Report: Nation's top cybersecurity official out after contradicting Trump
Christopher Krebs, the top cybersecurity official in the U.S. government, expects to be fired soon by the White House, Reuters reported today. Krebs has worked to dispel misinformation and conspiracy theories about last week’s election — sometimes in direct contradiction of President Trump’s tweets.
Krebs and his staff at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency have received bipartisan praise for keeping the 2020 U.S. elections free of major interference from foreign powers.
Krebs apparently had drawn President Trump’s attention for very public assertions about the fairness of the 2020 election vote count.
On the CISA.gov webpage, Krebs’ group maintained a robust “Rumor Control” site that batted down various conspiracy theories making the rounds online. For example: In response to a recent rumor that “more votes in one contest than other contests on the ballot means that results cannot be trusted,” the page says: “Reality: Variations in vote totals … occur in every election.” Each entry includes a hearty list of “for more information” links.
Krebs’ Twitter account — emblazoned with #Protect2020 across the top — is full of several messages and retweets negating false claims about voter fraud, including some promoted by President Trump.
Some observers worried that a vacuum of leadership on America’s federal election security team could imperil the critical Georgia run-off elections that will be held in early 2021.
“This move leaves our election & critical infrastructure vulnerable at a time when the threat remains,” wrote Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a non-partisan international watchdog, in a Tweet.
Also leaving, according to Reuters: Bryan Ware, the Assistant Director for Cybersecurity for the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. He handed in his resignation on Thursday, Reuters said.
Krebs was fired for refusing to change or delete items on Rumor Control, Reuters reported.
In particular, one person said, the White House was angry about a CISA post rejecting a conspiracy theory that falsely claims an intelligence agency supercomputer and program, purportedly named Hammer and Scorecard, could have flipped votes nationally. No such system exists, according to Krebs, election security experts and former U.S. officials.
Krebs was the first director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Before working at homeland security, Krebs had worked Microsoft’s U.S. Government Affairs team.
“The nation owes a debt of gratitude to Chris Krebs for his tireless leadership to establish the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,” said David Hoffman, a Duke University professor and privacy expert. “Chris is uniformly highly respected across government, industry and civil society for his professional and deeply substantive approach to tackling some of the hardest issues impacting the country. The government will be hard-pressed to find such capable leadership moving forward.”
(Disclosure: I am a visiting scholar at Duke’s school of public policy this year, where I work with Prof. Hoffman.)
