“Americans can and should have confidence in our election system,” Wray said. “And none of the election interference efforts that we’ve seen put at jeopardy the integrity of the vote count itself in any material ways. And so in that sense, people can have confidence.” 

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t threats to the election process, he said, particularly highlighting foreign governments’ desire to meddle. 

“The other part, though, is the chaos, and the ability to generate chaos is very much part of the playbook that some of the foreign adversaries engage in,” Wray said. “And there is the potential. If we’re not all collectively on board, that chaos can ensue to varying levels.”

Wray and Nakasone spoke in a fireside chat moderated by Mary Louise Kelly, host of NPR’s All Things Considered, at the 10th International Conference on Cyber Security, held at Fordham on Jan. 9. Kelly asked how 2024 compares to the 2020 election year.

“Every election as you know is critical infrastructure,” Nakasone said. “We have to be able to deliver a safe and secure outcome. And so when I look at it, I look in terms of both the threat and the technology—but yes, it’s an important year, it’s a presidential election year, and we have adversaries that want to take action.”

Protecting America’s AI Innovation 

Nakasone said that as they look at foreign adversaries and how they are using AI, he noticed that they “are all using U.S. AI models, which tells me that the best AI models are made by U.S companies.” 

“That tells me that we need to protect that competitive advantage of our nation, of our national economy going forward,” he said. 

But that’s not an easy task, Wray added, noting China’s advantage in particular.

“China has a bigger hacking program than that of every other major nation combined and has stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than every nation, big or small, combined,” he said. “If I took the FBI’s cyber personnel and I said, ‘Forget ransomware, forget Russia, forget Iran—we’ll do nothing but China,’ we would be outnumbered 50 to 1, and that’s probably a conservative estimate.” 

Nakasone said that’s why it’s important for the agencies to maintain the United States’ “qualitative advantage.”

“How do we ensure that our workforce is continuing to be incredibly productive?” he said.

Combatting Foreign Adversaries 

In addition to China, Wray and Nakasone highlighted Russia and Iran as threats, even as Russia is occupied with the war in Ukraine. 

“If anything, you could make the argument that their focus on Ukraine has increased their desire to focus on trying to shape what we look like, and how we think about issues because U.S. policy on Ukraine is something that obviously matters deeply to their utterly unprovoked and outrageous invasion of Ukraine,” Wray said.  

In order to combat their efforts to interfere in elections, Nakasone highlighted partnerships between agencies like the NSA and FBI, and the quality of work that U.S. agencies do.

“It will never be having the most people—it’s having the best people and the best partnership being able to develop and deliver outcomes that can address adversaries,” he said.

Calling Out Misinformation and Disruptions

Kelly highlighted a recent poll from The Washington Post that found that one-third of Americans believe that President Joe Biden’s win in 2020 was illegitimate and that a quarter of Americans believe that the FBI instigated the January 6 insurrection. 

“I’m not trying to drag either of you into politics,” she said. “But what kind of charge does that pose for your agencies as you try to navigate this year?”

Wray said it’s important for the NSA and FBI to call out misinformation right away. He highlighted how in October 2020, the FBI called out Iran’s interference efforts ahead of the November elections in an effort to make the messaging less effective.

“We have to call it out when we see it, but we also need in general for the American people, as a whole, to become more thoughtful and discerning consumers of information,” he said. 

The Use of Section 702: ‘A Vital Tool’

In December 2023, Congress gave a four-month extension to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance on non-American citizens who are outside of the United States without a warrant. The section has come under scrutiny as privacy advocates and members of both parties said it’s an overreach of government powers.

Nakasone called it “the most important authority we use day in and day out in the National Security Agency to protect Americans.”

He said that the agency uses it to address a number of different threats: “whether or not that’s fentanyl or Chinese precursors [to fentanyl]coming in United States, whether or not it’s hostages that foreigners take overseas, whether or not it’s cybersecurity, in terms of victims that we’re seeing in the United States.” 

Wray said that the section was “a vital tool.”

“This country would be reckless at best and dangerous at worst to blind ourselves and not reauthorize the authority in a way that allows us to protect Americans from these foreign threats,” he said. 

“I think we’re concerned about the same usual suspects in terms of nation states—Russia, Iran, China, each in their own way,” Wray said.

He recalled something another FBI official recently said: “The Russians are trying to get us to tear ourselves apart, the Chinese are trying to manage our decline, and the Iranians are trying to get us to get out of their way.”

“And we’re not going to do any of the above,” Wray said.

The pair described their agencies’ work to address these challenges at a fireside chat at the ninth International Conference on Cyber Security, held at Fordham on July 19.

Nakasone called 2020 “the pivotal year for the nation in cyberspace,” and said it taught him and his agency lessons that they’re applying today.

“We ended 2020 with SolarWinds [a cyberattack], and then we begin 2021 with a number of different instances,” he said, citing the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and others. “I know that informed me to think differently about what I should be expecting in the fall of 2022 … I’m thinking about traditional adversaries, I’m thinking about additional tradecraft, I’m thinking about new and unique ways that an adversary might try to disrupt or try to influence our elections.”

Even with Russia’s invasion into Ukraine and efforts there, Wray said they’re still expecting Russia to try and interfere in U.S. elections, and they’re working to prepare for it.

“I’m quite confident the Russians can walk and chew gum,” he said. “We are prepared and postured to counter both.”

He also noted that while some countries, like North Korea, have similar methods to the Russians, they are “differently situated.”

“North Korea, in many ways, is a cyber criminal syndicate posing as a nation state,” he said.

New and Evolving Threats

Wray said the agencies need to be prepared for “hybrid threats,” or those that start online and move into the physical world. He gave the example of how in the lead-up to the U.S. 2020 presidential election, two Iranian nationals led a campaign that aimed to “intimidate and influence American voters.”

The two individuals started by obtaining U.S. voter information from a state election website, before they sent emails where they pretended to be part of “a group of Proud Boys volunteers,” and created a video filled with disinformation, according to an FBI release.

“There was a little bit of hacking, but the disinformation layer that they built on top of that magnified potentially the risk of what would be relatively modest hacking,” he said.

Wray also cited Chinese multi-pronged attempts to interfere with a New York congressional candidate, Yan Xiong, who had previously participated in the Tiananmen Square protests before he became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

“We recently announced charges here in New York involving the [People’s Republic of China]’s efforts to detail a congressional candidate that started with, first, [them trying to]see if they could dig up dirt to prevent the candidate from being elected, and then if that didn’t work maybe manufacture dirt about the candidate, and when that didn’t work, [thinking]maybe we can have this candidate suffer ‘an accident,’” Wray said.

Wray said stopping these types of operations requires a mix of public exposure and law enforcement efforts.

“Most of these operations—if you think of them as influence operations—exposing them is a significant antidote to them,” Wray said. “But we also need some other kinds of disruption operations—arrests….sanctions.”

Dealing with Challenges at Home and Abroad

Wray said that the FBI focused on three main things related to election security: dealing with “foreign, malicious actors” pushing out fake information; investigating malicious cyber actors, both foreign and domestic, who target election infrastructure; and prosecuting federal election crimes ranging from campaign finance violations to voter fraud to violence.

“I think the first thing people need to be clear is we’re not the truth police,” he said. Their role is “targeting foreign and domestic malicious actors,” he said, and investigating federal election crimes and threats of violence.

He noted that violence, in any form, would be something the FBI would take action against, particularly the “alarming rise” of threats of violence against election workers.

“The idea that they would become targets of threats of violence is totally unacceptable,” he said.

Wray said that the attacks on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were “a manifestation of another phenomenon, which is deeply troubling.”

“There are way too many people, in this country and to some extent, other countries, who are choosing to manifest their ideological, political, or social views through violence … in the case of January 6, [it was]that plus an effort to interfere with one of our most sacred constitutional processes,” he said. “There is a right way and a wrong way to express your views under our First Amendment, and violence and destruction of property, violence against law enforcement, that’s not okay. That is not First Amendment activity.”

Partnering with Each Other and the Public

He encouraged members of the public to play their role in helping protect the sacredness of elections.

“The best defense against malicious, foreign interference, all the way to something like a January 6th, is an enlightened, thoughtful public,” he said.

Working with the private sector, academic institutions, and members of the general public, in addition to collaborating with each other, are essential for both agencies, the directors said.

“What I learned in 2020 was the power of being able to engage with academic institutions and the private sector, with people that actually have this expertise that are looking at either ransomware or influence operations,” Nakasone said. “We bring the foreign insights of what the adversary is doing, the tradecraft, the techniques that they’re utilizing outside the United States.”

Wray said that today, all of the FBI field offices have “private sector coordinators” who lead their partnerships with local organizations and institutions.

Nakasone said that these kinds of relationships are not just beneficial for agencies like the FBI and NSA, they’re beneficial to members of those organizations too.

“It’s our insights on foreign intelligence—that’s something that the private sector just relishes,” he said. “The second thing is talent. When you’re on the other end of the line, you’re talking to an analyst from the U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency. You’re talking to someone that is incredibly talented in terms of what they’re seeing, what they understand, the perspective of what they bring.”