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9 Colum. J. Race & L. 191 (2019)
Russian Election Interference and Race-Baiting

handle is hein.journals/cjoral9 and id is 191 raw text is: RUSSIAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE AND RACE-BAITING Darin E.W. Johnson.* Russian interference in the 2016 United States presi- dential election exposed the nation's vulnerability to targeted campaign disruption by foreign intelligence actors through social media. The Russian cyber disinformation campaign exploited racial divisions in the United States to undermine public confidence in American electoral processes and institu- tions, revealing how those divisions can be weaponized. The campaign fed on racial divisions arising from institutionalized state practices that have a disparate discriminatory effect on racial minorities. Successful in their online interference in 2016, Russian operatives continued to stoke these divisions in the 2018 midterm election and have begun to do so in the 2020 presidential election campaign. Russia will continue to stir racial division in future elections, and other states may follow suit. To combat this threat, refraining the manner in which national security institutions address matters of race is necessary. This Article advocates that national security institutions adopt an explicit racism as national security threatframework in place of the implicit minority race as threat framework that has previously shaped national security institutions' behavior. It traces how a minority race as threat framework has histori- cally guided national security institutional action in significant ways. Further, it elucidates how a racism as national security threat framework promotes American antidiscrimination law and international human rights law, and how the strategic * Associate Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law; J.D., Harvard Law School; B.A., Yale College. Prior to entering the academy, the author worked for over a decade in the United States national security community as an attorney within the Department of Defense and the Department of State. The author would like to thank the Howard University School of Law for a 2018 summer research grant that supported the drafting of this Article. He would also like to thank the participants of the John Mercer Langston Writing Workshop for their helpful comments and feedback. The author would further like to thank his research assistant, Kanysha Phillips, HUSL class of 2019, for her assistance with this Article. He would also like to thank the editors of the Columbia Journal of Race and Law for their thoughtful edits, comments, and suggestions throughout the editorial process.

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