Election Interference Demands a Collective Defense
Foreign AffairsAug 01, 2023
The Facts
On Tuesday, the UK's Electoral Commission admitted that "hostile actors" have accessed electoral registers via a "complex cyber attack," potentially affecting millions of voters.
Though the unidentified hackers first accessed the Electoral Commission's systems in August 2021, the incident was only identified in October 2022.
The Spin
Pro-establishment narrative
Election interference is a threat that cuts to the core of the liberal and democratic way of life, with both Russia and China often acting as chief culprits. Western efforts have so far been insufficient to disrupt such influence schemes in this veiled war. Greater actions must be taken to tackle these constant attacks, aimed at illegally harvesting data and undermining democratic elections in western nations.
Establishment-critical narrative
It is right to scrutinize and respond to cyberattacks such as these with the upmost vigilance, but efforts by the UK and US to suggest such sophisticated hacking is a strategy employed exclusively by non-western agents are a fallacy. Whistleblowers like Edward Snowdon have long shined a light on the illicit privacy violations conducted by the UK and US governments — part of an information war in which they are equal agents against China and Russia. Surveillance on either side is unlikely to stop anytime soon.
