In today’s newsletter, understanding the true threats to election integrity, and then:
China, Iran, and Russia are the prime manipulators of U.S. political discourse.Illustration by Ben Wiseman
The U.S. Spies Who Warn About Election Interference
A group of intelligence officials confers about when to alert the public to foreign meddling.
This Presidential race is a prime opportunity for foreign meddling. Although the Trump campaign would have us believe that ballot boxes are being ambushed, attacks on the mechanics of vote counting are only a slight risk. The real election-interference threat lies with hacks and leaks, bots and trolls, hidden payments, A.I. deepfakes, and targeted attack ads—coming from places such as Iran, Russia, and China. In rigorous reporting for this week’s issue, David D. Kirkpatrick spoke with intelligence officials, including those at the Foreign Malign Influence Center, to assess the danger of adversaries using these tactics to twist public opinion, discredit the vote, and sway its outcome.
In an election that may hinge on tens of thousands of votes across a handful of states, almost any illicit advantage could arguably decide the outcome and gin up doubt about the results. Those tasked with protecting the Presidential election from manipulation by foreign powers must find ways to alert the public when harm is being done—without disclosing their sources and methods. How worried should we be about the threat, and what can individual voters do to tell fact from fiction?
In the News
The media lords thought that they could control him; political schemers thought that they could outwit him. The mainstream left had become a gerontocracy. And all of them failed to recognize his immunity to shame.Photograph from Universal History Archive / Getty
John Kelly, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, spoke with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg about an exchange he had with the former President, in which Trump expressed frustration at disloyalty among the military and envy of Adolf Hitler’s generals. In light of these comments, it’s worth revisiting Adam Gopnik’s essay, from earlier this year, on the ways in which Hitler didn’t so much seize power as he was given it by those around him. “In history, it’s true, the same thing never happens twice,” Gopnik writes. “But the same things do.”
More Top Stories
Daily Cartoon
“Brace yourselves, fools, for twenty minutes of pure, horrifying, uncomfortable sitting.”
Cartoon by Tom Chitty and Ellis Rosen
More Fun & Games
P.S. Roz Chast, who has been publishing on our cover and in our pages since 1978 (including in this week’s issue), was honored by Joe Biden with a National Humanities Medal this week. With singular style, her work illustrates the humor in the human experience—such as this cheery story about the potential end of the universe, or this sketchbook about her solo trip to Vienna, where she encountered an enthralling replica of the life-size doll that the artist Oskar Kokoschka had commissioned of his mistress, which he eventually destroyed, fed up with her “inescapable thingness.” ✍️
