Hillicon Valley — Disinformation effort targets US ahead of midterms

A pro-China disinformation group has launched a campaign against the U.S. by attempting to undermine its political system and discourage Americans from voting ahead of the midterm elections. 

Meanwhile, the White House unveiled on Wednesday its plan to enhance cybersecurity standards in the chemical sector. 

This is Hillicon Valley, detailing all you need to know about tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. Send tips to The Hill’s Rebecca Klar and Ines Kagubare.

Pro-China group casts doubt on US political system

A pro-China disinformation campaign known as Dragonbridge has been aggressively targeting the U.S. by using various tactics designed to divide the country along party lines and isolate it from its European allies, according to a report released on Wednesday by cybersecurity firm Mandiant.

The report revealed that the campaign has been attempting to discredit the U.S. political system and discourage Americans from voting in the upcoming midterm elections. 

• Dragonbridge allegedly posted a video in September asserting that “the solution to America’s ills is not to vote for someone,” but rather to “root out this ineffective and incapacitated system,” Mandiant reported.
  
• The video also attempted to cast doubt on the productivity of U.S. lawmakers and questioned whether the legislative process is having a real impact on American lives. 

“We have seen DRAGONBRIDGE criticize American society via narratives regarding racial strife and social injustice,” the report said. “However, its targeting of the U.S. political system through attempts to discourage Americans from voting shows a willingness to use increasingly aggressive rhetoric.” 

Read more here. 

White House rolls out chemical sector cyber strategy

The White House announced on Wednesday its plan to expand its public-private cybersecurity partnership to include the chemical sector.  

• The Chemical Action Plan will push for higher cybersecurity standards across the sector, including improving visibility and threat detection for industrial control systems.
  
• The plan will also guide the sector in assessing current cybersecurity standards over the next 100 days. 

Under the plan, industry leaders will focus on securing high-risk chemical facilities from cyberattacks. The proposal also encourages information sharing between the government and the private sector as well as collaboration with sector owners and operators. 

The new strategy will also support the continuation of chemical production that is critical to the national and economic security of the country. 

Read more here

REPORT FINDS GUN ADS ON FACEBOOK DESPITE BAN

Facebook has allowed ads for guns and gun accessories to run on its platform in violation of its own rules, according to a report released Wednesday from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP).

• The platform’s parent company Meta prohibits advertisements promoting the use or sale of weapons and weapon accessories in its own ad policies, but the TTP investigation found that Meta “regularly approves” such ads, sounding alarms about the company’s review system for what goes up on its sites.
  
• The investigation reportedly uncovered 173 examples of gun-related ads that were approved to run on Facebook and Instagram Aug. 15-29 alone. 

Meta’s response: A spokesperson for Meta told The Hill that the platform doesn’t allow ads for the sale weapon or weapon enhancement sales, and said Facebook works to quickly correct rule violations “that slip through by mistake.” 

Read more here. 

Meta revenue dips (again) 

Meta’s earnings for the past three months declined compared to the same period last year, marking the second quarter in a row the tech giant saw a dip in revenue after years of growth.   

• Meta, the parent company of Facebook, reported in Wednesday’s third quarter earnings release a revenue of $27.1 billion, representing a 4 percent decrease compared to the same time period last year.
  
• After the report was released, Meta’s stock dropped by around 12 percent in after-hours trading.   

Meta’s report said the company expects to see revenue in the fourth quarter between $30 and 32.5 billion.   

The company will also make some hiring changes in some places, hold teams flat, and in other areas, make cuts. Meta predicted its headcount at the end of 2023 will be around in line with the third quarter of this year.   

The company said it expects operating losses for Reality Labs, the project to expand its virtual reality (VR) services, to “grow significantly” in 2023. After next year, Meta said it expects to pace investments in Reality Labs to “achieve our goal of growing overall company operating income in the long run.”   

Read more here.  

MUSK IN THE BUILDING

Elon Musk tweeted a video of himself walking into Twitter headquarters on Wednesday and has updated his Twitter bio to reflect that he is leading the social media platform.  

• “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” Musk posted along with the video. 
  
• His Twitter bio now says, “Chief Twit.”  

Musk needs to close his $44 billion deal to purchase the social media company by Friday in order to avoid the continuation of legal proceedings that began following a dispute between Musk and the company. 

Read more here.  

WHITE HOUSE DISCUSS CYBER STANDARDS FOR EV

The White House cyber team on Tuesday gathered private sector leaders for a discussion focused on how secure electric vehicles will be key to achieving the Biden administration’s climate goals.  

The Office of the National Cyber Director held a meeting at the White House with electric vehicle industry executives, who talked about cybersecurity gaps in their organizations and gave recommendations on how to improve cyber standards across the industry. 

Government officials also noted that building an electric vehicle ecosystem that is secure and resilient is crucial to achieving some of the administration’s climate policy objectives, which include increasing the production of electric vehicles to 50 percent by 2030. 

Participants said they will work to assess the current state of cybersecurity standards in the electric vehicle ecosystem and identify ways for both the public and private sectors to accelerate improvements. 

Read more here.  

👾 BITS & PIECES

An op-ed to chew on: The federal government conducted an investigation of Big Tech’s privacy practices. Where are the results? 

Notable links from around the web: 

Groups demand crackdown on online misinformation ahead of midterms (Axios / Ashley Gold) 

Elon Musk Seems to Answer to No One. Except for a Judge in Delaware (The New York Times / Lauren Hirsch) 

Uber will show ads now. But don’t count on a lower fare (The Washington Post / Tatum Hunter) 

One more thing: Space station ‘debris avoidance’

The International Space Station (ISS) performed a “Pre-Determined Debris Avoidance Maneuver” to increase its distance away from a fragment of a Russian satellite.  

NASA said in a post on its website that the ISS’s thrusters fired for just more than five minutes on Monday to provide an “extra measure of distance” from a fragment of debris from the Russian Cosmos 1408, a Soviet satellite launched in 1982 that operated for around two years.  

A Russian anti-satellite test last November destroyed the satellite, generating a large cloud of debris, according to NASA. The cloud included about 1,500 pieces large enough to be tracked.  

Read more here. 

That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s Technology and Cybersecurity pages for the latest news. We’ll see you tomorrow.