At a recent McCain Institute event Adrian Fontes Arizonaʼs Secretary of State shared his biggest night-time worry: politicians who spread lies for personal gain. The threat isnt just domestic – its international
What keeps me up at night is that we still have elected officials who will purposefully lie because of grift
Fontes created a simple way to remember main foreign threats which he calls “RIChis“ (Russia-Iran-China). These non-friendly countries work hard to create problems for the nov-5 election‚ targeting both presidential candidates and local races
Recent cyber-security reports show how each country picks its targets:
- Russia makes fake voting videos
- Iran tries to influence pro-trump groups
- China looks at congress races and down-ballot picks
In maricopa county (which has over 4‚5 million people) Bill Gates who leads the board of supervisors knows these problems first-hand. After 2020s vote his family got death threats‚ and he dealt with ptsd; now hes ready to retire after this election
The countyʼs election center got major security upgrades – iron gates bullet-proof glass and armed guards protect it now. Adrian Fontes hired the states first info-security chief and works with national guard to stop cyber-attacks
They also created an AI committee this summer with experts from big tech companies to fight deep-fakes. “We do dungeons & dragons style training for election staff“ Fontes explains showing how they prepare for fake videos of himself speaking foreign languages
Bill Gates says his team gets billions of cyber-attacks every three months but theyʼre better prepared now: “We know what might happen – its not like 2020 when we had to learn everything during the crisis“