Dear John,
The 2016 Russian intervention in our elections changed our politics forever. It ushered in an era of what we call “Moscow Rules” - defined by disinformation and cyber-insecurity - and a whole new set of challenges that would make the already tough business of running for office and governing far more difficult.
The failure we saw in Iowa last week and the one we may be about to see in Nevada are signs that we still have a lot of work to do to drag our politics into this new era. My own career has spanned the digital age. I put the first American political party on the Internet in 1993 (the Democrats of course), and worked to battle disinformation at the DCCC last cycle. This latest moment in the digital age, a darker and more challenging one, is going to require a complete re-imagination of our politics from everyone in it – from elected officials to members of our security community to campaign staff to the party committees themselves.
In the materials below you can find our thinking about this new “Moscow Rules” era of our politics. Please spend time with this body of work, and let us know what you think.
Best, Simon
Trump Needs To Re-Open The FEC Right Now - Simon Rosenberg, NDN, 10/9/19 - On the same day that the Administration learned about the whistleblower complaint alleging felony level US election law violations by the President in the Ukraine scandal, the independent body overseeing US election law was shut down. It must re-open.
Re-Imagining The Parties In An Age of Hacking, Disinformation - Simon Rosenberg, Medium, 9/7/19 - New digital threats will require US political parties to start seeing themselves as front line actors in our national effort to protect our elections and discourse. Some thoughts on how the parties can re-imagine themselves to meet these challenges head on.
GOP Bringing “Moscow Rules” On Disinformation To American Politics - Simon Rosenberg, Medium, 7/26/19 - A series of events over the past several months raises questions about whether using Russian style disinformation tactics has become a core part of the GOP’s electoral strategy in 2020.
Simon In Richard Clarke's Future State Podcast On "The Future Of Hacking Democracy" - Simon Rosenberg, NDN, 6/19/19 - Simon talks with Richard Clarke about what Russia did in 2016, new trends and threats we've seen in the past few years, and what steps we should be taking now to prevent foreign governments and domestic actors from manipulating our elections and discourse.
Three Things We Need To Do Now To Protect Our Elections In 2020 - Simon Rosenberg, Medium, 4/10/19 - America’s leaders should prioritize three things to protect our elections in the run-up to 2020: require paper ballots and audits, protect candidates from hacking and disinformation, and enter a pact to forgo the use of illicit campaign tactics.
Trump Doesn't Take Russian Electoral Interference Seriously. This Is What Democrats Did To Oppose It In 2018 - Simon Rosenberg and Aaron Trujillo, NBC News, 12/18/18 - The U.S. and its politics are not powerless to stop the kind of foreign hacking and disinformation tactics we saw in 2016. In the 2018 midterms, the DCCC developed a series of tools and strategies for reducing the influence and impact of malicious actors. Far more can now be done to protect our democracy and our discourse — and doing so should be a very high priority for the new Congress in 2019.
Other Materials
The Country Needs To Stop Downplaying The Enormity Of The Russian Intervention In 2016 - Simon Rosenberg, Twitter Thread, 1/25/19 - In a widely shared thread Simon goes through what Russia did in 2016 and concludes that the campaign was far bigger and more impactful than conventional wisdom holds, and clearly delivered a very close election to Donald Trump.
The RNC's Russia Problem - Simon Rosenberg, US News And World Report, 4/14/17 - The Republican National Committee has a particularly important role to play in future efforts to protect America's elections. For as we've learned over the past two years, the RNC was at the center of two of the most important components of the Russian campaign – the penetration of Trump's campaign by the Russian government, and the normalization and use of Russian disinformation.
Calling All Patriots - Simon Rosenberg, US News & World Report, 10/13/16 - While in a reflective mood about the future, their nominee and party, Simon suggests two other activities Republicans should swiftly denounce and distance themselves from – their relentless effort to make it harder for Americans to vote, and their rancid embrace of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election.
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