- Tens of thousands of polling places, some 150 million people or more voting.

There will be disruptions, there will be incidents.

The important thing the American people need to know is that these incidents will not impact the security and integrity of the vote.

(bright music) - Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and I am so very happy to tell you that the long national nightmare of political ads plastering your mailboxes, TV, and text messages is almost over.

Election day just around the corner.

In a matter of days, millions of votes will be marked and processed and reported around this beautiful mess of a nation.

But how can you be sure that your vote will be counted freely and fairly?

Don't take it from me, I'm just a political scientist.

Take it from Jen Easterly, Director of the US Government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, known as CISA.

She's my guest today and she's in charge of making sure that our elections run smoothly.

Her message to voters?

We got this.

But as you'll hear, Easterly's concern is much more about what happens once the votes are counted.

We'll get into all that and more.

Don't worry, I've also got your Puppet Regime.

- She said the quiet part loud and I love it.

- But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- [Announcer] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Advertiser] Every day all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

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- [Announcer] And by: Cox Enterprises is proud to support "GZERO".

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by: Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and: (bright music) (upbeat music) - [Ian] Can perception become reality?

Imagine, you open a bank branch with the most secure vault in the world.

Now imagine your competitor claims that the vault has more holes than Swiss cheese.

If that message hits home, it doesn't matter how thick your vault is, no one will want to stash their money there.

That's a bit like the challenge facing election officials as they try to promote voter confidence in this year's US election.

Making their jobs harder, of course, is former President Trump.

- If the election's not rigged, we're gonna win.

If it is rigged, I guess that's a different story but we'll find out pretty soon.

- Most government officials are very eager to push back on Trump's claims about a stolen election.

You can remember Chris Krebs, the Trump administration's cybersecurity official who Trump fired because he called the 2020 election free and fair.

Here's his successor, Jen Easterly recently.

- The reality is that election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election stakeholder community never better prepared to run free, fair, safe, secure elections.

- As for the security of the last election, I'll defer to Rupert Murdoch.

Last year during a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, the chairman stated under oath that the 2020 election was free and fair and was not in fact stolen.

That case ended up being settled outside of court for $800 million.

But a court of law is one thing, the court of public opinion, quite another.

As of late September, Gallup found that four in 10 Americans lack confidence that their vote for president will be accurately counted in this year's election.

And the percentage of Americans saying they are not at all confident in the vote has steadily climbed from 6% in 2004 to 19% today.

The chasm becomes even wider when you separate by party.

- [Reporter] The vast majority of Americans are actually bracing right now for at least a few incidents of voter fraud.

And while just 6%, 6% of Harris voters think that fraud will be widespread, nearly half of Trump voters feel that way.

- And if you needed a reminder that we're in the final fever pitch of the campaign, things got a little testy when CNN's Jim Acosta challenged the Georgia GOP Chair's claim that ballot drop boxes were scattered randomly all over the state.

- You're making suggestions that there were some kind of tom foolery and shenanigans going on last time around.

Your party's own Secretary of State said that that was not the case and that it was a free and fair election and that it was secure.

I'm just saying, Josh, what you're saying is horse crap.

- You said something earlier- - It's horse crap.

- [Ian] Luckily such horse crap, Jim's words not mine, has not kept Americans from early voting this election cycle.

As of today, tens of millions of voters have already cast their ballots from Arizona to Georgia.

It's the perception of insecurity and foul play that worries officials and really, anyone who's got a stake in democracy.

It's also red meat to America's adversaries.

Russia, China, Iran, and more all have vested interest in sowing distrust and discord in America's voting system.

And they're doing more than just watching and waiting, they are actively interfering.

And that's what I want to talk about today with my guest, CISA Director Jen Easterly.

I also want to dig into what happens after all the votes are cast and counted.

You remember January 6th?

Here's our conversation.

Jen Easterly, great to have you back on the show.

- So exciting.

- So look, we have a lot of people in the United States right now that are losing their minds over the state of democracy and in particular this election.

So you are personally doing more than any human being I know in this country to try to help ensure that our election is indeed free, fair, not interfered with.

Explain that please.

- Folks may not know that in the aftermath of Russian attempts to interfere in the presidential election in 2016, election infrastructure, which was not considered critical infrastructure before, was actually designated as critical infrastructure and CISA was designated as the federal government lead for election infrastructure security.

So that means that we bring the federal government resources and intelligence and capabilities to state and local election officials who of course run elections.

So that's been eight years, Ian.

And over that eight years, there has been a massive improvement in the security and resilience of our election infrastructure.

I can tell you over the last three plus years, I have traveled the country working with election officials of both parties.

And I have seen firsthand how tirelessly they work to ensure that every vote is counted as cast.

I can say with great confidence that election infrastructure has never been more secure.

But I think it's important why I say that.

We gotta look at the facts.

So first of all, to prevent digital interference, gotta remember, voting systems not connected to the internet.

Second, to prevent digital manipulation, over 97% paper ballots, that really matters.

And to guarantee zero human manipulation, election officials have put in place multiple layers of safeguards, cybersecurity, physical access controls to protect election infrastructure from compromise and that includes pre-election testing of equipment, post-election audits.

So no matter who you vote for, you can have confidence that your vote will be counted as cast.

- But the fact that you have 50 different state governments running 50 different systems can create very different ways of counting the ballots, very different ways of who is allowed to vote and how easily.

I mean, this is a significant challenge when it comes to the ultimate integrity of an election.

- Yeah.

Well, you're probably referring to non-citizen voting, which- - As only one example.

- Has been a big issue.

I'll tell you one reason why it's been a big issue, who I blame for it, and that's the Russians.

The Russians have picked up on this specific narrative as something that they can use to essentially spew propaganda that divides Americans.

Their goal is to undermine trust in the legitimacy of our elections and to pit Americans against each other.

Look, what Americans need to know about this, it is a crime for non-citizens to vote, a federal crime that is punishable by prison, deportation, and a permanent bar to citizenship.

Second, election officials forever have multiple layers of systems and processes in place to ensure voter eligibility and the accuracy of voter roles.

And the important thing to know is it's working.

So the data actually shows that non-citizen voting is exceptionally rare.

Just look at Georgia.

So as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger just announced last week what he called the most comprehensive citizenship audit.

You know what they found?

Out of 8.2 million voters in Georgia, nine non-citizens voted, 0.0001%.

- Georgia, a red state that recently went blue.

But Raffensperger we're talking about was a Republican elected official.

I'm saying that not because it should matter, but just so people understand.

- Yeah, yeah.

Your point is a good one because at the end of the day, elections are political, election security is not.

We do need to recognize that, right?

It's not a Republican issue, it's not a Democratic issue, it's an American issue.

Election security is national security.

We're talking about the foundation of our democracy and I think it is dishonest and frankly, really irresponsible for anybody in a position of power or authority, regardless of party or politics, to be spreading inaccurate information that undermines American trust in our election infrastructure.

It's corrosive to our democracy.

It does the work of our foreign adversaries for them.

And oh, by the way, it is leading to very real physical threats to election officials of both parties.

- Across the country.

- Across the country.

- Is it fair to say right now that there is unprecedented amounts of disinformation being circulated about the election and the election process, both by external actors and internal in the United States for this election.

Is that fair to say?

- I think it's fair to say.

I have talked a lot about this fire hose of disinformation.

We've been working very closely with the office of the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines and the FBI, to bring together the federal government to put out so much information about what our foreign adversaries are doing.

So a lot of intelligence now being declassified so that we can get it to the American people so they understand what the Russians, what the Iranians, what the Chinese are doing to influence Americans to undermine our confidence in the election and to stoke partisan discord.

And most recently we've talked about what may happen after November 5th, because as you know, when the polls close, the election is not over.

- Absolutely.

- So very, very focused on our foreign adversaries, but at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is to ensure that Americans know the accurate information.

We're not gonna fight all of this crazy disinformation out there, but what we can try and do is make sure that Americans who want to know, who have questions about how their vote is protected, how they can be sure that their vote is counted as cast, where to go and that is your state or local election official.

They are the experts.

They're the ones who run elections and can tell you all of the steps that they take to protect your vote.

- Now, irrespective of all of the integrity that we have around the election, there have certainly been some shenanigans, right?

- Yeah.

- A number of election officials have received physical threats, to themselves, to their families, making it very difficult for them to effectively do their job.

Secondly, we have just seen two incidences of arson, ballot boxes where potentially significant numbers of ballots have been spoiled in areas that have been very close in the last election, opening to question whether or not the outcome of those local elections are going to actually be free and fair.

Talk about what you have seen and experienced of those and of others that give you reason for concern.

- So for example, in Bucks County in Pennsylvania, there was a video that purported to show ballots being destroyed.

Bucks County very smartly came out right away and said this is a fake video, evidence of a crime, they're investigating it.

And then the federal government in shocking agility came out a day later, put a statement together based on a forensic analysis of the video saying this is Russian.

Russians had created this and are spreading this.

So this is Russian propaganda.

And we will continue to put out information where we see it's coming from our foreign adversaries.

But again, the state and local election officials have a very important role in terms of communicating around that.

So that's an important example.

Separately, there was fraudulent ballots in Lancaster County.

So that you had, again, election officials, also Pennsylvania.

- And my God, we know how important that state is to the outcome in particular.

So the Russians are not picking Pennsylvania randomly here.

- No, but that process worked.

You had election officials come out, they had identified it, they're investigating it as evidence of a crime, and the criminals will be held accountable.

Going to Washington and Oregon, you just talked about the two incendiary devices.

So I was just on the phone today with the Secretary of State in Washington.

They are working with local law enforcement, they're working with the FBI to find the criminals who are responsible for this activity to ensure that they are held accountable, but they are also reaching out to potentially impacted voters to make sure they understand if they were impacted, how to get that replacement ballot.

All of this to say, so I say election infrastructure is more secure and more resilient than ever, part of that is because there are processes in place to deal with these inevitable disruptions.

I mean, Ian, we're talking about a very complex event.

Hundreds of thousands of election workers, tens of thousands of polling places, some 150 million people or more voting.

There will be disruptions, there will be incidents.

The important thing the American people need to know is that these incidents, while they are disruptive, they will not impact the security and integrity of the vote.

Election officials have multiple processes in place to ensure that they are able to verify the votes that come in and ensure that every vote, every voter that is eligible, casts a ballot and that ballot is counted as cast.

And we have to remember, these election officials are not some faceless bureaucrats.

They are our friends, they're our neighbors, they're family members.

They're in our community every day.

And they ain't doing it for pay or fame or glory.

They're doing it because they believe in our democracy and they deserve to be respected, they deserve to be supported, and they damn well deserve to be safe.

So all of us should keep that in mind when we're voting.

We should thank those election officials and be grateful for what they're doing.

- Talk about foreign interference after the elections.

What should American voters be looking for?

What should we be concerned about from foreign adversaries post-November 5th?

- Between November 5th and frankly, probably January 6th, when the Congress is gonna certify the vote, our foreign adversaries are gonna go hog wild.

When the polls close, the elections are not over.

All that voters will see, Americans will see, are unofficial results.

It actually takes a few days, in some cases weeks, to get the official results.

But what we know is that in the battleground states, it could be very close, meaning that there could be recounts, there may be audits just as happened in 2020.

And so there could be a couple days of uncertainty about who the winner is.

And we know our foreign adversaries that are intent on stoking partisan discord, on undermining American confidence and legitimacy and potentially inciting violence.

And so we will likely see foreign adversaries even more actively involved in influence narratives, in disinformation.

And that's where Americans need to be patient, Americans need to go to those trusted sources, state and local election officials to understand exactly what's happening, to protect their vote and get to a positive outcome.

And it's again, not just Russia, it's Iran and it's China.

Just talk about Iran.

We have to recognize that Iran has tried to assassinate the former president and other senior officials, and that is a very real threat.

So I don't wanna dismiss that, Iran is involved in malign influence operations and disinformation, but also this threat of violence is a very real thing.

- And they went after specifically as well the campaign information and the dump that we saw from the Trump administration.

- Yeah, the hack and leak, exactly.

- They are playing one side of this.

- Yeah.

And the intelligence community has been clear about that, that it looks like Russia is trying to influence for the former president, and Iran is trying to influence things in support of the vice president.

And China looks like it's not focused on the presidential election, but rather on down ballot candidates to try and get a favorable outcome against Taiwan.

- Is it fair that in addition to doing those things, the Russians are also just really generally interested in doing anything possible to stoke revolution and violence in the United States?

- They all have two main goals.

They all have two main goals, Ian.

Look, they know that America is the most powerful nation on the face of the earth.

Strongest economy, strongest military.

They all wanna do everything they can to weaken our democracy.

So of course, undermine American trust in our democratic institutions and to stoke partisan discord.

So from their perspective, they're looking at us and seeing a lot of the partisan rancor that's happening.

And that is absolutely to their ends, that is weakening our nation.

- You essentially have to do two jobs, right?

You have to ensure election security from the ballots all the way to the result, but you also have to actively fight the disinformation so that people believe that that process was indeed legitimate.

And I would argue that the latter is a lot harder than the former.

Especially because some of it is protected speech, especially because some of it is promoted by, for example, the former president.

- You're right, that is a harder problem, especially because we are now in an incredibly fractured information environment.

So first, when it comes to a major source of this disinformation, which is our foreign adversaries, we are working to be able to understand their tactics, identify them, ensure the American people understand what our adversaries are doing, and disrupt.

We do not want our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.

Now the other thing that we're doing, we have to make sure that Americans who want the information, want the accurate information, know where to go.

And that's why we are always pushing people to the state and local election officials.

Everybody cares about our country, everybody cares about our democracy and what's more important to our democracy than the integrity of the vote?

And what really matters is the truth, the facts at the end of the day.

And I get it.

Rage is interesting and facts are boring, I get it.

But at the end of the day, facts have never been more important to safeguarding and preserving our democracy.

- Jen Easterly.

Thanks so much for that.

- Thanks Ian.

(rhythmic music) - Now let's hear from someone who knows more than a thing or two about election interference, Vladimir Putin.

He traveled to New York City to get some canid opinions from Trump supporters outside of his rally at Madison Square Garden.

Let's see what they had to say.

- Hey, I'm walking here!

The imagery outside was infectious.

So many interesting people.

- 47!

Triangle Swamp!

Woo!

- Yes!

Yes!

Go Russia!

What is it that you think that people don't understand about Trump?

- You ask people about Trump, first thing they say is he's racist.

- They say he's racist?

- That he's racist.

- Okay.

But he sometimes says things that are a little crazy, like that immigrants poisoning bloodstream of America and such things.

I mean, where do you think that comes from?

- I don't know.

I don't know.

- I think we need a strong person to, you know, against Russia and all these other nations- - Against Russia?

Wait, hold on a second, wait.

- I'm a transgender.

- He's showing me- - I'm someone unique.

- Okay.

- As I am.

Respect- - Transgender.

So let me ask you- - Yes.

- This interesting because most transgender people, I feel like probably support Harris, am I right?

- I don't know.

I support him.

- Okay.

- Then I'm different.

- That's interesting.

- That's the man in me.

- Why do you think Trump will make great change for America?

- Because it can't get any worse.

No, I cannot- - As a Russian person, I beg to differ.

It can always get worse.

- Could you do a little something with the numbers to get Trump in?

- She said the quiet part loud and I love it.

But just before I got inside, something horrible happened.

- It's full.

Nobody's coming out, nobody's going in.

It's full.

- I'm a VIP, a very important Putin.

Let me through this crowd immediately.

I wasn't the only dictator who couldn't get in.

No you don't.

No you don't, Mister.

You don't just show up here like this.

And so I listen from outside like so many others.

It's Hulk Hogan!

I can't believe it.

Even when Donald took stage, he pretended not to even recognize me.

Donald?

Donald, Donald, its me!

I'm over here.

I am on the freaking guest list!

In the end, I was disappointed not to get inside of this rally, but I left confident that I continue to live rent free inside head of American politics.

See you on Election Day.

♪ Puppet Regime ♪ - That's our show this week.

Come back next week and if you like what you've seen, or even if you don't, but you wanna vote because you think that's important, at least once, why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com.

(bright rousing music) (bright rousing music continues) (bright rousing music continues) (bright chime) - [Announcer] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Advertiser] Every day all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com - [Presenter] And by: Cox Enterprises is proud to support "GZERO."

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by: Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and: (bright music) (cheerful chime)