MY WORRIES ABOUT ELECTION SECURITY. After Russia’s 2016 operations exposed vulnerabilities, the federal government spent several years building a system that interconnected intelligence, law enforcement, cybersecurity, and the states that run elections. In 2018, the Trump administration created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA.) Intelligence and threat monitoring were added and coordinated with the states. It worked well.
The structure was “relationships connecting intelligence agencies, law enforcement, cybersecurity specialists, state and local election officials, and the private sector. CISA and the federally funded Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC), for example, provided election offices with assistance designed not only to detect an operation but also to move information among institutions that held pieces of the problem.”
The agencies and interconnections that made this system work have changed radically since 2025. Some were disbanded, some downgraded. There have been funding cuts and massive layoffs.
Important capabilities remain, but instead of operating as a system, they are fragmented and, in some cases, sharply reduced. The weakness is at the seams between the remaining capabilities. “Intelligence officers can still collect, investigators can pursue leads, and states can secure their own systems. But those capabilities are less useful if information is not fused quickly, responsibility is dispersed, or warnings reach election officials too late to act. The post-2016 architecture was built precisely to prevent those pieces from operating in isolation.”
Election officials report losing services (e.g., testing to break into a system and detect vulnerabilities, tabletop exercises, and regular threat briefings.) Federal intelligence sharing and technical assistance have become sporadic.
“States cannot see the full dimensions of a foreign campaign that crosses state lines or originates overseas. They cannot replace federal intelligence collection, integrate reporting across the intelligence community, or attribute a foreign operation. Those responsibilities remain with the federal government.”
https://www.justsecurity.org/161370/foreign-threats-us-elections-maturing/