General Paul Nakasone, the director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), has pledged that Washington would respond to possible attempts by foreign countries to meddle in the 2020 American presidential election.
“We’re going to act when we see adversaries attempting to interfere in our elections”, Nakasone, who is also head of the United States Cyber Command, told a virtual event hosted by the Association of the US Army on Monday.
He vowed that the NSA will bolster its interagency partnerships and study the techniques of US adversaries in order to secure the 3 November elections.
According to the general, the NSA is “going to know our adversaries better than they know themselves”.
The document specifically singles out the 2016 Brexit referendum, the 2017 general election, and the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.
The publication followed the Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejecting the report as something that contained "groundless accusations" which he stressed could not be "substantiated".
Peskov underlined that Russia “has never interfered in the electoral process in any country, the United States, the United Kingdom and other nations” and that “we […] will not tolerate foreign nations' attempts to meddle in our political affairs”.
The statement echoed the Kremlin spokesman’s remarks last week, when he pointed out that “we consistently and categorically deny any possible involvement of Russia in interference in the elections of any country, including those of the UK”.
In April 2019, then-Special Counsel Robert Muller’s probe into alleged collusion between Donald Trump and Russia found no evidence that any American citizen (including members of the Trump campaign) was involved in a conspiracy with the Russian authorities during the 2016 US presidential election.
