The Biden Administration's Response to Disinformation

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. With Election Day tomorrow, concerns about the role of disinformation and misinformation have been brewing for months, if not years, because of what happened in 2020 all over the country, as you know. According to Politico, Elon Musk fired half of Twitter's public policy team a few days ago going into election weekend, including personnel who handle account verifications for politicians, which is to say some of the people who are supposed to spot disinformation on Twitter and eliminate it.

Also just yesterday, The New York Times reported that Russia has reactivated its bots, its disinformation bots, just in time for the midterms, in order, "To stoke anger among conservative voters and to undermine trust in the American electoral system. This time, it also appears intended to undermine the Biden administration's extensive military assistance to Ukraine." That from the Times yesterday. Many election officials are worried. In early August, election officials from Florida and Colorado wrote to the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, urging the agency to, "Help track and remediate doxing, threats, and harassment of election officials." We talked on the show last week about the threats to poll workers.

A little over a week ago, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the National Counter-Terrorism Center and the Capitol Police released a big joint warning that election-related perceptions of fraud will likely result in attempted violence by extremists. Let's talk about it. With me now, Andrea Bernstein, who covers Democracy for ProPublica and contributes to NPR covering Trump legal matters. She's co-host of Will Be Wild, the podcast about January 6th, and author of the book American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power, and also Ilya Marritz, freelance reporter for ProPublica, NPR, and co-host of the podcasts, Trump, Inc.

You remember Ilya and Andrea doing that together when they were WNYC employees, and we were producing that show and the podcast Will Be Wild about January 6th. Andrea and Ilya have now co-authored an article for ProPublica titled, "How the Biden Administration Caved to Republicans on Fighting Election Disinformation," and that's precisely what we're going to discuss. Hi, Andrea. Hi, Ilya. Welcome back to the show.

Andrea: Hey, Brian. Great to be with you.

Ilya: Hi.

Brian: Andrea, you want to start and lay out the timeline for our listeners a little bit? What did the Department of Homeland Security pledge to do in order to fight misinformation, and how did we get to a place where most of those efforts, you report, have been paused or canceled?

Andrea: Yes, so I think it's worth just going back for just a moment to the environment after the last election, January 6th, when it was clear that the words of the former president were motivating people to commit acts of political violence. In the immediate aftermath of that, there was a lot of hand wringing in the security community, a lot of people that I spoke with who felt distraught that the warning signs were there, that not enough had been done. When there was a peaceful transfer of power, and President Biden took over, his administration went pretty forcefully ahead with identifying that disinformation, it's not just about political spin or expressing vehement opinions.

It's about spreading false information in the political environment in a way that some people will pick up on it and act on it and commit acts of violence. It was really identified early on as a key domestic terrorism threat, mis- and disinformation that needed to be addressed. There were some robust initial efforts in the Biden administration. There was a domestic terrorism report that identified misinformation as a key problem. The Department of Homeland Security recognized that it needed to coordinate its efforts. It began to set up, late 2021, early 2022, what are called Disinformation Governance Board, which was designed to coordinate efforts around this.
It's not just an election thing, although that is a prime threat. One of the things that happens after disasters is people put out mis- and disinformation. It happens regarding immigration and lots of intersecting interests of the Department of Homeland Security. When word of this board leaked, there was a fierce pushback by rightwing influencers and some Republicans saying, "This is attempting to stifle our free speech. It's identifying people that disagree with the administration as domestic terrorists." What our reporting showed is that inside the Department of Homeland Security, there was a real reversal. There was a, "This is too politically sensitive. We need to pull back. We can't do this."

Here we are in this political environment leading up to the 2022 elections where we have never in American history had this kind of vast mis and disinformation circulating right before the election, where you have, and Ilya has talked to now probably dozens of election workers who are under threat, who are people who maybe had the political profile of a library worker or a cafeteria lunch lady or a school crossing guard. People trying to do their civic duty who are suddenly getting death threats, having people show up at their homes. This is the environment that we're going into where the disinformation is awful. The attempt to combat it was really curtailed prior to this election.
Brian: Listeners, if you want to help us report this story by saying out loud any attempts at misinformation or disinformation you're seeing come your way. I'm not talking about political flyers or anything like that where you disagree with their spin and you want to label it disinformation. I'm talking about real disinformation, stuff that's totally made up in order to mislead people, in order to send people down rabbit holes that aren't even really the debates in play or intended by outsiders like Russia to try to inflame people. Are you seeing anything that you would call disinformation that you want to point to as we talk to Ilya and Andrea about their reporting? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or if you want to ask them a question. You can tweet @BrianLehrer.

Ilya, picking up on what Andrea wrote, you wrote that the Department of Homeland Security completely canceled a project that, you write, "Would have tracked online death threats to election workers and offered them enhanced protection of their personal information." What is DHS doing, if anything at this point, to protect election workers from different types of threats or intimidation or actual physical violence?

Ilya: Well, I'm glad you asked, Brian, because it's important to emphasize DHS has not completely pulled back from election-related activity and efforts to help election workers. Actually, right before the show, I was watching a video that they put out I think three weeks ago, about de-escalating confrontations at polling places. A source of mine tipped me off to that video, and I was like, "I got to see this." They talk about how to recognize the signs of an agitated individual, maybe they have balled fists or they're pacing, or they're unwilling to follow the rules of the polling place. Election workers are advised to say things like, "I see you're upset," instead of saying, "Calm down, sir."

That's quite interesting, and there's a fair amount of security activity going on. Tabletop exercises, that kind of planning. The reason that this piece of it matters around mis and disinformation is that that is a driver of the threats, absent the idea that elections are fraudulent, absent the notion that your polling place or vote by mail can't be trusted or drop-off boxes can't be trusted. You won't have people making these kinds of threats and having these kinds of confrontations with election workers. Andrea mentioned, I've talked to a lot of people in the election worker community over the past several weeks, and what I heard from almost every single one of them is the balance of their work has really shifted.

There's always been a public-facing component where you are communicating to the public about how voting works, what to expect on election day, how to get an absentee ballot if you want to request it, how the system works, how privacy works. That's always been a part of it, but it's gone from 20% of the day to 50% of the day. That means that these election workers have less and less time, or they're even harder pressed to actually do the work of administering elections. That in itself may cause some problems because when you're triaging between a lot of hostile incoming questions and doing the work of running an election, that's when mistakes may happen and problems may crop up.

Again and again, I heard that this is a really combustible mix and we don't know. Hopefully, voting goes smoothly this cycle. Everyone hopes that it will, but the chances that it doesn't one place or another are a lot higher than they've ever been in the past. This is a really new thing. It's very, very unusual for Americans to be so activated around concerns about voting, many of which are fueled by myths and disinformation.

Brian: This is WNYC FM, HD and AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey public radio and live streaming at wnyc.org at exactly eleven o'clock as we continue with Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz on election day, election week disinformation and the Biden administration pulling back from certain attempts to fight it under pressure from Republicans. Let's take a phone call right now. Vincent in Yonkers, you're on WNYC. Vincent, I think we have you. Hi, there. Vincent, can you hear me?

Vincent: Hi, good morning. Can you hear me?

Brian: I can. Hi.

Vincent: Like I told your screener, I'm from India originally, and last few days we've seen these advertisements on Indian channels on television where you have ex-President Trump sitting with someone and saying that the Indian children, this is regarding the children with the DREAM Act, and ex-President Trump saying that your children have been treated horribly, very badly. He switches to one sentence in Hindi to gain people's attention, and then the voice-over takes over in the background saying, "Please help President Trump save your children. Vote Republican." This is a very negative ad and a very, very false ad. I think, in my opinion, all my friends who are Indian have been really put off by this.

Brian: Vincent, thank you very much for reporting that. That's an interesting example. I don't know if that goes in the category of disinformation as opposed to just very targeted spin, but Andrea, have you heard about that example before?

Andrea: I have not heard about that example. One of the things that the dis and misinformation experts have spoken to me about a lot in the last week is the way in which these messages are proliferating across all kinds of social media channels. Not just, obviously, Twitter and Facebook, but there's Parler, there's Gab, there's just so many of them, and how it's hard to track these rumors. A lot of the election-related mis and disinformation has to do with stuff that people have been primed to believe since 2020. For example, after 2020, the former President Trump and his supporters have said you can corrupt the voting system, you can change lots of votes.

There was a movie 2000 Mules about how vulnerable and easy to manipulation drop boxes are. There is all kinds of talk about when the election count ends, and if it doesn't end election night, how it's suspect. That is all disinformation about the voting process. Over the last two years, what's happened is people have been accustomed to hearing these things that are false, they have been accustomed to the idea that they should suspect everything when in fact voting systems are quite secure. I'm always cautioned by the experts. That doesn't mean there won't be mistakes, but overall, time and time again, they're proven to be very secure. These things are not true.
What happens is that you create doubt. You create doubt about an outcome and the great fear is that in a close election, these rumors and lies that many voters have been primed to believe will take over, and some small section of the population, some unbalanced person, like the person who attacked Paul Pelosi in San Francisco, will then translate into acts of violence. That's the fear that keeps being expressed to me by experts in this space, that lies and rumors can lead to acts of violence, and that they are specifically about the integrity of the electoral process.
Brian: George in Bay Ridge, you're on WNYC. Hi, George. We'll get you up in just a second. Sorry about that. We are putting callers on the air a little differently with a different-- You don't need to know about this. A different person clicking them on than usual, but now we have you, George. Hi.

George: Hi. Thank you for taking the call. I have no social media presence whatsoever, but I've received the mailing from what calls itself the Congressional Leadership Foundation saying that Max Rose voted for inflationary spending with all the Joe Biden's spending increase, except Max Rose hasn't been in office during the Biden administration. It's not opinion, it's just total misinformation.

Brian: Thank you, George. That's interesting. I know that group that you refer to. That's a big pro-Republican PAC, political action committee, that buys a lot of ads, if I'm hearing the name that you stated correctly. I guess, Ilya, that's a form of disinformation. It's true that Max Rose used to be a member of Congress from Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. He was defeated in 2020 by Nicole Malliotakis, the Republican. At the same time that President Biden was elected, Max Rose was kicked out of office, so he couldn't have voted for any Biden policies.
That might be an example of, I haven't seen the exact wording, either disinformation per se, or a hard spin on positions that Max Rose took in the past that they would say are consistent with the kind of spending that they object to. I think you're talking about different kinds of things primarily. Andrea was giving a few examples. Maybe you can give a few more. What is the really damaging disinformation, not even a lie about a particular candidate's policy positions, but the kinds of things that your report really focuses on that are so troubling and new?

Ilya: Well, the really damaging stuff is all the stuff about the mechanics of elections. It's all about the idea that drop boxes aren't safe, the idea that an election can be stolen through mail-in voting. Again, as Andrea said, every election there are irregularities. Usually they are small, hardly ever are they decisive, and usually they're handled and addressed very quickly and efficiently. It's interesting once you start delving into the architecture of American elections. It's extraordinarily complex. They're run usually by local authorities under state auspices. There is coordination with the federal government.

There can be coordination with umbrella nonprofit best practices groups as well. What we've found, really, since the last election is that there are all these lies coursing through the bloodstream about that architecture that has slowly taken root over time that has made our elections so secure, and people are finding lots of ways to raise doubts about it. That is what's really damaging because ultimately, if people formed the view that voting can't be relied upon, that your vote isn't safe, that's going to motivate more people to violence. It also may cause some people to drop out of voting, just say it doesn't matter. A lot of Americans already don't vote.

If fewer and fewer Americans vote, if fewer and fewer Americans feel they can vote safely, that's an issue for our democracy. It is very concerning. It's not to say that lies about candidates don't matter, they do, but lies about the system itself are, frankly, this is what Russia and China and Iran are hoping for. They have tried to do these kinds of things in their own disinformation ops, and now we are finding that it's happening domestically. It is very troubling.
Brian: Andrea, as we run out of time, your article on ProPublica about the Biden administration pulling back on its misinformation fighting efforts came out before this weekend, before some of these latest misinformation news stories. I wonder if I can get a quick take from you on the two that I saw over the weekend that I mentioned in the intro, Elon Musk taking over Twitter and immediately firing a large number of staff, many of whom were in charge of account verifications for politicians, the kinds of positions that were, in the past, looking for misinformation and disinformation and maybe taking down those tweets. That staff has been thinned out just in these days going into election day, when that kind of disinformation might peak.

Plus, Russia, reported by The Times to be unleashing bots with their latest misinformation campaign aimed at this election day. How do you see either of those things adding to the chaos or the uncertainties or the threats that you report on in your article?

Andrea: On the question of Twitter, one of the things that quite a few people have spoken to me about-- It may not be apparent to ordinary users of Twitter, but scholars and researchers who study this say that in the 2020 election, Twitter actually managed to camp down and stop some election lies and played an effective role. They felt that Twitter was more hands-on, there were alerts, obviously, they ultimately deplatformed the former president. All of that they said actually did help cool things off relative to what they might have been. Obviously, the fire is still very, very hot.

There is a real concern about if Twitter is indeed going to walk away from that, with the whole question about the blue checks, how you could get a blue check. There was a real fear related that somebody could get a blue check for $8 that said, for example, "Maricopa official." Today, there are new guidelines from Twitter about what the penalties are if you're impersonating people, but it's a lot of confusion. It's a lot of confusion before a very key election. As to Russia and Iran and others spreading disinformation, I think, clearly, one of the things that activated the US government was what happened in 2016.

Russia's both hack campaign, but also, it's the disinformation that it spread through the internet research agency during the 2016 campaign that was intended to sow divisiveness among Americans. The feeling was that that had worked, and that the US needed to build up protections against it. I have heard from senior security officials and former DHS officials that one of the key fears is that foreign actors take advantage of this disinformation to promote their own ends. What appears to be happening now is that some foreign actors are jumping in and, in particular, according to this reporting, we're supporting Republicans with the idea that Republicans would be less forceful on Ukraine than Democrats.

Obviously, that is exactly the kind of scenario that is feared. That a foreign actor, like perhaps Russia, is able to take advantage of discord for its own internal aims. The alarm is that without an aggressive response, that just becomes more and more and more of the information environment that we're in, where people don't know what's true, policy people make decisions. There's a sense of fog and chaos that infects the political environment. The basic bottom line of democracy has always been at the end of the day, when there is an election result, both parties agree. That's the pact that has kept democracy going, and that's the pact that people feel is in danger right now.
Brian: Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz. Their latest article for ProPublica is called How the Biden Administration Caved to Republicans on Fighting Election Disinformation. Thank you both for joining us with this disturbing report.

Andrea: Great talking to you.

Ilya: Thank you, Brian.

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