Digital Coup: The Conspiracy to Thwart Local Democracy

Online propaganda and computer-assisted electoral fraud threaten to overthrow democracies the world over, according to this scattershot debut study. Legal scholar Johnson recaps the story of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election by means of divisive political commentary spread on social media. It was an example, he contends, of the “digital coups” that Russia regularly launches to undermine foreign elections, including a 2021 disinformation campaign in Burkina Faso that preceded an actual coup, and another in 2024 against a Moldovan ballot measure to join the E.U. (which passed anyway). After surveying Chinese attempts to sway Taiwanese elections, Iranian initiatives to foment pro-Gaza protests in the U.S., and online organizing by white supremacists, Johnson pivots to efforts to hack voting systems, with particular focus on theories that the Trump campaign stole the 2024 presidential election via hacking, an idea he takes seriously. (He also explores more plausible conjectures that Republican voter suppression measures resulted in Trump’s triumph.) Johnson proposes cogent safeguards against election hacking, like returning to paper ballots. More troubling is his case for fighting social-media subversion with laws regulating content, which can sound like a rationale for censorship. (Citizens who spread “divisive... messaging” online “have essentially committed treason,” he writes.) It’s a mixed set of recommendations for a serious modern dilemma. (May)