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I'm Terry Gross.
In these final days before Election Day, how much do we know about foreign efforts to influence voters and the outcome of the election?
How many bots and deep fakes and fake news stories planted by Russia, Iran or other countries have been seen by voters who believed they were authentic?
This is the first presidential campaign since the creation of a new group within the intelligence community that's responsible for discovering and defeating foreign efforts to influence voters and to warn voters and lessen the effectiveness of foreign influence.
It's called the Foreign Malign Influence center, and it was created in 2022.
My guest, David Kirkpatrick, a staff writer at the New Yorker, has written a long article about the center and the role of the larger intelligence community and the Justice Department in determining what voters get to know and when they get to know it.
The article is also about what we've learned so far about foreign influence in this presidential campaign and lessons learned from the past.
The article is titled the US Spies who Sound the Alarm About Election Interference.
David Kirkpatrick, welcome Back to FRESH AIR.
You know, after the 2016 election, there was a special counsel appointed Robert Mueller to investigate Russian attempts to influence voters and have an impact on the results of the elections.
But the Russians didn't say, okay, you got me, we're done.
But this time around, like, as far as I can tell, not that much attention is being paid to foreign influence.