Senate intelligence chair sees ‘Wild West’ election risks from AI and disinformation

The 2024 campaign was always going to be unlike any other, given the marquee rematch of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

But the rise of artificial intelligence could take things to a whole new level, says Sen. Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 

Already, the Virginia Democrat has warned, the United States may be less prepared for threats to the integrity of its elections than it was four or eight years ago. In addition to increasingly sophisticated AI, he cites improved disinformation tactics by Russia and China and the growing dissemination of false information by domestic candidates and groups. 

At a Monitor Breakfast on Tuesday, Senator Warner highlighted another factor: a pending Supreme Court case that could hinder the Biden administration’s ability to combat what it sees as disinformation campaigns on social media platforms. The Republican-led states that originally sued are claiming a violation of free speech rights on the platforms.  

If the federal government loses the case, the result could be more viral, false information coursing through social media – and through campaigns, he warns. 

“It becomes the Wild, Wild West,” Mr. Warner says.

For now, though, there are hopeful signs. At a hearing last month before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the director of national intelligence testified that the U.S. has improved its ability to safeguard election security and combat foreign disinformation since 2016, when Russia sought to influence the election. 

Mr. Warner says his committee has had “a number of good sessions in SCIFs [secure rooms] and with our hearings. I’m feeling better.” He intends to have more hearings with the social media platforms. 

In the recent elections in India and the European Union, “I don’t think we saw as much activity as we might have anticipated,” Mr. Warner says, referring to use of AI for malicious intent.

He even applauds the use of AI in India for “creative” purposes, citing a candidate who used AI to manipulate his own voice in order to speak to voters in different dialects.

But Mr. Warner projects a sense of vigilance when he talks about the challenges between now and Election Day in shining a light on any outside efforts to manipulate voters.

“This is something I’m going to try to elevate in the debate: how we can potentially be more proactive on some of these entities and sites,” the senator says.

The Russian disinformation group known as the Internet Research Agency has been disbanded, “but there are other like-kind groups that are kind of quasi, not-fully-governmental groups in Russia” that are active, Mr. Warner says. 

Following are more excerpts of the session, lightly edited for length and clarity.

On U.S. tracking of advanced Chinese technology:

Our intel community is so used to traditionally spying on – you spy on the military; you spy on the government. You don’t necessarily follow all the tech companies. You don’t follow where China is getting extraction of rare earth minerals. 

We just need to continue to up our game in following what China is doing, not just in this chip space, but frankly in a lot of these other domains, where we’ve seen no indication that China is not pedal-to-the-metal in terms of investing and trying again to not just be successful but dominate some of these other domains.

On the threat that terrorists could enter the U.S. illegally and launch an attack, especially in light of a recent report that eight Tajiks with ties to an Islamist terrorist group had crossed the southern border: 

It is a significant threat, and I am monitoring it very, very closely – and nothing would be more devastating. Remember, I do think we leaned forward with the Russians on the Tajiks who launched the attack in the suburbs of Moscow [in March]. It’s one of the reasons why I’m glad the president took the action ... on the border. The border’s a mess. The IC [intelligence community] and law enforcement are very focused on this threat.

On U.S. efforts to get the Chinese internet tech company ByteDance to divest its U.S. portion of TikTok: 

I wish the roughly 40% of the investors in ByteDance, which are large American PE [private equity] firms, would be more willing to be forward-leaning on urging China to go ahead and at least break off the non-Chinese portion. 

I have great empathy for all of the people who make their living off of TikTok. But end of day, the law is the law. And we’ve got the surgeon general yesterday saying maybe we ought to put warnings [on social media platforms] in terms of kids’ mental health. I want to make clear, I have a beef with a lot of the other American platforms as well. 

So I’m going to keep urging the American investors ... because we don’t want to ban TikTok. We want to simply have it not controlled by CCP [the Chinese Communist Party].