Hegseth puts Pentagon's entire spy apparatus on a 'no-fail' mission to stop foreign meddling in the midterms

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is directing his entire intelligence and spy forces to ensure foreign adversaries do not interfere in Tuesday's midterm elections. His September directive orders the department's sprawling intelligence apparatus to make election security a priority in what he calls a 'no-fail mission.'

The directive reaches beyond U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, instructing the entire Defense Intelligence Enterprise — including agencies responsible for military and geospatial intelligence — to 'mobilize every authorized asset, capability, and partnership' against foreign election threats.

In practice, the directive can mean military intelligence agencies identifying foreign hackers or influence operations overseas, warning civilian agencies about threats headed toward U.S. targets and, when authorized, Cyber Command taking action against the foreign actors or the infrastructure behind them.

The military's role largely stops at the U.S. border: state and local officials run elections, while agencies including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security handle the domestic side. The Department of War declined to provide additional details about how the order is being implemented, and Cyber Command separately declined an interview request about its election-security efforts.

The Pentagon's election security mission is not new. Since Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election and the ensuing Russiagate scandal, scrutiny of foreign meddling has grown, and Cyber Command and the NSA have spent years tracking and disrupting foreign threats, including operations targeting Russian actors during previous election cycles.

The effort began taking its current shape ahead of the 2018 midterms, when the agencies formed a 'Russia Small Group' focused on foreign interference. It later evolved into a joint Election Security Group, combining the NSA's intelligence-gathering capabilities with Cyber Command's ability to conduct operations against foreign cyber threats. The agencies again established an Election Security Group for the 2024 presidential election, though whether that structure was recreated for this year's midterms has been less clear.

By 2022, then-Cyber Command and NSA chief Gen. Paul Nakasone was describing election security as an 'enduring, no-fail mission' — language echoed by Hegseth four years later. Gen. Joshua Rudd, the current head of Cyber Command and the NSA, told lawmakers in April that foreign interference was 'reasonable to expect based on what we've seen in the past' and that his command was 'postured and ready to support as required or tasked,' though he said at the time he was unsure whether the Election Security Group had been reconvened.

Five months later, Hegseth issued his department-wide directive, addressed not only to Cyber Command and the NSA but also to the directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The order instructs military intelligence agencies to collect and analyze intelligence on foreign election threats while directing Cyber Command to use its existing authorities and capabilities to counter potential foreign cyber activity in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security. It does not publicly grant new authorities or establish a new election-security organization.

U.S. intelligence officials say they have seen no evidence that a foreign adversary has attempted to interfere with voting machines, physical election infrastructure or the counting of votes ahead of Tuesday's midterms. Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said last week that intelligence officials continue to see nothing contradicting that assessment, but urged Americans to remain 'on high alert' for foreign disinformation, particularly as artificial intelligence makes such campaigns easier to spread.

Officials continue to track foreign influence efforts from Russia, China and Iran, with Russia remaining the most active foreign influence threat, CNN reported Sunday. Lawmakers briefed on classified intelligence last month said Russia was using disinformation to target candidates and undermine confidence in the election, while China's influence efforts were more narrowly focused on candidates viewed as hostile to Beijing.

Hegseth's directive makes the overseas mission a priority across the broader military intelligence enterprise, though the Pentagon has not disclosed whether it has resulted in additional personnel, resources or organizational changes ahead of Election Day.