China meddled in the 2022 election because it figured Biden wouldn't retaliate: US intel report

• China tried to meddle in the 2022 United States midterm elections, a US intelligence report said.
• Beijing wasn't worried about retaliation from the Biden administration, the report found.

China intensified its efforts in trying to meddle in the 2022 United States midterm elections because Beijing wasn't worried about retaliation from President Joe Biden's administration, according to a newly declassified US intelligence report.

The largely redacted report, which was made in December 2022 for the National Intelligence Council and released this week, said that the Chinese government "tacitly approved efforts" to influence several American midterm races last year.

Chinese leaders, the report said, "repeatedly" ordered officials to zone in on US Congress because Beijing "is convinced that Congress is a locus of anti-China activity, driving a downturn in the bilateral relationship, and more aggressively threatening China's core interests."

Since 2020, senior Chinese leaders have given "broad directives" to ramp up operations aimed at shaping US policy and public opinion in favor of China, the report said.

The US intelligence community determined that those orders gave Chinese "influence actors more freedom to operate ahead of the midterms than the presidential election in 2020, probably because PRC [People's Republic of China] officials believed that Beijing was under less scrutiny during the midterms and because they did not expect the current Administration to retaliate as severely as they feared in 2020," the report said.

The Chinese government "almost certainly" saw the 2022 US midterm elections as a chance to "portray the US democratic model as chaotic, ineffective, and unrepresentative, and frequently directed PRC messaging to highlight US divisions on social issues, such as abortion and gun control," the report said.

According to the intelligence report, Chinese officials identified specific members of Congress "to punish for their anti-China views and to reward for their perceived support of Beijing."

Those activities included "covertly denigrating a named US Senator online using inauthentic accounts," according to the report. No US senator's name is left unredacted in the report.

Still, the report said, the US intelligence community found that Chinese leaders "refrained from authorizing a comprehensive campaign" to influence the midterms in favor of one US political party or to question the legitimacy of election results.

"China's officials almost certainly viewed the risks of such efforts as greater than the rewards because they were wary of exposure of their influence efforts in the United States, did not want to become embroiled in US politics, and concluded that Congress would remain adversarial to Beijing regardless of which party was in control," the report said.

Additionally, the report said, Iran, Russia, and Cuba also tried to meddle in the 2022 midterm elections.

Foreign governments' attempts to interfere with the 2022 midterms "exceeded" what the US intelligence community detected during the previous midterm elections in 2018, said the report.

Russia, and to a "lesser degree," Iran "aimed to heighten broad, existing US sociopolitical tensions and sow distrust in democratic processes through online information operations," according to the report.

The report noted that the intelligence community has "not seen persistent foreign government cyber efforts to gain access to and tamper with US election infrastructure" since Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.