“Some of the actions that CISA took in the last election cycle were controversial,” said Wales, a career official who was the agency’s third official during Krebs’s tenure.
Asked to clarify Wales’ comments, a CISA spokesman said the agency remains proud of its work on its Rumor Control fact check page and described it as “an example of how CISA was able to add value during the 2020 election by successfully misinforming. “
“We support this work and will continue to report misinformation when it comes to our mission and experience, while ensuring that we respond to feedback from the electoral community,” said the spokesman, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the comments of a senior employee.
‘Return to routine’: Wales said he wanted CISA to focus its fact-checking initiatives “on the security aspects where we have the broadest authorities, responsibilities and, ultimately, experience”, adding that “issues related to electoral administration” were “beyond our competence “. The United States’ decentralized approach to elections has traditionally left state officials in charge of answering questions about how they are run.
Wales also said that after taking over CISA after Trump’s dismissal of Krebs, he tried to divert the agency from controversial projects such as Rumors Control. His guidance for officials, he said, was: “Let’s get back to basics – providing the best cyber and physical security products and services and guidance for election officials.”
Next steps: Wales asked his team to propose strategies for more personalized efforts to combat disinformation in a wide range of areas, including electoral security and Covid-19. These proposals, he said, will be “based on what we saw working and not working during the 2020 election cycle”.
He added that he was “making recommendations to future political leadership” from CISA and DHS.
“Wait for more information about the future of our disinformation work,” Wales told the secretaries. “I know from speaking with several members of the Biden transition team [members] that they’re looking forward to engaging in that, so I hope more will come in that space soon. “