The election hackers are back – and they’re starting with the US midterms | PW Singer and Emerson Brooking

Democracies around the world now face an even bigger threat than in 2016. But there are ways to fight back

Whether it is in the movies, media or politics, discussions of election security typically focus on the sexy story of hackers hacking into voting machines. While this is a well-founded fear that certainly requires better defence, the reality is that there is no example of this kind of cyber-attack ever being attempted or working on a national scale.

By contrast, there is another kind of attack, one which has not just been repeatedly attempted but has been proven to work. It has struck everywhere from the 2016 election in the US and the Brexit vote in the UK, to the Syrian civil war and the Myanmar genocide. This threat doesn't come in the form of hacking networks (aka "cyberwar") but rather hacking the people on them, by making ideas viral through a mix of "likes" and lies on social media (what we call "like war").