National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone is worried about election security before the November midterms, telling Bloomberg that "we are going to be full-bore against foreign interference and influence in our elections."
Nakasone, who also runs Cyber Command said, "we bring our best people to do three things in terms of securing our elections. We generate insights, to understand what your adversaries are doing; we share that information and indications of what's happening outside the United States with a series of partners; and we take action when authorized."
Nakasone told a cybersecurity conference at New York's Fordham University on Tuesday that Cyber Command has carried out some 50 different "hunt forward" operations in 16 countries since 2018 to guard against foreign interference efforts aimed at the U.S. electoral process or other American interests, CNN reported.
Nakasone said these efforts will continue through the midterms.
"I'm thinking about new and unique ways that an adversary might try to disrupt or try to influence our elections," he said.
"This is a growth industry for us," he added, according to The Wall Street Journal. "We do have a series of operations that we're conducting now and into the future as we approach the fall."
Nakasone also warned, along with FBI Director Christopher Wray, that Russia continues to pose a cyber threat to the midterms despite the focus of Kremlin-linked hackers on supporting the country's war against Ukraine.
Emphasizing that he does not think the Kremlin-backed hackers will be overly preoccupied with Ukraine in the lead-up to the November elections, Nakasone said "that's not a thought process that we go into '22 with," according to the Journal.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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