Gavin Wilde
The United States currently has over three dozen active, ongoing national emergencies on issues ranging from transnational narco-trafficking to political repression in Belarus. One of them, initially declared by former president Donald Trump in 2018, is due to be renewed by the White House in coming weeks: It addresses foreign interference in U.S. elections. The original executive order, which deems “the unauthorized accessing of election and campaign infrastructure” and “the covert distribution of propaganda and disinformation” as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security, gained renewed urgency in August when Iran attempted to hack the accounts of the U.S. presidential candidates’ advisers.
However, as this particular emergency stretches into a seventh year, which aspects of the threat truly remain unusual and extraordinary? More critically, the latest hacking attempt offers a reason to question the wisdom of linking the technical mechanics of the vote and the integrity of the campaigns themselves under a single “election security” umbrella.
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