FBI Is Focused on Election Integrity, Misinformation Threats

The U.S. presidential election is still eight months away, but the FBI is already seeing its share of cyberattacks, nation-state threats and AI-generated deepfakes aimed at influencing the outcome of the race. According to FBI Agent Robert K. Tripp, “We’re no longer considering threats as a what-if situation; it’s happening now.”

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The rise of generative AI tools in the past year has the potential to escalate the reach, realism and scale of fake content, posing dynamic challenges to government election security teams as well as media outlets.

“We now know it’s possible to create convincing videos that could sway elections. Even if it doesn’t change votes, the doubt it creates undermines the process, serving the objectives of certain nations. Identifying and unmasking the source of deepfakes is crucial to mitigating their impact,” he said.

In this video interview with Information Security Media Group, Tripp discussed:

• The primary cyberthreats to the 2024 election and how the FBI is working to counter them;
• How the approach to election security has evolved since the last presidential election;
• The challenges of misinformation and disinformation and how the FBI investigates and intervenes to protect elections.

FBI Director Christopher Wray named Tripp as the special agent in charge of the San Francisco Field Office in August 2022. Tripp began his career at the FBI in 1998 as an intelligence research specialist in the Criminal Investigative Division, working on transnational organized crime issues.