Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen Delivers Remarks at Columbia Law School

Thank you for that kind introduction and to Columbia Law School for having me here today.

It is especially meaningful to me to be here in New York City this week on the day after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. That tragic event 23 years ago — along with the thousands of lives lost — shook the foundations of our country and our sense of security in the world, and it continues to reverberate today.

On a personal level, 9/11 altered the course of my legal career. After law school, I started in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division enforcing voting rights laws and spent a decade as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. September 11 changed all that. I became special counsel to then FBI Director Robert Mueller to support the FBI’s post-9/11 transformation. When the National Security Division – which I now lead – was founded in 2006, I was the senior career official in the new office, overseeing the department’s intelligence work and the implementation of Congress’ landmark changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I went on to be National Security Agency General Counsel and the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. After spending time in the private sector, I feel very fortunate to be back at the Justice Department now, a place that has been my professional home for so many years.

In the early days of the National Security Division, we were predominantly focused on pursuing al-Qaeda and the counterterrorism mission; today’s threat landscape is very different and more complex.

In additional to counterterrorism, we’re focused on countering domestic terrorism, malicious cyber activity, traditional and economic espionage, sanctions and export control evasion, foreign malign influence, transnational repression and other threats from nation state adversaries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

In the past week alone, for example, we have:

• Announced the arrest of two leaders of an online collective called “Terrorgram,” alleging conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism and civil rights violations, for the group’s promotion of white supremacist attacks and incitement of racially motivated violence;
• Obtained a guilty plea for a scheme to illegally export sensitive aircraft components, including items that are controlled for anti-missile and anti-terrorism reasons, to Russia;
• Sentenced a former CIA officer for conspiring to share secrets with the People’s Republic of China (PRC);
• On Friday, we filed a complaint leading to the arrest of Pakistani citizen residing in Canada for plotting to carry out a terrorist attack against the Jewish community here in New York in the name of ISIS;
• And the day before that we announced a superseding indictment charging five Russian military intelligence officers in the GRU with hacking campaign targeting Ukraine and other victims around the world.

But even with the wide range of threats we work to counter every day, the singular challenge that keeps me up at night is defending our democracy against foreign interference.

We face an onslaught of foreign malign influence activity by nation state adversaries seeking to sow discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and our values. This is not a new phenomenon. But the efforts to manipulate the electorate in advance of the upcoming election present a clear and present danger to our democracy.

Right now, our adversaries are actively taking steps to covertly influence our elections and undermine our democracy. Authoritarian regimes — including Russian, Iran and China — are determined to warp the views of the electorate in advance of upcoming elections in ways that they believe will serve their own interests and weaken the United States.

Our leaders are sounding the alarm. Last week, the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Avril Haines, put out an ODNI statement, warning that, “Foreign actors are increasing their election influence activities as we approach November.”

Two days earlier, FBI Director Chris Wray said: “Whether it’s China, Iran, Russia or some other country, attempts to meddle in our elections or destabilize our free and open society represent attacks on our democracy.”

Let me say this in the plainest possible terms: our authoritarian adversaries are determined, persistent and sophisticated. And they are working around the clock to exploit our free and open society, sow discord and interfere in our democracy.

In taking on this threat, our commitment at the Justice Department is to defend the integrity of our democratic institutions and public discourse against any who would seek to break the law and exert covert influence, no matter the country and regardless of viewpoint.

U.S. laws demand that our citizens have transparency regarding the origin of political messages from foreign sources. That transparency empowers citizens to evaluate information and make informed decisions for themselves. It is especially critical that we enforce these rules as the American people decide how to exercise their fundamental right to vote in free and fair elections.

Let me talk more specifically about the threat we face.

There’s no doubt that foreign adversaries are steadily increasing their malign influence activities as we approach the elections in November — fewer than 60 days away.

In particular, Russia, Iran and China are working to stoke divisions in our society for their own benefit. And they see our elections as moments of vulnerability. These governments believe that amplifying controversial issues and divisive rhetoric can serve their interests by making the United States and its democratic system appear weak. They also hope this will keep the United States distracted with internal issues instead of pushing back on their hostile behavior around the world.

These adversaries are also focused on trying to shape voter preference for one candidate or the other — choosing sides in our elections to promote or denigrate a candidate or party in order to achieve their authoritarian goals. Or they simply seek to cast doubt on the electoral process.

Our adversaries are increasingly sophisticated in their tactics. They are engaging in malicious cyber operations including targeted spearphishing of campaigns. And our adversaries have learned to exploit social media platforms and to deploy advanced technologies, like artificial intelligence, to expand the scale and enhance the resonance of their covert messaging. Foreign actors are also turning to commercial firms to leverage these firms’ expertise in communications and to better hide their hand. And influential voices within the United States online and on the airwaves — whether witting or unwitting — amplify falsehoods and misinformation, serving as the mouthpieces of tyrants like Putin and against the fundamental interests of the United States.

The warnings from our intelligence community are clear — the concerted efforts of our adversaries to influence our election is increasing, putting at risk the exercise of our most basic democratic rights to vote in free and fair elections.

So, what are we doing to counter these threats?

First, the U.S. intelligence community is laser focused on obtaining the insights necessary to detect, disrupt and deter election threats. And it is also leaning forward like never before to proactively share information with the American public, a key lesson from the 2016 presidential election.

We have learned that transparency about what we are seeing is critical. It helps ensure that our citizens are aware of the attempts of foreign government to sow discord and spread falsehoods — all of which promotes resilience within our electorate. It provides warnings to our private sector so they can better protect their networks. And it sends an unmistakable message to our adversaries — we’ve gained insight into your networks, we know what you’re doing, and we are determined to hold you accountable.

At the Justice Department, we are pursuing enforcement actions at an unprecedented pace. I was with the Attorney General and other officials at a convening of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force last week. In that meeting, Attorney General Garland said, “The Justice Department’s message is clear: we have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic system of government. We will be relentlessly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia and Iran — as well as China or any other foreign malign actor — to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy.”

Among the authoritarian governments seeking to interfere with our elections, Russia stands apart. The Intelligence Community (IC) has assessed that Russia poses the most active foreign influence threat to this year’s elections. The Kremlin is looking to influence the outcome of the presidential race and to amplify divisive rhetoric. This effort is part of Putin’s broader goals of weakening the United States and undermining our support for Ukraine. Russia is using its media and other entities to covertly push for its preferred election outcomes, seeking to influence voter preferences in favor of the former President and to diminish the prospects of the Vice President, using targeted online influence operations on social media and websites that portray themselves as legitimate news sites.

Last week, we unsealed an indictment in the Southern District of New York of two Russia-based employees of Russia Today, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, for conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and money laundering.

FARA is a law that ensures basic transparency when foreign powers engage in political activities or try to influence our public discourse. The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power is attempting to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas to disseminate its own propaganda.

That’s exactly what we allege happened here. RT ceased U.S. operations in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the Kremlin continues to use RT to direct disinformation and propaganda. RT’s editor-in-chief has boasted that the company had built an “entire empire of covert projects” designed to shape public opinion in “Western audiences.”

We allege that, as part of that effort, RT and its employees, including the two defendants, carried out a nearly $10 million scheme to fund and direct a U.S.-based company to publish and disseminate content deemed favorable to the Russian government. The defendants directed that U.S. company to contract with social media influencers in the U.S. to share this content on their platforms. The content of many of the videos published by the company were consistent with Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to Russian interests, particularly its ongoing war in Ukraine. The company never disclosed to the influencers — or to their millions of followers — its ties to RT and the Russian government.

We also simultaneously announced a separate court-approved operation — the “Doppelganger” takedown — to seize 32 internet domains used by the Russian government and its proxies to impersonate legitimate U.S. and foreign media organizations and perpetrate a covert campaign to interfere in the 2024 presidential election. Our filings in that case allege that Putin’s inner circle directed Russian public relations companies to promote disinformation and state-sponsored narratives as part of a program to influence the 2024 presidential election. In fact, an internal planning document created by the Kremlin makes explicit that a goal of the campaign is securing Russia’s preferred outcome in the election.

One of the most egregious aspects of this case is that the Russians impersonated legitimate U.S. media organizations — exploiting the credibility of our own free press — to spread its propaganda. The online infrastructure used by the Russian public relations company — known as the Social Design Agency — used websites designed to appear to American readers as if they were major U.S. news sites like The Washington Post or Fox News. In reality, these were fake sites filled with Russian government propaganda that had been created by the Kremlin to influence American voters and reduce international support for Ukraine.

The two cases we announced last week come in the wake of other actions the Justice Department is taking against malign Russian actors.

Four U.S. citizens were convicted by a federal jury in Florida today for allegedly working with Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) intelligence officers to conduct a multi-year foreign malign influence campaign in the United States. The defendants are charged with acting as illegal agents of Russia for their efforts to sow discord and spread pro-Russian propaganda. The Russian FSB officers are also charged with conspiring to influence elections in the United States by covertly funding the political campaign of a particular candidate for local office.

And in July, in a first-of-its-kind operation, we disrupted a Russian government operated artificial-intelligence-enhanced social media bot farm that spread disinformation in the United States and abroad. The social media bot farm used elements of AI to create fictitious social media profiles — often purporting to belong to individuals in the United States — which the operators then used to promote messages to undermine our partners in Ukraine and spread narratives favorable to the Kremlin.

These operations underscore the critical role of the private sector, including the companies that operate social media platforms. As the Deputy Attorney General has said, our strategy involves sharing actionable intelligence with those companies so they can make decisions regarding abuse of their platforms by adversaries conducting foreign malign influence operations, including ones targeting our elections. Our focus is on exposing the foreign actors behind the accounts, without regard to the content or viewpoint. And when the FBI shares this information, it’s entirely up to companies what they do in response to these threats.

Unfortunately, Russia is not alone. The IC assesses that Iran is making a greater effort to influence this year’s election than it has in prior election cycles and that Iranian activity is growing increasingly aggressive as this election nears. Iran perceives this year’s elections to be particularly consequential in impacting Iran’s national security interests, increasing Tehran’s inclination to try to shape the outcome.

Like Russia, Iran employs a multi-pronged approach to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process. For example, Iran is conducting covert social media operations using fake personas and artificial intelligence to help publish fake news articles. In July, the DNI publicly alerted Americans to an Iranian online influence campaign designed to exploit protests about the war in Gaza — legitimate, First Amendment-protected activity by real Americans — for their own nefarious purposes.

Iran is also conducting cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns. Just last month, the DNI and FBI Director issued a joint statement to publicly attribute Iranian malicious cyber activity targeting and trying to compromise the former president’s campaign. 

This is not a new tactic by Iran. In November 2021, the Justice Department announced charges against two Iranian nationals for a cyber-enabled disinformation and threat campaign designed to influence the 2020 presidential election. Today, Iranian election influence activity is also playing out against the backdrop of its brazen lethal plotting against dissidents inside the United States, as well as against current and former U.S. officials.

China is also engaged in concerning malign influence activity surrounding elections. In particular, the PRC is focused on influencing down-ballot races rather than attempting to influence the presidential race, focusing on candidates it views as particularly threatening to core PRC security interests.

According to our intelligence officials, “China is also continuing its longstanding efforts to build relationships with U.S. officials and entities at state and local levels because it perceives Washington as largely opposed to China.”  In one example from just last week, we charged a former high-ranking New York state employee with illegally acting as an undisclosed agent of the PRC.

In our cases at Justice Department, we have also seen how the PRC government’s malicious cyber activity, covert influence efforts, and wide-ranging transnational repression activity to target dissidents in the U.S. can impact elections.

For example, in March of 2022, we brought charges related to a PRC-driven conspiracy to derail the congressional candidacy of an American citizen and a military veteran. The victim was a former student protestor at the 1989 Tiananmen protest and later escaped to the United States.

And earlier this year, we charged seven hackers associated with the PRC government with a range of computer crimes, including targeting U.S. government officials working in the White House, at the Departments of Justice and State, and members of Congress. Our court filings also describe the group’s efforts to target campaign staff from both major parties in advance of the 2020 election — activity the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security previously made public in a March 2021 report on foreign election interference.

The intelligence community’s 2024 Worldwide Threats report notes that China is demonstrating a higher degree of sophistication in its influence activity, including experimenting with generative artificial intelligence, and cites TikTok accounts run by a PRC propaganda arm that reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the 2022 U.S. midterm election. In recent election threats updates for the current election cycle, the IC warned that PRC Government entities have collaborated with a China-based technology company to enhance covert online influence operations. And PRC online influence actors have continued small-scale efforts on social media to engage U.S. audiences on divisive political issues and to promote negative stories about both political parties.

With fewer than 60 days until the presidential election, we must remain vigilant in countering efforts to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy. We will not allow anyone to exploit our democratic processes and exert malign influence to harm Americans. And every day will continue working to enforce the law and protect the rights of our citizens, without fear or favor from any foreign malign influence scheme, whether it comes from Russia, from Iran, from China or from any other foreign adversary.