Russia might do more than meme us into discord during the 2022 midterm elections, U.S. officials warned in a CNN report Sunday. The Kremlin's operatives might also execute "smaller hacks of local election authorities—done with the deliberate purpose of being noticed—and then [use] that to seed more conspirac[y theories] about the integrity of American elections."
This is a plausible threat, not least because of how much tactical sense it makes for Russian hackers. Why bother engineering a vast state- or nation-wide conspiracy, with all the resources and competence that would require, when you can do a little deliberately clumsy meddling in some town council races and let Americans' animosity and gullibility do the rest? "If something small happens, it will feed into the mania and chaos, and all of a sudden people will think all the elections are completely insecure," Nicole Tisdale, who previously worked for the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN.
