US cyber team hasn’t been activated yet to protect midterm elections from foreign meddling
People cast their votes at the Bailey's Elementary School polling location in Falls Church
(CNN) — For the first election cycle in years, US military and intelligence officials have not yet activated a specialized team dedicated to detecting and thwarting foreign threats to elections, according to comments from those agencies to Congress and CNN, alarming some lawmakers and former officials who have served on the team.
A failure to activate the team would be a “major national security mistake and I hope that they will correct it in the weeks to come,” Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who sits on the armed services committee, told CNN.
For every general and midterm election since the 2020 election, the Election Security Group (ESG) has been a hub for officials from the National Security Agency, the code-breaking and signals intelligence agency, and US Cyber Command, the military’s hackers, to share intelligence and launch counter attacks against trolls from Russia, Iran and elsewhere who were trying to undermine US elections.
The ESG has overseen operations targeting Russian companies that spewed propaganda at US voters in 2024 and Iranian hackers that meddled in the 2020 election.
At this time in the election cycle, even months from Election Day, the group is normally activated, staffed and briefing Congress on its efforts, former Cyber Command officials said. But the newly minted head of the NSA and Cyber Command indicated to lawmakers this week that the group was still dormant ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“I don’t know that an ESG has been established yet, but we are prepared to, as required,” Gen. Joshua Rudd said at a Senate hearing in response to a question from Hawaii Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono.
Cyber Command and NSA have other ways of tracking and countering foreign threats to US elections. That work, the agency and the command said in statements to CNN, continues.
But neglecting the ESG — which many election security experts see as a proven, effective tool — has surprised some former Cyber Command officials.
“Holy hell, that is strategic malpractice,” said Jason Kikta, who helped design the ESG when he was at Cyber Command. “We’re at war with Iran, which impersonated the Proud Boys to threaten American voters in 2020. How far will they try to go this time?”
“The bigger danger is not what foreign actors do, but what Americans believe foreign actors did,” Kikta told CNN. “We are heading into the midterms partially blind to foreign influence and right after an attempted assassination [of the president] generated conspiracy theories almost immediately. It’s as reckless as it is foolish.”
The ESG “was the most impactful mission that I got to be a part of at US Cyber Command,” Andrew Schoka, who worked at the command in the 2020 election cycle, told CNN. The details of that work often can’t be publicized, he said, but it is “an incredibly impactful and significant contribution to free and fair elections in the United States.”
The group, he said, combines “the unique mission of the NSA and the unique authorities and capabilities of Cyber Command.”
CNN asked Cyber Command and the NSA multiple times over email and phone whether the ESG had been activated. Both organizations responded with a statement that did not answer the question.
“U.S. Cyber Command regularly targets actions by malicious foreign cyber actors overseas against the nation, this includes those intent on interfering with our democratic processes,” a command spokesperson said.
An NSA spokesperson said: “In support of ODNI’s [the Office of Director of National Intelligence’s] whole of IC [intelligence community] effort concerning foreign threats to 2026 elections, we have identified an Election lead that will represent NSA for the IC’s broader ability to counter foreign threats to election security.”
The work that Cyber Command and NSA do are one piece of what has been a federal government-wide effort to expose foreign efforts to sway American voters.
More than a year into a second Trump administration, many centers at other federal agencies, including the FBI and departments of Homeland Security and State, that were previously tasked with repelling foreign influence operations have been disbanded or downsized, CNN previously reported.
In their annual threat assessment released in March, US intelligence agencies did not mention foreign threats to US elections for the first time since Russia’s influence operation aimed at the 2016 vote. The 2025 assessment, the first under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, said that foreign powers would use artificial intelligence to continue to target American voters with disinformation.
King, the independent senator, told CNN that the dormancy of the ESG would be “very concerning, when you consider we’ve been seeing foreign interference occurring in our elections for the past decade – and we know that our adversaries are more enabled and more capable than ever before to cause harm to our democracy.”
The NSA and Cyber Command have ample budget and resources available to combat foreign meddling in elections, should they be ordered to use them. Former officials from both agencies told CNN that there are still a number of tools that the agencies could use to counter election threats outside of the ESG.
And there is bipartisan support for hitting back against foreign hackers and trolls that target US democracy.
“When these dictators are using cyber ops to come after … American elections … I think we should flex a little offensive cyber capability,” Senator Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican, said at the armed services hearing.
The-CNN-Wire
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