FOREIGN INFLUENCERS

How the U.S.government decides when to alert the public about election meddling.

- DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

The Intelligence Community CampusBethesda, a vast office complex covered in vertical panels of maroon siding and mirrored glass, sits on a cliff overlooking the Potomac, surrounded by a forty-acre lawn and a tall wrought-iron fence. Roughly three thousand employees of various United States spy agencies work there. About two dozen of them are assigned to the Foreign Malign Influence Center-the command hub of the battle to protect the Presidential election from manipulation by foreign powers. The center, which opened in 2022, is responsible for deciphering, and defeating, surreptitious efforts to rig or tilt the American vote. The October before an election is the busy season.

Jessica Brandt, a forty-year-old newcomer to the intelligence world, is the center's first director. Before her appointment, last year, she'd spent her career writing research papers at Washington think tanks, most recently on "digital authoritarianism"--the way dictators use technology to control or manipulate people, at home and abroad.

At a thirty-seat conference table in the center, we talked about her move from theory to practice. Now that Brandt has access to classified intelligence, she knows as much as anyone about how foreign powers are trying to tamper with American elections. But she has also experienced firsthand how the polarization of U.S. politics is making it harder to protect the fairness and credibility of the vote. These days, a warning from the U.S. intelligence agencies is no longer accepted at face value. It's immediately spun for partisan advantage.