Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Report: Foreign powers exploit election law weaknesses to interfere in U.S. elections

Russian financial interference

This image of Russian leader Vladimir Putin behind an American flag illustrates the findings of a new report that Russia, China and others are trying to inject foreign funds into U.S. elections.

Jaap Arriens/ Nur Photo/Getty Images

A chilling new report outlines how Russia, China and other authoritarian regimes have used weaknesses in campaign finance and financial reporting laws to launch attacks on the political processes in the United States and elsewhere.

The report, released last week by the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, found that authoritarian regimes spent more than $300 million in the past decade on dozens of interference campaigns.

Among the foreign powers' methods of attack: government-funded disinformation; funneling money to campaigns through straw donors, nonprofits and shell companies; and providing in-kind donations to U.S. and other Western politicians.


Most of these incidents occurred in the past four years, researchers found.

The report comes as security experts focus on protecting the 2020 presidential race from a reprise of the efforts to hack election systems in 2016. And it includes numerous recommendations for U.S. policy makers, including passage of several pieces of legislation that were introduced in response to cybersecurity concerns raised four years ago.

While the focus has been on cybersecurity, these experts say Russia and China have also been exploiting financial loopholes that allow foreign money to seep into the American political system.

Examples of what the authors call "malign finance" include:

  • Providing in-kind contributions to influence candidates and office holders. The most prominent effort involving the United States was President Trump's request for negative information from Ukraine on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his family — the cause of Trump's impeachment. But U.S. law is not clear on whether getting dirt on a political opponent is a "thing of value" that constitutes a reportable contribution. What's needed, they argue, is a broader interpretation in U.S. campaign finance law — or a revision to the law — to clarify that a "thing of value" includes political information. The report calls closing this loophole "the single most urgent reform" that the authors recommend.
  • Requiring campaigns to report contacts with foreign agents. The SHIELD Act, introduced and passed last year in the Democratic-controlled House on a party-line vote, would institute such requirements. The bill has not advanced in the GOP-controlled Senate.
  • Outlaw secret shell companies and restrict U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies. This is a key way that foreign money gets introduced into U.S. campaigns, the report states.
  • Disclose foreign donors to nonprofits. Foreign powers hide donations by giving the money to a nonprofit that in turn provides it to a candidate or office holder while not having to disclose the source of the funds. Numerous legislative efforts to require disclosure of so-called dark money contributions have failed.

Other proposals include requiring disclosure of the source of funding for online political ads and requiring disclosure of foreign funding sources to U.S. media companies.

The authors say they hope exposing financial loopholes that allow foreign governments to interfere in our politics "will jumpstart a policy reform initiative to build resilience against this threat."

"There is no time to lose," they conclude. "Just like airplanes in the summer of 2001 and cyberattacks in the summer of 2016, the system is currently blinking red about incoming rubles and yuan."

Read More

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

The B-2 "Spirit" Stealth Bomber flys over the 136th Rose Parade Presented By Honda on Jan. 1, 2025, in Pasadena, California. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are
a close up of a typewriter with the word conspiracy on it

Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case. Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. Still, to a more dangerous reality: the conspiracies taking hold and being amplified by political ideologues are increasingly correlated with violence against particular groups. Fortunately, promising new research points to actions we can take to reduce conspiratorial thinking in communities across the US.

Some journalists claim that this is “a golden age of conspiracy theories,” and the public agrees. As of 2022, 59% of Americans think that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than 25 years ago, and 73% of Americans think conspiracy theories are “out of control.” Most blame this perceived increase on the role of social media and the internet.

Keep ReadingShow less
We Can Save Our Earth: Environment Opportunities 2025
a group of windmills in the sky above the clouds

We Can Save Our Earth: Environment Opportunities 2025

On May 8th, 2025, the Network for Responsible Public Policy (NFRPP) convened a session to discuss the future of the transition to clean energy in the face of some stiff headwinds caused by the new US administration led by Donald Trump. The panel included Dale Bryk, Director of State and Regional Policy at the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program and a Senior Fellow at the Regional Plan Association, and Dan Sosland, President of the Acadia Center. The discussion was moderated by Richard Eidlin, National Policy Director for Business for America.

 
 


Keep ReadingShow less