Top Clinton and Romney campaign heads to jointly fight election hacking
Top officials from both the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney are joining forces to prevent cyberattacks that could affect United States elections, according to a press release Tuesday.
Robby Mook, who served as Clinton’s campaign manager last year, and Matt Rhoades, who served as Romney’s 2012 campaign head, will lead a new bipartisan project, Defending Digital Democracy (DDD), the Harvard Kennedy School announced.
The project aims to develop strategies and find “concrete solutions” to address the threat of foreign entities attempting to hack election infrastructure or political organizations.
CNN first reported the new collaborative effort through Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, which the news outlet says is the “first major effort to explicitly organize regarding the growing concern over election-related cybersecurity threats.”
{mosads}Rhoades and Mook both spoke out against the consequences of another foreign government or agent meddling in an American election.
“Cyberattacks on campaigns and elections are a threat to our democracy and affect people of all political stripes,” Rhoades said in a statement, adding, “Foreign actors could target any political party at any time, and that means we all need to work together to address these vulnerabilities.”
“Many foreign countries, and even terrorist organizations, exploit digital technology to advance their agendas and influence public narratives abroad,” Mook said, adding that the DDD “will find practical solutions to help both parties and civic institutions that are critical to our elections better secure themselves and become more resilient to attacks.”
Technology and national security experts, as well as two top election lawyers, will work with Mook and Rhoades on the new project.
The U.S. intelligence community believes Russian President Vladimir Putin attempted to interfere with the election by targeting Clinton’s campaign in an effort to sway the election in President Trump’s favor.
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