Secreted distant inner a windowless construction at 7700 Potranco Road in San Antonio, Texas, is a darkened area that serves as the hub of Task Force Raider. This armed forces project power is secretly at activity as part of a government-wide “election safety group,” guarding against “interference” in the upcoming midterm elections.
Interference, however, is a loaded word. While it connotes the Kremlin hacking into polling places or changing the ballot count, Task Force Raider is really additional focused on the broader category of “influence”, specifically Russian or Chinese attempts to alter minds fairly than to alter votes.
But the genuine mark is the American people, whom the national authorities sees as vectors for abroad influence.
“The complete ballot safety scare is to indulge President Trump and assuage Democrats, all of whom fear interference and shenanigans, but not from abroad shores,” says a elder armed forces intellect officer, who said to me concerning the concealed effort.
He and another armed forces officers expressed unease alongside the sprawling mission. It encompasses everything from sending millions of anonymous content and sound messages abroad, to outright deleting social media posts or taking downward complete websites, as documents I obtained reveal.
All of this is in infringement of longstanding prohibitions against any armed forces involvement in elections whatsoever, yet enjoys the assistance of the two important governmental parties.
What’s more, for all the handwringing concerning ballot interference, the Trump administration hasn’t substantiated that any nation (or any another foreigners) are preparedness to interfere or have any chance of meaningfully altering an outcome. But that hasn’t stopped the national authorities from designating ballot safety the figure one “operational priority” — a goal that insiders are calling “no fail.”
That is the goal directive that Pete Hegseth issued to the San Antonio cyber institution final week, as I reported on recently. Yet since Hegseth’s war is extremely classified, takes location in cyberspace and entails a fit dose of covert actions that would close downward possible attacks as fine as cut off normal influencers and average citizens who search to sway voters (what several power call ‘democracy’), nothing has been written concerning Hegseth’s genuine ballot interference.
“These are not merely Keystone Cops battling against pimple-faced amateurs and anarchists,” says a former elder armed forces authoritative who has been engaged in ballot safety since the 2016 presidential year. “Every capability that the US possesses, in Cyber Command, the CIA, NSA, and another agencies, the Russian and Chinese governments additionally have,” he says. “We are exactly engaged in a regular battle in cyberspace.”
Despite this underground war, the authoritative questions the expanding armed forces involvement in safeguarding voting. “Influencing the influencers? That’s creating a precedent that I’m not comfortable with,” he said. As he sees it, this is not fair a slippery incline to boots on the dirt at polling places but of construction and having national authorities capabilities that volition eventually be capable to authority community address and assembly.
The officer, who describes himself as a nonpartisan believer that the Constitution continually comes first, points out that the hundred-plus-year ban against posting national soldiers at polling places had fine logic rearward it afterward and fine logic now.
“Granted, those in uniform are assistant to an interagency noncombatant effort,” he says, “but the build of lone fearing boots on the dirt is obsolete. We need to update our thinking, and the law, to contain the cyber world. And we need to oppose the idea that a robust, equal foreign-based debate, requires national intervention.”
To comprehend how near we are to abridging the First Amendment, regard that before this month, Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla of California wrote to the heads of fractional a dozen social media companies to notify that they — YouTube, Twitter (X), Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Google — weren’t doing adequate to “combat misinformation and disinformation … during the 2026 midterm elections.” It was a entirely partisan letter alongside a predictable dose of Donald Trump this and Donald Trump that. But there it was: two notable Democrats and liberals threatening that Congress must “consider investigations and law to remedy” ballot mis- and disinformation.
“Congress shall create no law,” the armed forces authoritative says, whenever asked concerning the projected legislation. “It’s the archetypal declaration of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Period.”
Now, however, a law, and control, is the norm. And Hegseth, for any reason, wants the Pentagon in on the action, that is, under the misleading guise that it is lone operating against “foreign” actors.
The armed forces has been quietly engaged in protecting national elections against cyber assault since Donald Trump appeared on the national phase in 2016, in the environment of WikiLeaks, Kremlin power operations and their hacking of Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Whether any of what happened was crucial adequate to have the least effect on the American ballot or not, the Obama White House was spooked adequate that it gave the CIA covert act authorities to close downward websites and social media accounts — including taking a Russian military-created website called “DCleaks” offline — that power publish additional materials. Whatever you think concerning Obama’s motivations or Trump’s, the regulation of the authorities act then, as it is now, is that it restricts liberated speech.
Task Force Raider (or its predecessor) was mobilized to assistance Homeland Security and the FBI in “defending” the United States. To drag together the correct group alongside the top talent, the Task Force operates under a “best athlete” approach, picking the most qualified idiosyncratic despite of armed forces service, noncombatant agency or defence contractors. Eventually, complete 350 group got to activity on the project force.
A $10 myriad Rewards for Justice program was unveiled, and complete 56,000 “psychological operations” (PSYOPS) messages were posted complete the internet. The power warriors of Task Force Raider sent complete three myriad (!) content and sound messages to group in “countries of interest,” according to documents I’ve obtained. All of this took location in secret.
Some of the activity and preparations were focused purely on defense. One unit, the “Demon Chasers” of the “91st Cyber Operations Squadron,” the military’s premier insulting cyberspace squadron, contributes its ability to the mix. Working from their 42,600-square-foot “multi-domain” safe facility that contracting documents say is authorized to grip Top Secret “sensitive activities” (SA), “sensitive compartmented information” (SCI), “special admission program” (SAP) flat information, insulting cyber operations (OCO), and “special specialized operations” (STO), the 91st specializes in freezing out communications.
One document says that the squadron, and its Special Program Office, has the goal to “degrade, disrupt, deceive and utilize adversary telephony and data system.” It cut its teeth in Afghanistan, anywhere it perfected “cellular safety blackouts,” that is, the capability to close downward cellphone communications in a constricted area.
Another component operates a “malware lab” that collects together application and data from all sorts of adversary hacks and cyber operations, conducting inspection of “malicious artifacts,” and penning counter-software to thwart incoming attacks and implants.
An enormous part of the general attempt is “persona operations” — anywhere soldiers and another literal keyboard warriors create false identities and counterfeit net addresses to run in cyberspace without authorities attribution, to scout the web and surf social media, to affect idiosyncratic users, and to do several influencing of their own.
My sources who are privy to this Top Secret attempt all agree: the armed forces is not fair thwarting abroad actors from sowing discontent. They are additionally regulating what appears in social media, regulating lawful debate.
Cyber Command’s (CYBERCOM’s) Joint Force Headquarters – Cyber, functioning from its war area inner the National Security Agency-Texas facility in San Antonio, oversees Task Force Raider and another armed forces ballot safety efforts. On the million-square-foot “security hill,” not far from the NSA facility at the erstwhile Kelly Air Force Base, another component has built a “state-of-the-art weapons scheme to mimic the gathering efforts of abroad intellect services,” according to documents I’ve obtained.
After the 2020 elections, the Joint Force Headquarters activated an ballot safety “enclave” to assistance “the most delicate activities.” The Pentagon defines specified activities as “activities that, if compromised, could logic enduring adverse effects on U.S. abroad guideline or armed forces operations, or guide to important embarrassment for the U.S. government, its allies, or the military.”
In another words, actions that power damage the national authorities and the military, not actions that power damage democracy.
Online assistance for Palestinians and opposition to Israel’s behavior in the Gaza war; vitriol against Donald Trump, or ICE, or the CIA and the FBI; or “disinformation” in general? None of these are a grave danger to our democracy. Yet somehow the national authorities and the Pentagon have convinced us that they need to obtain extreme action, including controlling speech, to oppose it.
What Americans see of armed forces involvement in the election, they beautiful plainly don’t like. When video circulated of DC National Guardsmen appearing in forefront of a ballot autumn box, it quickly went viral, stoking outrage.
What group don’t see is that the armed forces is additionally eyeing the ballot in a much additional systematic way in cyberspace. Why isn’t anyone asking what they are really doing? And who is the genuine target? And what is it that they have in intellect to do on or before ballot day to transport out their own power campaign?
— Edited by William M. Arkin
