As AI technologies are increasingly used to create deceptive content, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly said on Tuesday that Americans can remain confident in U.S. election infrastructure, but also warned that the information environment is at risk.
Easterly’s remarks came just days after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report predicting that attacks on critical infrastructure, misinformation and disinformation, election interference, and emerging technologies will be among the biggest cyber threats in 2024.
“I think at the end of the day, why Americans should continue to have confidence in the integrity and the resilience of our elections, is because of the incredibly hard work of state and local officials who for the past six years have been building capability and security measures in place to keep election infrastructure safe and secure,” Easterly said late Tuesday afternoon at an event hosted by the National Security Institute (NSI) at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
“So, I don’t think anything from an AI perspective will change what we put in place in terms of those measures,” she added.
Even so, the CISA director said she believes that there are issues surrounding confidence in terms of the information environment, especially as adversaries look to use AI to generate deceptive content to influence Federal elections.
For example, Easterly said local election officials are concerned about deepfakes – which use a form of AI called deep learning to create images or videos of fake events – and the use of generative AI from a disinformation perspective.
A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill just last week that aims to ban deepfakes depicting Federal candidates in political ads. That same day, CISA released a Cybersecurity Information Sheet (CSI) focused on deepfakes, titled Contextualizing Deepfake Threats to Organizations.
Easterly said CISA is working hard to combat this newer threat and is “now very focused on the local offices,” and bringing them the support they need.
“We’re going to work very hard using the same things that we’ve done before … rumor control, we’re continuing to do that, we continue to amplify the trusted voices of local officials, and then continuing to work with our [Intelligence Community] and FBI partners on what are the tactics of disinformation that are used by foreign adversaries and how could that impact the information environment,” Easterly said.
“We are doing everything we can to be proactive and get ahead of it. I think it’ll be a challenging year,” she said, adding, “But, I have great faith in the state and local election officials who are on the frontlines defending democracy, and there’s no more important mission.”
