Why Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections is Growing

There is irony in what appears to be an Iranian hack of the electronic files of Donald Trump’s campaign. Details are unclear and unconfirmed, but a day after Microsoft issued a report about efforts by hackers in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to target a senior official in an unnamed U.S. presidential campaign, the Trump campaign stated that it was a victim of that effort. 

In what may or may not have been a result of such a hack, internal campaign documents—including a vetting file on eventual vice-presidential nominee JD Vance—were then sent to Politico, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung declared, “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”

The irony comes from comparing that complaint with Trump’s posture toward such hacking by foreign adversaries during his first presidential campaign. “Russia, if you’re listening,” said Trump in a campaign speech in July 2016, “I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing”—a reference to emails of his opponent, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. 

The Russian regime evidently was listening because shortly afterward, its hackers pulled documents from Clinton’s personal account as well as accounts of her presidential campaign. Russia conveyed the resulting large haul of documents to WikiLeaks—the operation that has divulged wholesale much stolen classified material related to U.S. national security—as its instrument for disseminating the Clinton material. Trump repeatedly and publicly expressed hisdelight with the Russia-WikiLeaks caper, saying, “I love WikiLeaks.”

Trump’s response to this operation was part of how he and his campaign welcomed, exploited, and facilitated Russia’s extensive and multifacetedinterference in the 2016 election. Among other things, Trump or senior people in his campaign replayed material from Russian internet trolls and met with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer to seek dirt on their Democratic opponents. At the same time, the chairman of Trump’s campaign repeatedly met and shared polling data with a Russian intelligence agent. Trump brushed off any criticism of his use of the Russian election interference, saying this was just another form of “opposition research.”

The Founding Fathers were deeply worried about how partisan motivations could open the door in this way to foreign interference in American politics. The worries extended to interference by putative allies as well as adversaries. A price of the alliance with France during the Revolutionary War had been French meddling that exploited divisions between factions within the Continental Congress.

The Federalist Papers, which emphasized the evils of factionalism, drew attention to how those evils included the encouragement of foreign interference. Several of the earliest essays in the series—written by John Jay, who was in charge of U.S. foreign affairs between the Revolutionary War and the adoption of the Constitution—warned of damaging transnational alliances between foreign powers and American political factions.

The damage continued during much of the Federalist Era, which was plagued by intense partisanship. Policies toward France and Britain—the two foreign powers that then mattered most to the United States—were corrupted by how Federalists and Democratic-Republicans mixed their partisan affinities to one or the other foreign power with their domestic political objectives.

The growth of national power freed the United States, for most of its subsequent history, from significant foreign interference in its own elections. It became more common for the United States, as a superpower, to interfere in other countries’ domestic politics rather than the other way around. 

But over the last three decades, this pattern has changed. Foreign interference in U.S. electoral politics has again become significant. 

One reason involves technology. Hacking and trolling are tools for interference that did not exist in pre-internet times.

Another reason is partisanship, which has become at least as intense and poisonous as it was in the Federalist Era. The dissipation of an earlier Cold War consensus that had guided much of U.S. foreign policy means that the outcomes of U.S. elections matter more to foreign regimes than they did before. The identification with a party that many Americans feel more than with the nation as a whole has fostered an “anything goes” attitude toward political competition that leads to excesses such as Trump’s version of “opposition research.” 

The same sort of self-identification also breeds affinities with foreign factions and regimes of a similar political persuasion. Americans had traditionally played little role in transnational political movements, but that is no longer the case, at least on the Right. The sort of transnational factional alliance about which Jay warned is now a reality.

Congressional testimony earlier this year by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on foreign threats to the 2024 elections mentioned Russia, China, and Iran as regimes worth watching. Haines named Russia as the most active foreign threat to U.S. elections, with goals of discrediting U.S. democracy, exacerbating internal divisions within the United States, and impeding Western support for Ukraine. 

Intelligence directors shy away, especially in public testimony, from anything that starts to touch on partisan politics. Still, unquestionably, Russia’s goal this year, as it was in 2016 and 2020, is to help elect Donald Trump. Trump’s authoritarian-envy positive views of Russian president Vladimir Putin, which have helped to make the Republican Party—despite its traditional anti-Moscow posture from Cold War days—more favorably inclined toward Russia than the Democrats are, would be enough to influence Moscow’s choice. There also is the prospect that a second Trump term would likely mean less Western support for Ukraine.

Iranian leaders probably would like to see Trump lose, given that his policytoward Iran in his earlier term was unmitigated hostility and a rejection of diplomacy in favor of unrestricted economic warfare. The policy was bad news for everyone involved and led to an accelerated Iranian nuclear program and a more aggressive Iranian regional posture, and certainly was at least as bad for the Iranians themselves as for anyone else. An exception to this Iranian preference may come from some hardliners in Tehran who would welcome playing off hardliners in the United States to strengthen their own domestic position. 

Iran probably also has other objectives, such as general gathering of information, that would involve targets beyond Trump. Shortly after the Trump campaign announced that Iran had hacked it, Kamala Harris’s campaign revealed that it, too, was the target of a “foreign actor influence operation.” However, whether this involves Iran is something the FBI is still investigating.

Haines said China’s influence operations are aimed at cultivating favorable positions toward China at all levels. So far, these efforts do not appear to be aimed at helping one presidential candidate over the other. This reflects the Chinese expectation that Washington will take a hard line against them regardless of who wins the election in November.

Intelligence directors and other U.S. officials also shy away from any mention of Israel in the same breath as adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran. Still, in omitting mention of Israel, Haines said nothing about the foreign state that has for years been the most active and successful foreign influencer in U.S. elections. The lobby that is involved recently demonstrated its continued clout by pouring millions into a couple of primary races and ousting two members of Congress who had dared to criticize Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip. 

Although that lobby for years strove to keep its fingers in both American political camps and to some extent still does—that recent demonstration of clout was in Democratic Party primaries—there now is a pronounced partisan tilt to its influence. The Republican Party has become the Israel-right-or-wrong party as politics within Israel have moved ever farther to the extreme Right. Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are in a strong electoral alliance. 

The Israeli government conducts most of its influence efforts in the United States openly. But more recently, it has also employed covert methods, using fake social media accounts and fake news sites to influence American politicians and the American public in the same manner that Russia, China, or Iran might. 

The covert Israeli operations that have come to light so far are aimed at nurturing U.S. support for the Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip. But any Israeli influence efforts, either overt or covert, that may get closer to presidential politics would certainly be in support of Trump, who, during his term in office, gave Israel and Netanyahu almost anything they wanted, with nothing in return except political support for Trump himself.

Interference by any foreign government in U.S. politics and elections entails several harms. For one thing, U.S. elections are supposed to determine the composition of a government that is of, by, and for the American people. This is less the case to the extent that non-Americans have an influential role.

Foreign interference also skews U.S. policy toward the countries that are interfering. U.S. policy toward, say, Iran ought not to be shaped by anything the Iranian regime might do to influence thinking, much less political outcomes, in America. The same goes for U.S. policy toward Russia, China, Israel, or any other foreign country.