FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate discusses election security

The Weiser Diplomacy Center hosted FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate Tuesday afternoon for a conversation with Javed Ali, associate professor at the Ford School of Public Policy. The event explored the evolution of the FBI’s approach to safeguarding elections with local governments and enforcement agencies. Abbate also touched on increasing collaboration with international actors, including U.S. allies, in front of a crowd of about 50 U-M community members and former FBI employees.  

Abbate spoke about how election interference during the 2016 presidential race changed the sphere of election security and how the FBI addresses concerns of domestic and international threats. 

“When we get to 2016, the attacks that came at our country from Russia — specifically in that instance via cyber means, hacking operations, spreading foreign malign influence covertly, hiding in the shadows of social media — those are new things that we’ve only encountered in very recent years,” Abbate said. “That’s been a very rapid evolution, and we’ve had to adapt having been caught off guard as a government by that and move very quickly to identify future threats, fill the gaps under what’s happening now and work to protect our elections and our democracy in an urgent fashion.”

Abbate said the changes that the FBI has made to their election security procedures align with the increasingly digital world. According to Abbate, election security concerns have been front of mind for federal law enforcement for decades, but the nature of the threats have changed as technology has advanced.  

“You go back to the early ’70s, and even then, we had what was an election program — or election protection program — in conjunction with the Department of Justice, but it was much more rudimentary,” Abbate said. “Real-world types of concern and threats — the things that we protect against today, the potential for voter ballot fraud, voter suppression, civil rights violations, campaign finance violations — that was the focus back then.” 

Abbate also discussed the growing collaboration between the FBI and local agencies to enforce stronger security measures around elections. Abbate said expanding these partnerships has helped them establish a set framework for effective communication between attorneys, representatives and FBI agents. 

“It’s essential, (what) we are doing, that the entirety of the information necessary to stop the threat is shared with everybody across the board, at every level: federal, state and local,” Abbate said. “I can assure you that that is happening today. It’s been happening for a long time, and it’s in part based on the lessons that we’ve derived from some of the failures of the past.” 

Abbate particularly emphasized the development of the partnership between the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. According to Abbate, CISA is primarily engaged in protecting voting machines, balloting and assisting local governments during election seasons.  

“We’re working together every day to collect information intelligence from a variety of sources and then synthesize that and then share it with potential victims so that they can put themselves in the best position to protect whatever is received to protect, and that applies in this realm to election security, and then beyond that …” Abbate said.

After the 2016 election, Abbate said the FBI increased its communication with social media platforms to inform them of suspicious online activity. According to Abbate, while the federal government has no jurisdiction over the activities of these social media platforms, they wanted to ensure platforms were aware of misinformation on their sites. 

“We’re identifying these things so we can go out and share information with others to prevent it from happening,” Abbate said. “So that would include social media companies. For instance, if we gather intelligence information that a foreign government, a hidden actor, is setting up fake social media accounts, we’re going to go appropriately to that platform, that provider, we’re going to let them know in advance. We’re not directing them to do anything.”

Abbate also talked about the importance of international cooperation and communication in matters relating to election security. 

“International partners are critical in this as well, particularly allies, and particularly our Five Eyes partners,” Abbate said. “That’s Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.K. — common democracies, ways of life, values that we share — those allies are being targeted as well by the same adversaries, including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. So we share information among each other as well, across all threats, but relative to elections specifically.” 

Public Policy junior Isabella Oh said in an interview with The Michigan Daily that she learned a great deal about the evolution of the FBI and their approach to addressing national security at Tuesday’s event. 

“It was interesting to hear his perspective, especially with working in the FBI for so long, and just how the landscape has changed within post 9/11, after all these attacks from Russia, and now, it being an election year, the recent assassination attempts,” Oh said. “So I think one of the biggest takeaways was just seeing how much the FBI’s perspective, and what they’re doing, has changed.” 

Engineering graduate student Aidan Szuch spoke to The Daily about how the discussion changed his perspective of the FBI’s role in national security.    

“There really are a lot of actors that are always looking at that element of security and national security,” Szuch said. “It’s not necessarily a glamorous position, it’s not something that’s super well known to the day-to-day U.S. citizen, but the fact that there’s institutions in place to do it is pretty cool to see.”

Daily Staff Reporter Claudia Minetti can be reached at cminetti@umich.edu. 

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