seem to have gotten from the other side. What, as an analyst, would that tell you is likely their reasoning?

It tells me it's not in that adversary's best interest to release that information. Perhaps there's some kind of incriminating evidence or it doesn't favor whatever their goal is. We can speculate on what that could be, but unless we actually see the evidence that they got a hold of, we don't know for sure why. They would hold that back. But I mean, there are analytical techniques to determine, you know, let's say if there were internal political leaks from that party that revealed some potential reason why Russians might not have wanted to release that.

Mm-hmm.

Also, it could be that they favor working with one presidential candidate over another. It doesn't necessarily mean that they like that person or they're friends with them. It might mean Russia could see that candidate as easier to manipulate. It could be that they have some kind of similarities that they plan to exploit in the future if that person becomes president. A lot of times it's a process of elimination for them, both Russia, well, and China, maybe Iran as well. And the reason I, I want to say that I focus on Russia when it comes to 2016 and 2020, because Russia has consistently been the most motivated to disrupt US elections and society. And I can talk later about why China is not as interested in our elections. But let's still stay on Russia for a second. Let's say, for example, if they are doing psychological profiles on two presidential candidates, they're looking at their political records and history, where they stand on certain issues. Like security and NATO and military power, Russia might determine, we definitely don't want this person to be the president of the United States because that will cripple our ability to achieve these goals and strategies that we have for ourselves. I think it's important because a lot of Americans feel like the world revolves around the US, and as a political— I went to college for political science. I have to point out that our adversaries always have their best interest in mind first. They're not just hateful towards the United States because we're the United States. They have their own political goals and objectives that do not— are like completely opposite from what we do in the United States and in the Western world in general. This also applies to Canada, UK, Australia, you know, other Western nations that operate like we do and have similar political ecosystems. So it's always about what's in their best interest first, and they don't have a party that they're like, oh yay, Republicans, yay Democrats. That's not how it works.

No, I mean, that's a really good point. I think, and I think we lose that here in the States sometimes, you know, it's there's been a lot, you know, 2016, obviously a lot of talk about Russia and we had a lot in 2020 as well. And, and I think, I think a lot of people are responsible for this. I think Democrats, I think Republicans, I think, I think the media in general are responsible for, for turning this into a Trump-Russia collusion discussion all the time. Right. And I think it's important to note that, like you just said, adversaries are looking out for themselves. They're looking for the best avenue for themselves. I think in 2016, We had one candidate who'd made it pretty clear they were not a huge fan of Russia, uh, and had a long political history that suggested they were going to make things difficult for Russia. We had another candidate who doesn't understand why we're investing in NATO and sees things more from a business standpoint than a politics and international relations standpoint, and has a lot of former professional dealings, you know, business dealings with the Russians. So I don't know that Russia likes either candidate more than the other in 2016. But it's easy to see which one they thought would probably be better for their interests. And this isn't about what it's turned into a lot of times in the media discussion. So I can go down a whole path of why I do or do not think, you know, that Trump and Russia actually have more to talk about in that discussion. But just looking at the surface, Hillary Clinton didn't look like she was gonna be very favorable to the Russian plans for what their goals and objectives were. And Donald Trump looked like he probably was going to be more favorable for them. That's, that's boiling down as simple as it can be. All right. This isn't about anything but Russia trying to do what's best for Russia and thinking they have an opportunity to affect our elections to make it happen. Either Trump would win and they would have a candidate they felt like they'd have a better chance of working with because that person was more aligned with their goals and objectives, or Trump would lose, but they'd done enough to poison the system that, that Hillary Clinton would win, but probably be a weaker president who would be fighting back allegations that it wasn't a fair election and some of these other things. Either one of those is a win for an adversary who's trying to make it harder for the United States to stand in their way as they're thinking of invading Ukraine, as they're trying to, you know, weaken NATO and some of these other things. It's not complicated. I think for people who try to take their politics out and just look at it as an adversary's perspective. Now, I'll add one perspective to this. You know, we talked about hypothesizing why would, why would the DNC be hacked and leaked and the Russian, the RNC was hacked and, and wasn't leaked. There's also, and again, this is. Speculation. There's also the possibility that you, you leak from one side and you hold back from the other side to use as blackmail, which the Russians are really, really good at. Perhaps they found some things that were really advantageous and they were able to threaten people that they needed support from. You know, there are certainly some prominent people on the Republican side who have wildly different opinions about Russia now than they did prior to 2015. Maybe they just changed their minds. Maybe they've learned new things. Maybe, you know, people are entitled to have different opinions come forward. But I did find it very interesting that nothing was leaked from the Republicans. A lot was leaked from the Democrats, and a whole lot of Republicans got on board with some policies and positions that didn't seem to fit their, their opinions prior. So again, speculation, something to take into account, but it's certainly something that fits in line with what intelligence organizations around the world do. And the Russians have some of the best intelligence capabilities in the world. So go ahead.

That's true. And we have to keep in mind, big picture, Russia's anti-NATO. NATO is a military presence and a threat to them, or that's how they perceive NATO, as a threat to them and their interests. Um, so that's something that Russia and China have in common as well. That's something that really ties them together when it comes to their strategies. Although they brag about, oh, we have this friendship without limits, when it comes down to it, they're supporting each other when their interests overlap. But if it was ever Russia versus China, they would take each other head on. For now, they know they have a bigger adversary to target, and they have that in common. That's NATO, US, and, you know, Western democracies around the world that threaten their power. So with Russia, it's anti-NATO, and they target NATO, NATO countries. They're conducting the same kinds of disinformation campaigns in NATO countries, and they're trying to turn the rest of the world against NATO, trying to get it dissolved basically, because that's what's in their best interest. And China's like, oh hey, I like where you're going with this, let's jump on this bandwagon. So I want to take the opportunity to kind of transition to China, if that's okay.

Sure, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, when it comes to election interference, China's very ineffective, and really they don't put a lot of resources towards trying to interfere in our elections. And bottom line is, it's because we're already such a mess. China sees how politically divided we are and go, do we really need to get involved in this when we could be putting our energy and resources on the rest of the world and trying to influence the rest of the world against the US? And in that way, they're very effective.

They're doing major investments in infrastructure in Africa, for instance.

Yes, all of these, you know, Belt and Road Initiative projects that they've launched around the world is essentially economic coercion to go, hey, we'll build bridges and 5G and give you data centers which will produce jobs for you. Now, that doesn't sound so bad for these countries that have been historically and marginalized, they are like, oh, this is awesome, China to the rescue. And they feel neglected by the West because there hasn't been as much investment in them. Now, what that comes with is contracts and, well, number one, a lot of economic debt, but they're able to politically coerce these countries in the Global South and say, Yeah, sure, we'll provide this, but you also have to agree publicly that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. So this One China policy is, you know, tied in with these economic deals that China's offering. And so little by little, they're using economic coercion. Um, they're also buying out a lot of the mainstream media in those countries. And now the Chinese state-run media is directly incorporated into those countries' mainstream media. So instead of getting just the Western perspective, now they're getting the China perspective on what's happening around the world and how the US and the West and NATO are conducting themselves. That is their— I don't know, I want to say like they inject malign narratives into those countries through their own state media. And it is globally very effective. And I'm not going to lie, it's scary. It's scary how effective it is. If you get into those Telegram channels and WhatsApp channels and those message boards in those countries, you'll start to notice the anti-US, anti-West sentiment growing over time. And that's where China is so successful, is like gradual little steps towards their long-term strategy of turning the world against the West and towards China.

Well, yeah, and above and beyond that— I mean, that's all very true, I should say. Excuse me, I should say in addition to that. So what you've got, you've got the old Sun Tzu logic, right? The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? So that's the Russia-China friendship. Yeah, we're friends for now because we all hate the same people, but eventually 400, 500 years from now, because Chinese think in centuries, Americans think in quarters business-wise, Chinese think in centuries and generations. So down the road, we'll deal with Russia later. But while the Russians—

It's like how everyone in the NFL is against the Cowboys.

Well, there's good reason for that though. The Cowboys are awful and horrible. Listen, I love the Cowboys.

They're my team, but awful.

I know. And I love it because every year you guys get so excited. This is going to be the year. And every year I get to watch them break your hearts within the first few weeks. And it's, it's fun to watch. Maybe sometimes they wait till later in the year. Listen, I'm a Vikings fan. Our team waits till the very end to break our hearts almost every year.

So yeah, well, at least they set the bar very low early this season. So we're just like, oh, that's how this season's gonna go.

Great.

Yeah, you guys are off to a rough start.

I'm not even excited for the game tonight.

So you got the, the enemy of, of my enemy is my friend, right? So that's the Russia-China engagement. But while the Russians are, are hammering elections and, and destabilizing the West so the West isn't unified to deal with, with what the Russians and the Chinese want. The Chinese are over here digging up islands, creating new islands to expand their territory in the South China Sea. They're, they're going heavy on, you know, manipulating Africa and the subcontinent, right, with the economics and the, and the messaging.

Right.

They're also hoarding a whole bunch of natural resources that people don't talk much about that are also coming out of there. So all the, all the elements and cotton and all the things the Chinese have been—

yeah.

Hoarding, right, is a big chunk of this. So there's huge strategic plays going on with both of these, you know, large nations that we're just so busy distracted by this, this political issue, which is not minor for us. I mean, it is our future as well, but it's, it's working really well. And like you said, it's very, very frightening to watch. You know, in 2016, I would say was a giant success for our adversaries. Regardless of how things worked out for us, it was going to be 2020. You know, we turn to 2020 and you see a lot of mis and disinformation campaigns coming out. That we're set up in a position of— it doesn't matter. Again, it doesn't matter who wins. The adversaries don't really care necessarily who wins. What they want is for us not to believe in our system no matter who wins. Joe Biden won the election. Listen, I argue all you want. Again, if you're still listening to this, I suspect you believe that because otherwise you just shut off a long time ago.

Yes.

Yeah, it's a fact. He won. He won by a lot in terms of individual votes. I mean, like 11 million. He won by a little in terms of our Electoral College because there's a whole system there that's It's a different discussion for a different day.

And there was—

but adversaries understand that.

Evidence of election fraud, just to be very clear for our audience, there was no evidence of election fraud.

Exactly. You know, if you, if you don't believe it, Heritage Foundation, who's as right-leaning as you get, did research on it. They found— I want to say they found— someone go look it up to get the exact numbers. It was like 24 cases of fraud in the last 30 years. I mean, it was some ridiculously long research. They really looked for it, which is good, and they didn't find it. And actually The rare cases we found in 2020 were Trump voters who were trying to prove that the system was rigged, so they were voting more than once and then got caught doing that and were trying to say, well, I didn't mean to, I wasn't trying to defraud the system, I was trying to prove a point, which actually is illegal, unfortunately. You know, the cases, 60-some-odd court cases. Listen, there's, there's no systemic fraud. There's no foreign, you know, illegal aliens don't vote. None of this stuff is real, right? But it, it gains traction and keeps gaining traction because of, in part, misindifferent disinformation from foreign actors amplified by Americans because it's in their best interest, because they want to keep power. And again, it creates a system where people don't believe. Joe Biden won. Like it or not, he won. It was close in a couple places. Our Electoral College creates that. By the way, Russia's very familiar with the Electoral College. They know where to target mis— and different disinformation campaigns right down to the exact counties. Like, they understand you can win by 10 million votes and lose the election in America as long as you lose the right places. Yes, there's no debate on who won. And yet we have, as the years have gone by, even it's gotten worse, the statistics. I want to say now, I'll get the number wrong, it's a large number, let's go with that, a large percentage of Republican, registered Republican voters believe that Joe Biden didn't win the election. It went from a smaller percentage and kept growing over years because the misinformation continues to grow with that. And it simply isn't true. I don't care who you believe in, who you voted for. We have winners, we have losers, and we have a winner. But here we are 4 years later now, and the same person who lost is running again because so many people believe they didn't lose, which, which is a testament to, I think, a lot of our foreign powers, frankly, uh, ability to run these, you know, misdis, malinformation campaigns. So, which kind of jumps into the next question, which is, you know, today, what do you see as the biggest threats for the 2024 elections, whether it's nation states, whether it's technologies? What are the biggest threats you're seeing right now as we're, we're closing in on this 2024 general election?

Oh man, I'm gonna be honest. I know we're talking about foreign influence and malign influence, but I really believe ransomware is the biggest threat to our election this year. The reason being is that I started putting together some research about 6 months ago about threats to elections, and I went into it with some you know, maybe some prejudged notions of what the results would be. And I was very wrong. So I expected heavy nation-state targeting of election systems, of technologies, critical infrastructure around the government and elections. And really what I found was ransomware is the biggest threat to all critical infrastructure around the world. Especially US critical infrastructure. We have, you know, China, Russia, Iran, cyber criminals all over the world targeting critical infrastructure. But ransomware is by far the biggest threat, and that includes election security, election systems. Now, the reason being opportunism. Obviously, cyber criminals know they can make bank if they can cause huge disruption to operations in any part of our government. So we've got this confluence of factors in this election this year as a much more intense political environment in the US than even 4 years ago, which is hard to believe because there was an insurrection 3 years ago. Right now, add in to that that Russia is still amplifying this stuff and now they're using AI tools to create deepfakes and all types of malign narratives that are much more convincing than they were a few years ago. We don't have the same grammar and spelling issues anymore. We have AI, you know, chat features that are able to really produce very convincing text that makes it look like you're talking to another American when really it might be a foreign agent from another country. And then we've got the cybercriminal aspect and ransomware has just been on the rise, you know, consistently over the past 4 years. So I think it's going to be cyberattacks and hack and leak operations, especially by hacktivists that are maybe tied to state actors. For example, there's now hacktivist groups that are directly tied to the Russian intelligence services, but it really is a confluence of factors that is going to be a challenge for us to protect ourselves from those vulnerabilities. Everything from cyber vulnerabilities to social vulnerabilities.

Mm-hmm. Now, so this is interesting. So I don't know, I've had this discussion with several people, you know, just, just in passing. I don't think I've ever had anybody give this answer before. And, and for those who don't know, don't watch the show or listen regularly, I tell you all the time, this is unscripted. I don't know the answers in advance. I don't. For anybody who wants to know how the process works, I have a brief conversation with the guests a week or two in advance. We kind of go over some basic questions. I tell them to fill out answers on a sheet however they want, and I'll see them the day we talk. Cheri didn't even fill hers out. So I have no notes at all. Like, I literally had no idea what her answers would be here. Sometimes I at least get a heads up 5 or 10 minutes before we start. I can kind of skim through. Cheri's like, "Nah, you get nothing. I'll tell you as we go." So, which is great. No, and I love that. That's the best way to do shows. But this is literally the first time I've heard somebody say, "Hey, I think the number one threat for the elections is really gonna be ransomware." So I gotta ask then, how do you see, when you say this, are you thinking like, are you talking about ransomware against the election system itself? Are you talking about ransomware attacks against, you know, infrastructure that therefore shuts down people's ability to get to voting or just creates chaos in general, shutting down telecommunication systems, for instance, or banking systems or transportation systems? Like, what are you envisioning? And again, no crystal ball, these aren't predictions. What do you see as the potentials, like the threats that are there without, you know, we're not trying to tell where the sky's falling, but what are you seeing when you talk about ransomware as it relates to threats for the elections?

I think it could be, a combination of multiple different threat vectors. One is shutting down any kind of critical infrastructure preventing voters from getting to the polls could be a huge problem. Now, I could see nation-state threat actors trying to conduct some kind of disruptive attack like that, and it, it wouldn't have to be necessarily ransomware. It could be anything that could shut down trains, buses, traffic systems, power grids, you name it. Nation-state threat actors would be very likely to do that type of disruptive attack if they see the polls leaning a certain direction that is not in their favor. Like, let's say, a last resort, because by that point on Election Day, they've done everything they can to try to sway voters one way or another, or just divide us. I mean, they're already very successful. Like, if you— it's very difficult to have political conversations these days that don't turn hateful. And so they've already implemented those strategies. When it comes to the week of the elections, or let's say mail-in voting, there's so many different ways they can try to shut down those systems at those organizations that support that. Event, that election event. Cybercriminals, they know that there would be urgency from the government and from those even private sector organizations that support critical infrastructure. There would be an urgency to pay the ransom and get systems back online. I'm sure everyone from lowest, like, city-level government all the way up to federal would be going, I don't care what it takes, fix this problem so we can have a real free and fair election. So, and it could be a combination of things. We know that Russia has cyber criminals they work with. We know that they have hacktivist groups now that, you know, are under the direction of state-sponsored groups. So it could be a combination of these things, but I think critical infrastructure shutdown is a big threat. Is a big risk for us.

Well, that's interesting. You mentioned possibly even as the election's going on, if they see early results coming in. So I think there's, I don't know, 10 states, 11 states maybe that are like the most important states for the election, right? There's these, the battle, battleground states, right? Mm-hmm. So on the east, you're gonna be dealing with say North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, maybe South Carolina, maybe Florida, like Michigan, Pennsylvania. You know, I'm thinking of Eastern time zone, so they'll get earlier results coming in, right? These are all battleground states. Ohio. Maybe even Florida. So if those, for instance, are tracking a direction that we don't think our adversaries would want— and listen, I'm going to be transparent about it. The adversaries, I believe, are going to want Donald Trump to win. All right. Again, we're dealing with— either way, whoever wins, if they can create a system where Americans don't believe the winner won, they're going to win either way. But if they have a choice, Donald Trump's made it clear he'd like to shut down America's support for NATO. And as we've said, that's, that's key for both Russia and China. And, and Iran for that matter too. So, you know, it's as simple as, as their own self-interest. Donald Trump will probably be the favorite candidate of most foreign governments strictly because of that alone. You can go into a lot of other reasons, but we'll just use that as the example. So in these early election results, if we're seeing battleground states that are leaning Democrat, that if I'm hearing you correctly, that opens up the possibility for them to say, okay, what do we do with the later battleground states? The Nevadas, the Arizonas, the What else is a battleground out? I mean, Texas, I guess, could be a battleground.

Texas is now.

Yeah. Right. Texas is purple. There's debate. Minnesota. I'm gonna tell you as a Minnesotan, Minnesota's not battleground. I don't care what Republicans say. Minnesota doesn't vote Republican and hasn't forever. Trump said he was gonna win here twice before and he hasn't come close.

But anyway, these— I feel like with Tim Walz in the competition, maybe Minnesota's leaning towards the Democratic Party, right? Yeah.

Seems pretty solid. Right. But, but so we could see these attacks in those states then to try to, to try to disrupt. And move those battleground states, you know, in another direction. Or perhaps maybe we'll see the attacks, if I'm hearing correctly, if the trends come in, maybe they attack the eastern ones just so they can disrupt them and create chaos to say, well, the winner didn't win, right? What if, what if Kamala Harris is having a great election night? She's winning Pennsylvania, she's winning Michigan, she's winning Georgia, which would all be very bad news for Republicans. Maybe it would make sense. I'm asking you a question here. Do you think it might make sense for, for adversaries to go, hey, let's start attacking those systems now So we can create chaos and say, ah, no, though, nobody won these. We don't know. Slow the process down, you know, throw sand in the gears because the longer it takes for things to get, uh, counted and the more controversy that goes with it, the possibility of it just being told, well, we don't believe in this result. Right. And I think there's a lot of strategy on the Republican side to just get some elections so complicated that you don't know what to do with it. And maybe they get it thrown into the House of Representatives where they have the majority. And for anybody who really knows the depths of our systems, theoretically, the House could end up voting for who the president is. Is that sort of what you're thinking with ransomware as to how this could play out?

Yeah. And one thought, one pervasive thought that keeps coming to me is from the perspective of the adversary, it would be in their best interest to blame these attacks on one of the political parties to create further division. So I would warn our audience to keep an eye out for these things and don't be too reactive. When incidents are happening, it takes time to investigate attribution. So if somebody is coming out within 24 hours and saying this was this party or this was the fault of this candidate, be wary. Wait, be patient. It takes time to figure these things out. But it is in our adversaries' toolkit to deflect blame onto the victims and somehow create further division. Ultimately, Russia, China, our adversaries would love to see us have a civil war. And unfortunately, there's already these civil war narratives floating around in more extremist groups saying, let's prepare. I mean, I'm in Texas and just casual conversations in the gym led somebody to tell me they have stockpiles of weapons hidden in caves in Central Texas. I said, for what? I mean, I'm an Army girl. Like, okay, have your weapons in your gun safe at home. But why do we need stockpiles? And he said, oh, you know, civil war. And I'm going, is this really getting traction here? Like, why are we already defaulting to this mindset of it's war on this other party? We're Americans. We have a lot more in common than we have different. And our adversaries want us to go to these extremes. So leading up to an election, if there were some kind of huge disruption event, like we would have to redo the election on a separate date or something crazy like that, be wary of civil war talk, be wary of extremist groups. Taking to the streets for violent, you know, unfortunately geopolitical events. So I think that's where we're at. We have to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

Well, and it's important when you mention that, I mean, we have evidence, uh, in the past of, and in this case, having to be Russia. I'm sure there's other nation states, by the way, but of Russians who were ramping up both sides, um, of a, of a, uh, conflict, uh, in the US that led to Iran too. Exactly. I mean, and you end up with protesters on both sides showing up at a place in a physical conflict, and both sides were ramped up by the same nation who was setting it all in motion. You know, it's manipulation is happening all the time. And yeah, the Civil War discussion is, is frightening. You know, I see it regularly in social media. I've, I've certainly gotten in some discussions with folks. I keep reminding people, first of all, that most people who are having these discussions have never been to any kind of war. I've never even served. And, and they, what they think the Civil War will be they don't understand their adversary, what they perceive to be their adversary. You know, they, they think their adversary is either a dumb bunch of hicks who doesn't know what they're doing, or a bunch of tree huggers, you know, who smell like patchouli, who've never fought before and will, will cave instantly. Like, neither side seems to really understand the other very well. They also don't understand how the US military works, that, you know, in, in something like that, your AR-15s will not be very valuable against an A-10 Warthog or artillery or some of the other things the US military would bring to bear to to, to stop this. Civil war is not a viable option, but it's frightening how often the discussion comes up. And again, that's exactly what our adversaries want. So, um, but you also made a valuable point about speed, right? We live in a world now where nobody has a lot of patience. Everything has very fast. We're an on-demand world. So when things happen, people want, you know, an answer— who did it?— right away, right? And they jump on that. And, and there's some real challenges when people do that, because first of all, once you jump on something, then when more information comes out later that changes the analysis, it's, well, uh, how can I believe anything? They said this and now they said that. Well, you shouldn't have believed the first thing because it was without any evidence behind it, right? You should have waited. And just because something takes time doesn't mean there's a conspiracy behind it. Doesn't mean, you know, it's, it's, it's should not be believed. We saw that with the election. You know, Donald Trump was way ahead and then he was behind. Well, that's because votes kept getting counted. That's how the world works. Math is funny that way. And, you know, if we were allowed to count, you know, mail-in ballots early, The Democrats were being a big lead early on. You know, the last few elections, Republicans have a lead and sometimes it evaporates and it's called the red mirage. And it's because mostly mail-in voting and absentee voting tends to favor the Democrat side. It just has. That's just where those voters are. And so you see this happen, but the misinformation gets out there very quickly and says, ah, he's won, you know, or we've won. And then when it changes, it's, it's, it's a conspiracy as opposed to just patience and letting things play out, you know, math. Works that way and time works that way. I think it's important, you know, and you made a good point there. The first time you hear something and somebody goes, this person did it, or this group did it, take it with a grain of salt. Let's wait and see more evidence come out. You know, we've seen this happen in all sorts of instances. We've seen it happen in mass shootings. We've seen it happen in crimes. We've seen it happen in politics. We have to learn to be a little more patient and let the system work to get the actual result as opposed to jumping to conclusions on who did what. And, and there's always groups quick to jump and go, the group I hate, I bet somebody from that group is responsible for this. And then it turns out somebody who's completely the opposite shows up and then it's a conspiracy theory.

Classic.

Well, I thought it was going to be this group. Yeah, exactly. That built-in bias. Right. All right. So we're running a little behind, which is no big deal. Editor will have a long episode. But so you talked about ransomware being the biggest threat, which I think is really, really interesting. And I hadn't thought of it before. It doesn't play as well into the third question we planned for, but no big deal. So again, my No, it's good. I think it's good. I think it's important to have that. The third question, uh, that we kind of planned out, so I will tell you my, my opinion has been not just about elections, but in general, I think the, the biggest threat we face worldwide is misdis and malinformation. Like just, I've talked a lot about going into this post-truth world where people just don't know what to believe anymore. And, and it's been ramped up for years by nation states and sometimes by, you know, other organizations and groups. And then the amplification through social media. Which makes messages move so quickly. We used to talk about a lie gets around the world before the truth gets its pants on, and now a lie gets around the world before the truth even wakes up in the morning. So, you know, how do you pull it back? And then you add in generative AI and the ability to make these, these, you know, campaigns so much more believable. So the question I have, and I still, like I said, I think this is the, the systemic, you know, existential threat to the world right up there, really, with nuclear proliferation, in my opinion, is how do we help people separate credible evidence and fact from misinformation and fearmongering that's designed to manipulate popular opinion? Now, that relates to the election cycle, certainly. It also relates to other things. But how are we going to help people in an age where things are happening so quickly, with nation-states, again, and other actors, you know, acting on their own best interests, who are pouring information into our systems? We live on social media, like it or not. We consume more content in a day now than our ancestors did in a year. And it's, it's, a lot of it's not to be believed, but people separate what they hear and think from the sources. A lot of times it's where our brains work. And so over time they believe things. They don't remember why they believe those things. So how are we going to help people separate, you know, evidence and fact from mis— dis— malinformation and things that are designed to manipulate our opinions?

Yeah, that's a tough question. And I like this one because we don't have all the answers. But let me start by saying people believe what they see and hear first. And what they see and hear the most. That means it's very easy to manipulate audiences with viral social media, with fake news that looks real. And most of the misinformation that is spread today is from low-information audiences. That means audiences that are not as familiar with critical thinking. And that's not like an insult to people that are not educated or something like that. It's just a lot of people don't learn how to do real research. They don't learn how to recognize their own bias. They cling to it like it's a huge part of their identity. And that is for everyone. Our, our beliefs, our opinions are deeply ingrained in us. Sometimes the way we were raised, sometimes depending on the country we grew up in or the political system or whatever. But you have to be open-minded and you have to think, do I really have the answers? Or is— am I okay with the answer this news agency has given me? Does this appeal to my belief system. Maybe that's why I'm clinging to this theory or this information. But if you are willing to just take a step back, be less reactive to what you see on social media, maybe take a deep breath and calm yourself down, because that information is meant to rile up negative feelings or intense feelings about the news, about the people on the other side of the political aisle. Take a deep breath, calm yourself down, and start exploring news from maybe politically neutral sources. There are— there's a media bias chart out there that I find helpful, and it's a lot of research and a lot of, you know, great science that went into this bias chart to help you identify which news sources are going to give you facts and are going to back up that facts with sources and not just anonymous sources said it's actual real information with studies that you can go read and verify for yourself. That way, you know that your chances of getting real factual information is much higher from those particular sources than it is from some of the more biased sources on the right or left side. So that's one way, but a lot of people don't trust the media and a lot of people don't trust official sources and government these days. I understand. What you're going to have to do is really take a step back and go, how do I really feel about this information? Is there a way I can verify it? If you find that the sources are really shady, you've never heard of some of these news channels, Stay away from those, those strays. You don't know who owns them, who funds them, and who manages them. There may be a good chance that some of these fringe news sites are actually foreign news agencies trying to feed you disinformation. So, you know, going back to 2020 when COVID started and all this COVID misinformation was coming out, I keep referring people back to official sources. Look at the facts. If doctors all over the world are all saying the same thing about how to protect yourself from a virus, or researchers— like you mentioned earlier, there were reports coming out of the U.S. government that were backed by private sector nonprofits, government research agencies, and all of these intel agencies all came to the same conclusions separately, but have the same evidence, there's a good chance there's truth in that report. So, you know, there is some critical thinking that goes into it. But I think it's always important to remember that we believe what we see first and see the most. And that's not always the truth. So sometimes it takes time for the truth to come out. So just wait, be patient, don't make any irrational decisions, or don't go, you know, unfriend all of your, all of your family that believes different, differently from you, right?

Well, and you make, you make a couple interesting points in there. First of all, you know, if this is the point that I kind of derived from what you said, because I've mentioned before, you have all these sources, right? We used to believe in things that we don't as much more. The, the, we used to believe not necessarily in the government 100%, but certain officials. We used to believe when the intelligence agencies told us things. And now we don't. We used to believe journalists for the most part. Now we don't. And you should ask yourselves, you know, we should ask ourselves why, you know, some of that is, yeah, people have been wrong occasionally or they've made mistakes and they've had to correct it. And you're able to say, well, see, they were wrong there. That means it must be wrong everywhere, which is ridiculous. But there's also been concerted efforts to limit our confidence in these organizations, in these systems, again, by people who benefit from us not trusting. If you run out of things to trust, if you run out of foundations, if you run out of infrastructure that you believe in, then anything is real and nothing is real, and then opinions equal fact, and then you can just choose to believe whatever you want. You live your own reality and there's no objective truth. There's no objective truth, then you're much more susceptible to being manipulated. I've also said I think it's really important if, as you said, you know, world— around the world, doctors, experts, scientists, etc., have an opinion, there's a good chance that you aren't the only one that just somehow knows right and they're all wrong. You know, a lot of people are like, ah, this is— I found this secret thing nobody wants to talk about. Everybody's hiding it, and it's in these dark reaches of the internet, and 12 people know about it. Listen, you 12 people are not smarter than every other person on the planet. That's just not how it works.

Yeah, that's called a conspiracy theory.

Exactly. And they work, and people believe in them. They go, well, they're all lying to us, and we're the only ones that are right. It's something that feeds a hole in somebody in their, you know, it's something in ego. It's something in, you know, the need to believe that they're special and unique and powerful and that they know things other people don't, as opposed to just accepting that maybe they don't. And it's not, you know, as you said, you know, people aren't necessarily skilled or trained in critical thinking. This is not meant to insult, all right? And this, this comes across that way. Oh, we're intelligence professionals. You must think you're smarter. No, I don't think I'm smarter. I think I'm trained differently. You know, you said you did a research project not long ago, the threats to, to elections, and you came in with a bias and it turned out it didn't work out that way. But the reason, and I think a lot of people miss this subtlety, is you knew coming in, hey, I have a bias. We're trained to know our own biases, to accept and realize they're there, and to fight against them, and to clean the slate, and to look at everything through fresh eyes. That is a skill. That is a trained skill. That is the difference between intelligence analysts and people who just look at the internet and they're smart and they read the Googles and they come up with the answers, right? And I think people lose track of this as a profession. This is a, this is a trained skill set. There's a lot of work that goes into this and there's a lot of effort and it includes understanding bias and fighting against bias. Most people don't. That's not a shot about somebody being uneducated or us being smarter or better. That isn't the point. It's just different training. And it, it does take training and effort and work to, to have critical thinking skills and to be able to fight bias. And most of us don't. Most people don't because you're busy and you have a million things going on and we're just consuming things that come in and we're, and we're, you know, we're working through what we get. And people are going to take advantage of those known biases. And they're going to try to put people into echo chambers where more of the same happens. And, and people come to believe— I just had a discussion the other day with somebody who said, well, everybody agrees on something. And quickly I was able to show statistics. That was on Twitter, if anybody's looking, by the way. I showed polls that showed 58% didn't agree with the position this person just said everybody agreed on. Like, there's data that proves that's not true. Just because you live in an echo chamber where everybody you know agrees doesn't mean everybody agrees on this thing. But it's easy for people to say that, and then you refute it with facts and data and, and things that are objective, and they just get really mad about it. But it's important to understand when intel people like Charity or like myself or others, when we talk about this, we're not trying to say we're smarter or we're better. All right? That's not the point. It's a skill. We've been trained on this. Intel professionals put a lot of time and effort. The government spends a lot of time and money, frankly, teaching us how to think differently. It's irritating. Believe me, ask any of our friends or relatives. It's really irritating to have conversations with us because everything seems starts to be a critical discussion, and we think differently about every little detail, and it can be very irritating. But it's important to understand this isn't about superiority, in my opinion. This is about explaining we think differently, and we're trying to help other people think this way and slow down and, and give it some thought. If something hits you and it just— boy, it really fits exactly what you want to believe, but it's an outlier and you're not seeing it in all the main media, it's not because the whole main media is afraid to report it and there's some big conspi— conspiracy against the truth. It's because what you're getting is garbage that's sent to you specifically because they know you're going to want it and believe it because it aligns with your position. And they're trying to manipulate you and get you to not believe facts because the facts are likely to be more advantageous to you and not to the adversaries. So I think, you know, everything you said is accurate, obviously. And I think it's important to help people slow down, find sources you believe in. I think that chart about bias in media is really valuable. And listen, for anybody who's wondering, yes, it talks about a lot of right-wing sources. It also calls out left-wing sources. It is intended to be unbiased. And there are sources in the middle. And, and I think going to as many sources as you can also helps. You know what? I read sources that I know are far-right biased sources. I read sources that I know are far-left biased sources because I want to know what everybody's saying. I know I'm not going to believe most of those sides, but it's good to know where they are. And then you work towards the middle and you get a lot of sources together and you're able to say, okay, this is what I I can tie myself to as most likely to be factual.

So, you know, I have a few quick tips for audience too when it comes to sorting through especially political information. You know, speaking about as analysts how we do our work, one, look at high-fidelity sources, hot sources that are leaning towards facts and provide sources for those facts. And are— you can tell by their headlines if they're leaning left or right or if they're more center. So use high-fidelity sources for your research and for verifying your information. The second tip I have is remove your emotions from, from the situation. If you're looking into something, let's say you're comparing two political candidates and their views on a divisive topic like immigration. Then when you're looking into this, be aware of your bias. Be aware that I'm coming into this with an idea that I think I know what this is. And then being aware of that, take the emotions out. It's, it's not about how it makes you feel. It's about looking for facts and looking for truth. And so when you're doing that, my third tip is use analysis of competing hypothesis. Which is a framework, a technique we use when we analyze information where we pose multiple different possibilities and then we look for the facts that support or refute each of those. And for, for many people, for me, I do like a, a list of like, here's facts that support this hypothesis, here's some facts that refute this hypothesis. And then I go through this with each of those you know, hypotheses. And then you look at it and you compare it and then show it to another analyst who might think differently than you. Show it to somebody of an opposite sex from you. They might have a different perspective on this. They might look at your list and go, oh, you're missing something here. Or what if we think about it like this? And it's going to open your mind to see facts in a different light because they may be able to call you out and say, maybe you purposefully omitted this information because you're biased in this way, but here's some information you might not know, or you may not know where to look for it. So again, high-fidelity sources, take the emotion out of it when you're doing fact-finding, and have some possibilities of different solutions, different answers for the problem.

Yeah, analysis of competing hypotheses is great. And for anybody who wants to, by the way, you can just Google ACH analysis. Like if you want to learn what ACH is, it's one of the common tactics we use. You can Google that. It's really easy to read a page and understand what the concept is. I mean, Charity laid it out pretty well, but ACH analysis, and you can see what analysis of competing hypothesis looks like and how to play that out. And this is what teams do all the time. This is what we do in the intel community and the private sector. Running through these hypotheses, having these discussions with other analysts, as, you know, as she said. And I look for people who are different than me, right? People with different political backgrounds, different age groups, different genders, different whatever it is, socioeconomic positions, you know, try to get people with different points of view so you're able to have the most unbiased answer possible. Now, everybody's not gonna do that with every news story they read. I get that. But the key is slow down, know your sources, look for facts and data and research as opposed to opinion. You know, you mentioned, Charity mentioned, like, it's not about your feelings. Listen, fuck your feelings. It's a big, big statement a lot of people make all the time, right? A lot of the same people who are the fuck your feelings crowd are really into their own feelings. So, you know, check yourself on that too. If you're believing that, if you get all upset with people, you're like, I don't care about your feelings, you know, just suck it up and live with it. Well, remind yourself that includes you. So, you know, it's not about our feelings. It's about data. It's about facts. It's about evidence. It's about what we can support. That's how we're going to get through this onslaught of misdis and malinformation that's designed to separate us, to divide us as a nation for the benefit of foreign nations. I mean, it's as simple as that. This divide and conquer has been around forever, and that's what people are trying to do to the US because we are still currently the most powerful country in the world economically and militarily. Right. But it's not a permanent situation. Other empires have been in that position before and And there's always gonna be somebody trying to, to fix that in their opinion, you know, to, to take that away. So we are our worst enemy sometimes because we, we fall for a lot of these things. And social media has amplified a lot of this and generative AI is gonna make it worse. So I think there's a lot to look at as we, as we look into the 2024 election cycle specifically, and then beyond, how do we keep track of what's real and what's not? How do we know what adversaries we're looking out for? You know, Charity just gave us a whole bunch of things to watch for the ransomware attacks. You know, we've got the misdisinformation. We understand the whys. Now, this isn't about politics. This is adversaries looking out for their best interest. It has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans or independents or whatever party you're a part of. Libertarian, take your pick. They don't care. We're all Americans and they, they, they want to weaken us as a nation because it's in their best interests. And this is the way they're, they're choosing to accomplish it.

So, mm-hmm.

All right.

With that said, we gotta get, uh, through here, closing up on the end here. Listen, the show's named Unspoken Security, so every guest gets put on the hot seat. You don't get an exception for being my friend, Charity. So, you know, with the idea that the show is called Unspoken Security, it's— you're on the seat now. So I need you to tell me something, and the audience in this case, something that you haven't told people before, something that so far has gone unspoken. Now, before you do, I wanna warn people, Charity and I had a long discussion. She has so much cool stuff. I'm already gonna have her back as a guest again. So she actually has a couple of these. She can't reveal both here, so She's gonna have to hold something back for the next episode because I'm gonna have her right back because she had some really cool stuff and we want to do a couple of these things. So you can pick whatever you've got on your, on your list here, but talk to somebody, you know, talk to me, talk to the, to the audience about something you haven't told me before, something unspoken.

Hard because I talk a lot. I'm pretty transparent with, with my friends that I trust, but one thing I've never told anybody is that in college I wanted to be a politician. And a lot of my friends would find this very strange because I am not into politics. I feel a lot of politics is kind of gross. It's very mean. It's just a lot of corruption, you know, in politics. But I started out my political science college adventure with this goal of changing the world and wanting to make a big impact. And at that point, I had not joined the Army yet. I guess that was the, my, the way that I ended up going. But I'll never forget when I was in high school, I was watching C-SPAN like a nerd, like who watches C-SPAN in high school? And I was watching a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing where they were interviewing the leader or the potential new leader of the CIA. And one thing I noticed that there was no women. In the Senate Intelligence Committee. And I asked my dad, like, why is there no women in there? He's like, I don't know, maybe you should go be one. And I was like, yeah, I love being a trailblazer. I like representing women and encouraging other women to break barriers and break those glass ceilings. And, you know, I'm happy to see that since then there have been women on the Senate Intelligence Committee and Sometimes that thought still pops up, but I decided not to go into politics. Instead, I went the Army route and got into intelligence. Who knows where it will lead, but I don't think I have enough money to even get into politics.

So, which is a sad story. Yeah, it's a sad story. There's a lot of money in politics. So first of all, really interesting and relatable. Listen, I also have thought about politics in the past and for the same reason, you know, it makes sense. I think what drew you and me, I guess, military service is probably the reason. Like, you want to make a difference, you want to help, and you think politics in theory should, right? Government leadership, that's how we help make a better nation. It's the politics part that's hard, you know, the whole getting elected, staying, staying in power, that constant cycle. And there's so much money in it now, uh, that our system isn't, you know, quite as clean as I think— certainly as I would like it to be, and I suspect you would either, which makes it very frustrating. It shouldn't be, you know, it's sad to hear, and you're right, but it's sad to hear somebody say I'd like to do this, but I probably just don't have enough money. That shouldn't be how our system works. That wasn't how it was designed, you know, as a representative of everyone. It shouldn't be that you have to be a millionaire to even consider getting into politics. And, and you almost have to now, unless you're, you've got a, you know, some sort of a firebrand, you know, reputation that gets you in with a specific, you know, group within a specific party. Just a note, by the way, there's 17 people on the US Senate Intelligence Committee as of today. 2 are women. So, and I went over it because I looked it up.

So very underrepresented.

100%. Yeah. Kirsten Gillibrand and Susan Collins are the only two women on the committee today. And I didn't know that by heart. I'm Googling over here, so I'm cheating because I was curious. As you said, I was like, how many women are on the committee now? So 2 out of 17.

We still have work to do there.

Yeah. Well, that's— and that's, you know, I was really curious.

So it's a nasty, nasty political environment for women in politics, too. Just yesterday saw some disgusting AI videos and stuff made of Kamala Harris. It just No matter who you vote for, it's really wrong. Sexism in politics is just discouraging. If you think about your daughters, your sisters, your mothers, like these women want to have a voice. They want to represent the 50% of our population that are women, but getting into politics and dealing with the hate and the literal violent threats towards women in politics. Makes it more challenging.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, it's a, it's a problem. It's a problem across the spectrum in the US. You know, certainly the tech industry, we see a whole lot of this, right? But specifically politics, I think you're right. You know, it's, everybody has a right, you know, to be a part of the system, especially, you know, everybody who's a US citizen, just for anybody who's wondering, everybody has a right to be part of the system if you're a US citizen. Women actually represent more than half of the country. And, and you're right. It, it's, listen, if you wanna attack a candidate because you don't like their policies. You don't like their positions. You don't think they're qualified. Great. You go into gender, you get into race, you get into religion, you, you've lost the argument. Like you're no longer actually arguing something that's valid or relevant. Women can do everything men can do. I don't care what gender you are. I don't care what race you are. I don't care, you know, what religion you are. Those aren't part of the, uh, equation, you know, for being qualified, you know, for office. You know, how is your education? What's your background? What's your history? What are your political positions? What are your policies, positions? Great. Vote on that stuff. Focus on the policies. That's right. If you're just upset about somebody, you know, because of, you know, what gender they are or their skin tone or whatever, you know, maybe, maybe it's okay if you just skip this one. I mean, it's, everybody's got a right to vote. You can, you can vote again for whatever reason you want to. I'm just, I'm not real impressed with people who aren't voting for facts and, and, and, you know, voting on reason. So anyway, I appreciate you sharing that one. That's really interesting, Charity. I'm looking forward to having you back. Like I said, we've got another topic lined up that we're going to talk about next time. So I'm excited about that. We're out of time for today. So I want to wrap this one up. Is there any last thoughts that you want to put in here? Anything I missed? You want to plug anything? You just want to, you know, talk about your kids or your dogs or whatever? Anything you want to wrap up before we kick out of here?

I don't think so. I think we covered a lot.

All right. Well, I'm good with that. So listen, with that, Charity, I can't thank you enough for being on and spending time. You know, you're a friend of mine, obviously, so I appreciate it. But you're also brilliant. I'm not, you I don't have friends on the show cuz they're friends. I have friends on the show cuz they're brilliant and they're foolish enough to be my friends still anyway. So brilliance always has a vulnerability in there someplace, right? So, but I appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time to come on, for talking about, you know, threats to the elections. I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to having you on again. Until then, and for everybody listening and watching, thank you guys. Please like and follow and subscribe and share all the good vibes with your friends and neighbors and family and whatever. If you don't like the show, just shut up. I don't wanna know about it. No, I do. Feel free to send me insights if you want to make the show better. But please don't spread the bad word without talking to me first. Maybe I can help make it better for you. But with that, I'm going to wrap it up here today. So again, thanks for being here. And this has been another episode of Unspoken Security.

That's a wrap for this episode of Unspoken Security. If you enjoyed this episode, follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. See you next time.