美国国家公共电台 NPR Director Of National Intelligence Dan Coats Appoints New Election Security Czar（在线收听）

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence, has announced he's created a new position to help coordinate government efforts to protect U.S. elections from outside interference. Intelligence officials have warned that the 2020 elections are still susceptible to attacks from foreign governments. NPR's Pam Fessler covers the issue and joins us in our studios. Pam, thanks so much for being with us.

PAM FESSLER, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.

SIMON: How does this position change what the government has already been doing?

FESSLER: Well, Coats created this new position. It's called election threats executive. And a longtime intelligence official - her name is Shelby Pierson - is going to do the job. She's going to oversee and coordinate all the efforts in the intelligence community, gather information about what kind of threats are out there. But quite frankly, she did something very similar to this during the 2018 elections, but that was part-time; this is going to be full-time. And this really elevates the position.

And I think mostly what it's doing is it's designed to send out a message that the government really takes this issue very, very seriously, and also to counter some concerns that the Trump administration hasn't been doing enough. It's worth noting that on multiple occasions, the president has expressed doubts about the conclusion by Dan Coats, the intelligence director, and the entire community, that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.

SIMON: Can you tell what kind of security threats they'll be on the lookout for?

FESSLER: Well, there's been a lot of focus on the kind of thing that happened in 2016 when Russian intelligence tried to hack into state voter rolls. They also broke into the DNC's email system. And also, we had this massive disinformation campaign on social media. So it's a lot of concern about a repeat of that.

But they're also worried about other bad actors in other countries. The Iranians, the North Koreans, the Chinese are all seen as potential threats, or it could even be somebody domestically. Earlier this week, interestingly, Microsoft said that it detected almost 800 cyberattack attempts over the past year against think tanks and U.S. political organizations. And that might be the sign of the kind of things that we're going to be seeing in 2020. And then this new intelligence effort - the whole purpose is to try and gather that information.

SIMON: You often remind us in your reporting that elections, actually, are run on the state and local level, not the federal level. How is this new position, if it is, going to affect what they do to protect against interference?

FESSLER: Well, it's interesting, actually. Ever since 2016, the Department of Homeland Security has been working really closely with state and local election officials to try and figure out, you know, how they can beef up their security. So that's going to continue. But, you know, they need intelligence to know what they should be doing and where the threat is coming from. So if the process works, this intelligence that's all being gathered will be shared with the state and local officials.

Interestingly, they say, though, that they really need more money. Congress approved about $380 million last year for election security, but they say it's not enough. They're still using a lot of old voting equipment that's more vulnerable to attacks. A lot of them don't have IT professionals to help them with security. They say, well, it's great if we have all this intelligence about potential threats, but if we don't have the money to fix the problem, what good is it?

SIMON: NPR's Pam Fessler, thanks so much.

FESSLER: Thank you.