U.S. Warns Russia, China and Iran Are Trying to Interfere in the Election. Democrats Say It’s Far Worse. – The New York Times

Mr. Schiff, who is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Friday on MSNBC that he had been “urging Bill Evanina and others in the intelligence community to level with the American people about what’s going on.” He said the warning gave “a false sense of equivalence between what Russia is doing, what China is doing, what Iran is doing.”

Mr. Schiff and the other three authors of the letter have been briefed extensively on the intelligence, and thus are prohibited from violating classification rules by describing what they have seen.

But Mr. Schiff, a frequent target of harsh criticism from Mr. Trump because he was the Democrats’ manager in the impeachment trial in the Senate, added, “I think that our adversaries, in particular the Russians, are going to amplify the false messages that the president is putting out about, ‘Well, you can’t trust absentee ballots,’ even though that’s how the president votes.”

Some intelligence officials expressed surprise at the lawmakers’ letter and insisted they were not trying to play down the threat of interference from Moscow or signal that China was a greater challenge. They said Mr. Evanina’s statement was meant to be the beginning of a series of public statements, according to an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The official said the statement did not play down the threat of Russian interference, but lawmakers had to understand that the 2020 contest would be different from 2016’s.

It is unclear whether those statements, however, deter further action by American adversaries. But it is clear that 2020 will not be the same as 2016 — the Russians know that they cannot use the same playbook, and Iran and China both seem poised to play a greater role.

The question is whether they will be on the same side, or working against each other.

After the 2016 election, American intelligence assessments concluded that the Russians ultimately intervened on Mr. Trump’s behalf. But this year, Republicans and Democrats who have reviewed the intelligence have come to different assessments about whether Russia hopes to swing the election to Mr. Trump, or if President Vladimir V. Putin is simply intent on eroding confidence in the American electoral system.

The threat of Iran to the election is harder to judge. Senior American officials said it was intent on trying to hurt Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign. Some believe Iran would stage attacks on oil shipping this fall, to try to cause economic calamity. But with the global economy already in turmoil from the pandemic, Iran’s room to try to influence the election through such attacks may be more limited.

China is not new to presidential elections. In 2008, intelligence officials warned the campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain that Chinese hackers had penetrated their campaign computer systems. But that was intelligence gathering, it appears, not an effort to influence the outcome in the way Russia tried eight years later.

This year, intelligence officials do not believe China will try the same kind of brazen techniques Moscow has employed. Instead, intelligence officials said Friday, China is playing a long game, trying to cultivate local politicians who may ultimately win election to Congress.

Mick Baccio, a former information security official with Pete Buttigieg’s campaign, said that with large numbers of absentee ballots and a potentially long counting period, foreign interference could intensify in November. As votes are being counted, foreign powers could seek to undermine confidence in the vote.

The 2020 election “is like every disaster movie sequel rolled into one,” said Mr. Baccio, now an adviser with the cybersecurity firm Splunk. “The postelection period is what I am most concerned about. The window of time where we are uncertain, that is when they will drop their madness.”

The intensified work by China, Russia, Iran and others provides a major challenge to the campaigns.

“Nothing is unhackable,” Mr. Baccio said. “You raise the bar as best you can. You identify your crown jewels of data and you lock it down the best you can.”

In recent weeks, intelligence officials have briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill about election interference threats from China, according to American officials.

Those classified briefings included warnings about how the Chinese government was trying to influence the broader political debate in the United States as well as in Congress.

F.B.I. and intelligence officials have warned lawmakers about China’s so-called mask diplomacy, in which Beijing’s diplomats have made donations of personal protective equipment useful to fight the coronavirus pandemic and have demanded support in return.

A Chinese diplomat had asked a Wisconsin state Republican lawmaker to pass a resolution lauding China’s work to fight the virus. The state senator refused and instead introduced a measure criticizing the Chinese Communist Party.

Until now, China has focused on local and congressional races and was less interested in influencing the presidential campaigns, officials said. Local influence campaigns are less likely to receive national attention, and are therefore more likely to succeed, officials said.

But those localized campaigns could influence national or presidential-level politics, current and former intelligence officials said. “Beijing recognizes its efforts might affect the presidential race,” Mr. Evanina wrote in his warning on Friday.

Beijing has been conducting cybersurveillance of the presidential campaigns and related political efforts, said an intelligence official, and it could decide in the coming weeks to expand its influence campaign to try to influence presidential politics more directly.