Early voting is already underway, Election Day is November 3, and the Pentagon has just said it will put the National Security Agency and other military intelligence and cyber forces on guard over the country’s election systems. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced it Monday.
The announcement rests on a memo dated September 22. In it, Hegseth told defense intelligence officials to mobilize every resource “to defend our election infrastructure from foreign malign influence and ensure that every lawful voter can cast their ballot free from foreign intimidation, coercion, or fear.”
None of this is new in kind. Military cyber specialists have helped monitor election systems and deter hackers since 2017, when election equipment was designated critical infrastructure. What has changed is who else is in the room. President Donald Trump gutted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security division built to protect election infrastructure. Last week that agency published an election security plan listing threats to voting systems and the services it can offer election officials.
“Just theater”
David Becker, a former Justice Department attorney who runs the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, was not impressed by the timing. Two announcements weeks before the vote, he said, “suggests this is just theater.”
“If the administration was serious about assisting state and local election officials, they shouldn’t have dismantled all of the federal government’s election cybersecurity capacity and fired all their experts in early 2025,” he said.
Suspicion runs wider than one critic. Many election experts, civil rights groups and Democratic election officials are watching for signs that the administration might meddle in voting or ballot counting, even though NSA and Cyber Command help is routine. Trump keeps pushing false claims that elections are riddled with fraud, and he has tried to interfere with long-standing election procedures.
The courts have drawn some lines. The Supreme Court blocked Trump’s attempt to restrict mail voting, but it has allowed the use of a federal database to check voters’ citizenship.
Sources
- Hegseth says national security, military cyber forces will guard US election systems during midterms
