Biden’s hard stand on foreign election interference signals funding fight – By Maggie Miller (The Hill) / Nov 10 2020
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to take a hard line against foreign election interference by pushing back against persistent cyber adversaries like Russia and Iran.
Biden took a hard line on the issue in the lead-up to last week’s election, warning as recently as October that countries seeking to interfere in U.S. elections would “pay a price.”
But beefing up cyber protections could set off a funding battle on Capitol Hill, one that has led to partisan deadlock in recent years over whether to provide states with steady security funds.
For some of Biden’s congressional allies, the first step is just talking publicly about the threat.
“Something that has been absent here is the president’s willingness to talk about election interference. That will not be the case under President Biden,” Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), chairman of the House Armed Services’s subcommittee on intelligence and emerging threats and capabilities, told The Hill.
