At a fascinating dialogue at Temple Emanuel of Great Neck, two foreign policy experts – Malcolm Nance, a renowned counter terrorism and intelligence consultant, and four-star Admiral James Stavridis who was the 16th Supreme Allied Commander at NATO – made the startling pronouncements that democracy is under assault globally and even domestically with the ascent of authoritarian rulers, using various versions of populist (neoNazi) nationalism.
“Russia is buying every conservative, neo-Nazi group in Europe – owned, lock, stock and barrel by Moscow,” Nance said. “Democracy as an ideology is now under attack, every day.” (On the other hand, “ISIS is not coming to Great Neck.”)
Indeed, as we have learned over the past year, Russia directly interfered with the 2016 election with an elaborate and extremely effective propaganda/fake news/disinformation campaign meant to sow divisions, resentment and populist anger, and undermine confidence in democratic institutions including elections.
And now we learn that the Trump campaign was doing the same thing as the Russians – whether in direct collusion or not (the jury is still out).
The intersection was at the social media platforms – Facebook and Twitter and such – that have proved so dominant in shaping political views in society. Russian-originated bogus ads on Facebook, alone, reached 159 million Americans, and now we learn that 50 million Facebook users were “harvested” by Cambridge Analytica, the “psychographic voter targeting” agency owned largely by Robert Mercer, a major donor to Trump, and directed by Steven Bannon who became campaign manager (brought to the Trump campaign by Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner).
The social media operation, run by Brad Parscale (who was tied to Cambridge Analytica and is the newly named manager of Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign) boasted to Bloomberg in 2016 that his campaign was aimed at suppressing turnout by “women, blacks and liberals.”
Despite every one of our intelligence agencies warning that Russia is still actively engaged in meddling in our elections (and why do you need Russia?
Cambridge Analytica and its ilk have the algorithms to mount their own disinformation/voter suppression campaigns), Republicans have taken deliberate actions not to protect our system, and have instead shielded Trump.
They have not pushed for Homeland Security to spend the $120 million appropriated to shore up election systems against attacks that are sure to come (Russia penetrated 21 states’ voter rolls; next time they could flip a few switches to steal districts or at least sow doubt in election results in order to spark challenges, sure to come from Republicans if they lose).
They have not even pushed for this administration to protect us from Russia’s cyber attacks on our power plants and critical systems – Russia at any moment could trigger an outage that impacts the electrical grid, water supply, air traffic control, transport systems, and banking systems, triggering panic.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar has proposed legislation to mandate transparency in political advertising, require online platforms to maintain an archive of political ads, that can be investigated by journalists and Good Government entities, and protect elections from foreign influence.
But Republicans are unlikely to allow it to advance, just as they consistently blocked the Disclose Act and efforts to rein in campaign finance abuses.
“Disclosure is critical,” Klobuchar said in a press call with Gov. Cuomo, “otherwise you see 10,000 pages of targeting ads in Ohio will just vanish. In last election, $1.4 billion was spent on social media ads by campaigns; we expect $3-4 billion next time – all the money is migrating there.
“It’s not just Russia, it’s about campaigns.
If they run dark, dirty ads, they will put them on Twitter, Facebook, because they can bury and hide if there are no rules of the road.”
In the absence of federal action, Gov. Cuomo – as he has on gun control, climate change, women’s rights – has decided to take action on a state level. Cuomo is advancing complementary legislation in New York to do what Klobuchar’s legislation would do at the federal level – requiring social media platforms know who is providing the political ads and maintain records that can be investigated.
Cuomo is hoping other states follow suit, in order to force marketplace pressures on the companies to adopt the higher standard.
Increasing transparency of online political advertisements and protect against foreign influence, by requiring digital platforms to maintain a public file of all political advertisements is one element of what Cuomo is advancing as his “Democracy Agenda,” included in his 2019 Executive Budget that needs to be adopted by March 31.
The Democracy Agenda also includes $5 million to create an Election Cyber Security Support Toolkit for county and local election boards to strengthen cyber security protections.
And considering that New York State, despite its reputation for progressivism, has one of the lowest rates of voter turnout, largely because it is one of the few that does not provide for early voting, it is significant he is calling for $7 million to improve access to voting across the state by instituting 12 days of early voting as well as automatic and same-day voter registration.
Cuomo noted that it isn’t just federal elections that need such defense, that Russia’s purpose is to “create chaos in the American electoral system, so we question what governors, mayors, assembly people got elected.
Part of the goal is to wreak havoc, and if it isn’t Putin, it could be North Korea or any country.
The system is so porous right now. Anyone with a few million dollars [like Robert Mercer, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch Brothers] can wreak havoc in race on social media with no disclosure whatsoever. Not to mention cyber attacks on the actual [voting] system itself.”
