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U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis visited Vietnam twice this year and suggested in October stronger relations as China bears down on Vietnamese maritime claims. In the Philippines a month later, Mattis swore to uphold a decades-old military alliance that helps Manila resist China. A U.S. naval ship passes through the South China Sea every couple of months or so as support for keeping the resource-rich waterway open, not just for Chinese use.

Moments like these raised Southeast Asia’s confidence in U.S. support after some nervousness when President Donald Trump took office in 2017. Mattis will quit January 1, in turn shaking that confidence.

Beijing has drilled for oil, built up islands or passed ships in South China Sea waters claimed as well by Vietnam, the Philippines and three other Asian governments. Weaker than China, the Southeast Asian states hoped the United States would help. Mattis advocated close relations with allies to resist authoritarian states.

“I suspect many leaders, be they in Southeast Asia or elsewhere, will just roll their eyes and think, ‘here we go again’” after Mattis leaves, said Sean King, vice president of the Park Strategies political consultancy in New York. “Mattis is different, as he…holds such a critical life-and-death cabinet post and is a firm believer in America’s alliances, as evidenced in his resignation letter to Trump.”

The U.S. Asia alliance spans democracies from Japan through South Korea and Taiwan into Southeast Asia. Many of those countries are trying to pare back the influence of China. 

Sudden resignation

“It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions — to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies,” the 68-year-old ex-Marine Corps general wrote in his resignation letter to Trump. 

“That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense,” the December 20 letter says.

Asian leaders found “reliability” in Mattis’s ties with Asia, said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the international affairs college at National Chengchi University in Taipei. The defense secretary made a particular impression by attending the Shangri-la Dialogue twice, telling Asia’s major annual defense summit in 2018 that the U.S. government would help its “partners” improve protection of their maritime interests.

Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan dispute Chinese expansion in the resource-rich South China Sea. Taiwan and Japan vie with Beijing separately over control of the East China Sea. 

“He played a sort of force of reliability because at least as defense chief he did what he said and then when he made contact with every other country he was steady, giving them a sense of reliability, so other people’s trust in the United States won’t fall so fast,” Huang said.

Mattis quit a day after Trump announced the U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria, a move opposed by the defense department. European allies France, Sweden and the U.K. have already voiced concern about the resignation. 

Among countries that claim the South China Sea, Vietnam will probably “miss” Mattis the most, King said. Vietnam has stood firmest against Beijing, he said, while other Asian maritime claimants look to the United States for security but to China for economic support.

Wait-and-watch phase

The U.S. withdrawal from Syria could show that Trump and his eventual new defense chief will later isolate Washington from its Asian allies, King said. China, he said, “would fill the vacuum.”

For the short term, expect leaders in Asia to wait nervously again as they did after Trump’s inauguration, analysts suggest.

“President Trump is playing demolition derby with his own cabinet and he’s going to be distracted and this is not the time to mount any significant foreign policy initiatives,” said Alan Chong, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

“If there’s any more restrained member of Trump’s cabinet left, now is not that time, because a whimsical management team would pull the rug from under their feet at any time,” he said. “So I think things will remain static.”

Trump will probably look for a new defense chief “who will listen to him,” Huang said. 

Trump has said he would appoint Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan as acting secretary on January 1 to replace Mattis.
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You don’t often get a second chance to make a first impression, unless, of course, you’re one of the world’s most popular dinosaurs.

“It’s a different profile, a much more impressive profile in many ways, a pretty scary large animal, as opposed to a lighter, swifter animal,” says the Field Museum’s Director of Exhibitions, Jaap Hoogstraten, who has courted the leading lady of the dinosaurs since she arrived in Chicago nearly twenty years ago.

“Since we put her up in 2000, we’ve made discoveries about the pose. We’ve added the gastralia, which are the belly ribs which changes the outline of Sue quite a bit. Sue is much bulkier.”

The belly ribs are not a new discovery… they’ve existed since the fossil was recovered from obscurity in the rock formations of South Dakota in the early 1990s. That was the beginning of a long legal and physical journey for the world’s largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. Known as Sue, named for paleontologist Sue Hendrickson who discovered it, the well-preserved specimen arrived as the star attraction in Stanley Hall at the Field Museum in 2000.

But scientists only recently learned how the belly ribs fit onto the overall specimen, which now fundamentally changes what we know about the Tyrannosaurus Rex. 

After a nearly year-long transition to a new exhibit specifically designed for her, Sue will look different to the millions who have seen the dinosaur before. 

“I didn’t really realize that Sue weighed nine tons in real life,” says Hilary Hansen, project manager at the Field Museum. “I think really adding this gastralia, these belly ribs, really changes the profile for Sue, and you can get a sense of how formidable and imposing it must have been to share an environment with this animal.”

Hansen explains that the new exhibit doesn’t just change our understanding of the animal itself, such as the fact it probably couldn’t run, but it also show visitors Sue’s natural environment, and place in history.

“What we’re trying to do is bring together everything about Sue that was all over the museum into one space so our visitors can see this as a one stop shop for all things Sue.”

“It pushes what we know about T-Rex forward,” says Hoogstraten, including possible answers to how Sue met her fate.

“One possibility is that there was an infection, and that she possibly starved to death.”

The Field museum typically welcomes over one million visitors a year, a number Hilary Hansen expects to spike when the new Sue exhibit opens to the public just in time for the holiday rush.

“For the next three weeks or so, we’re expecting between seven to ten thousand visitors coming through a day.” Some, revisiting an old friend with a new look. 

But even though science marches on, one mystery about Sue remains. 

Despite the name, experts are still not sure if the dinosaur behind this fossil was male or female.
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This will be a special holiday season for a father who was homeless and his five children. Mike O’Sullivan reports from Los Angeles, the family will celebrate Christmas in a new apartment – one located in an innovative building made from shipping containers.
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The U.S. commander of international forces in Afghanistan said Sunday he has not received orders for a troop withdrawal from the country.

General Scott Miller’s remarks came just days after reports quoted officials in Washington as saying President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to withdraw roughly half of the more than 14,000 American troops stationed in Afghanistan, beginning next month.

“You have seen the same rumors I have in the newspapers. But all I would assure you is first of all I have no orders, so nothing changed. We are same today as we were yesterday and we will be the same tomorrow,” Miller noted during a visit to the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.

The largest Afghan television station, TOLO News, broadcast the footage of Miller’s meeting with the provincial governor where the general was apparently responding to queries from his hosts on the reported U.S. troop withdrawal plans.

“But if I do get orders I think it is important for you to know that we are still with the [Afghan] security forces. Even if I have to get a little bit smaller [in troop size] we will be okay. We have thought about this before and we will be able to do the things that you require in terms of support,” Miller said.

President Ashraf Ghazi’s unity government in Kabul officially has played down the significance of Trump’s reported order of the troop drawdown, saying Afghan forces are capable of defending the country.

But privately, Afghan officials and generals are worried their beleaguered forces will find it extremely difficult to sustain battlefield pressure from the Taliban without American troops and air support.

Almost 30,000 Afghan forces have been killed since 2015.

General Miller, who commands U.S. forces and the NATO-led non-combat Resolution Support mission, reiterated the need for finding a political settlement to end the deadly Afghan conflict.

“My personnel preference is that we stop the violence because the people who are paying the price are the Afghan people, in some cases its civilians. But regardless if it’s the Taliban or security forces, the people who are paying the price are the Afghan people.” Miller noted.

The reports of a possible U.S. drawdown have emerged at a time when the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, last week held another round of talks with the Taliban in the United Arab Emirates to push for a peace deal to end the war.

Both sides have described the latest meeting as productive and anticipated progress in the upcoming meetings expected to take place at the same venue in coming weeks.

The U.S. launched its military campaign 17 years ago with the help of its allies to topple the Taliban government following September 2001 strikes on American cities.

The longest American war effort has since killed nearly 150,000 people, including security forces, insurgents and civilians, and it has cost Washington close to a trillion dollar in military expenses.

The Taliban has expanded its influence and currently controls or hotly contests more than half of Afghanistan.
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U.S. President Donald Trump will not change his mind on withdrawing American troops from Syria, his acting chief of staff said Sunday.

“I think the president has told people from the very beginning that he doesn’t want us to stay in Syria forever,” Mick Mulvaney told ABC’s “This Week” Sunday morning.

“You’re seeing the end result now of two years of work.”

When questioned about resignations of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the special U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State Brett McGurk, Mulvaney said that it is “not unusual” for cabinet members to resign “over these types of disagreements.”

McGurk’s and Mattis’ resignations came after Trump declared last week that Islamic State had been defeated and that the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria would return home.

Speaking from Chad on Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he “deeply regrets” Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria.

“To be an ally is to fight shoulder to shoulder,” he said, “paying tribute” to outgoing Secretary Mattis, who he called a “reliable partner”.

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, said Sunday that he was “devastated” by the decision, calling the United States “unreliable”.

Late Saturday, one of Trump’s many tweets on the issue stated that he was bringing home the troops “happy and healthy” after “decimating ISIS in Syria.”

 
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A White House official says tension between a president and the interest-rate setting Federal Reserve is “traditional as part of our system.”

Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney says it should come as no surprise that President Donald Trump is unhappy the central bank, an independent agency, “is raising rates and we think driving down the value of the stock market.”

Speculation about the fate of Trump’s appointed Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, has swirled after Bloomberg News reported that Trump discussed firing Powell after this past week’s rate increase.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tweeted Saturday that Trump has denied ever suggesting that and doesn’t believe he has the right to dismiss Powell.

Mulvaney also tells ABC’s “This Week” that the economy’s “fundamentals are still strong.”

 
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Now in its 10th year, America’s economic expansion still looks sturdy. Yet the partial shutdown of the government that began Saturday has added another threat to a growing list of risks. 

The stock market’s persistent fall, growing chaos in the Trump administration, higher interest rates, a U.S.-China trade war and a global slowdown have combined to elevate the perils for the economy. 

Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said he thinks the underlying fundamentals for growth remain strong and that the expansion will continue. But he cautioned that the falling stock market reflects multiple hazards that can feed on themselves. 

“What really matters is how people perceive these headwinds — and right now markets and investors perceive them as leading us into a recessionary environment,” Daco said. 

Many economic barometers still look encouraging. Unemployment is near a half-century low. Inflation is tame. Pay growth has picked up. Consumers boosted their spending this holiday season. Indeed, the latest figures indicate that the economy has been fundamentally healthy during the final month of 2018. 

Still, financial markets were rattled Thursday by President Donald Trump’s threat to shut down the government unless his border wall is funded as part of a measure to finance the government — a threat that became reality on Saturday. As tensions with the incoming Democratic House majority have reached a fever pitch, Trump warned Friday that he foresees a “very long” shutdown. 

The expanding picture of a dysfunctional Trump administration grew further with the surprise resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis in protest of Trump’s abrupt decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria — a move that drew expressions of alarm from many Republicans as well as Democrats. 

How markets and government officials respond to such risks could determine whether the second-longest U.S. expansion on record remains on course or succumbs eventually to a recession.

A closer look at the risks: 

Administration chaos 

It has been a tumultuous few days, even for a White House that has been defined by the president’s daily dramas. 

Trump faces an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections that has led to indictments and criminal convictions of some of his closest confidants. He is coping with a wave of top staff defections, having lost both his chief of staff and defense secretary. He is in the process of installing a new attorney general. 

Then there is the partial government shutdown that Trump himself has pushed. 

The shutdown is unlikely to hurt economic growth very much, even if it lasts awhile, because 75 percent of the government is still being funded. S&P Global Ratings estimates that each week of the shutdown would shave a relatively minuscule $1.2 billion off the nation’s gross domestic product. 

Still, the problem is that the Trump administration appears disinclined to cooperate with the incoming House Democratic majority. So the federal support through deficit spending that boosted the economy this year will likely wane, Lewis Alexander, U.S. chief economist at Nomura, said in his 2019 outlook. 

That, in part, is why the economy is widely expected to weaken from its roughly 3 percent growth this year, which would be the strongest performance since 2005. 

Tumbling stocks

Stock investors have been trampled since October, with the Dow Jones industrial average sinking nearly 15 percent. The plunge followed a propulsive winning streak for the stock market that began in 2009. But investors are internalizing all the latest risks, including Trump’s trade war with China and higher borrowing rates, and how much they might depress corporate profits and the economy.  

“Markets people are forward-looking, so they’re taking into account the latest information,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. 

Markets can often fall persistently without sending the economy into a tailspin. But O’Sullivan warned of a possible feedback loop in which tumbling stock prices would erode consumer and business confidence, which in turn could send stocks sinking further. At that point, the economy would likely worsen, the job market would weaken and many ordinary households would suffer. 

Trade war

For economists, this may pose the gravest threat to the economy. Trump has imposed tariffs against a huge swath of goods from China, which has retaliated with its own tariffs on U.S. products. These import taxes tend to dampen economic activity and diminish growth. 

“The trade war with China is now the biggest impediment to U.S. economic growth,” Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in his forecast for the first half of 2019. 

In part because of the taxes Trump imposed on Chinese imports, manufacturing growth appears to be slowing, with factory owners facing higher costs for raw materials. The president has held off on further escalating tariffs to see if an agreement, or at least a lasting truce, can be reached with China by March. 

Any damage from trade wars tends to worsen the longer the disputes continue. So even a tentative resolution in the first three months of 2019 could remove one threat to economic growth. 

Interest rate hikes 

The Federal Reserve has raised a key short-term rate four times this year and envisions two more increases in 2019. Stocks sold off Wednesday after Chairman Jerome Powell laid out the rationale. Powell’s explanation, in large part, was that the Fed could gradually raise borrowing costs and limit potential U.S. economic growth because of the job market’s strength. 

The Fed generally raises rates to keep growth in check and prevent annual inflation from rising much above 2 percent. But inflation has been running consistently below that target. 

If the central bank were to miscalculate and raise rates too high or too fast, it could trigger the very downturn that Fed officials have been trying to avoid. This has become a nagging fear for investors. 

Global slowdown 

The world economy is showing clear signs of a downshift, with many U.S. trading partners, especially in Europe and Asia, weakening or expected to expand at a slower speed. Their deflating growth can, in turn, weigh down the U.S. economy. 

Several other global risks abound. There is Britain’s turbulent exit from the European Union. Italy appears close to recession and is struggling to manage its debt. China, the world’s second-largest economy after the U.S., is trying to manage a slowdown in growth that is being complicated by its trade war with Trump. 

“Next year is likely to be challenging for both investors and policymakers,” Alexander, the Nomura economist, concluded in his outlook. 
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U.S. national parks will be left with just a skeleton staff during the federal government shutdown, and several states are using their own funds to make sure public restrooms get cleaned and visitor centers stay open. 

The shutdown of all but essential federal services because of a Capitol Hill fight over U.S. President Donald Trump’s funding demands for a Mexico border wall comes at the height of the Christmas travel season. 

The National Park Service said this week that parks will remain “as accessible as possible.” During a three-day government shutdown in January, the gates to about two-thirds of national parks and monuments remained open. 

“Services that require staffing and maintenance such as campgrounds and full-service restrooms will not be operating,” Jeremy Barnum, the National Park Service chief spokesman, said in a statement. 

The Republican governors of Utah and Arizona have promised to step in, in part to help protect local businesses in and around some of the country’s most spectacular natural landscapes that depend on tourist spending. 

Not ‘on our watch’

“Regardless of what happens in Washington, the Grand Canyon will not close on our watch,” Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said in a statement on Friday. The Arizona Office of Tourism will help ensure restrooms are cleaned, trash is collected and shuttle buses operate, Ducey said. 

All five of Utah’s national parks will remain open, and the three most popular will have maintenance costs underwritten by the state during the shutdown, according to Vicki Varela, the Utah Office of Tourism’s managing director. 

Zion National Park drew 107,000 visitors between Dec. 22 and Dec. 27 a year ago, Varela said. 

“This time of year is the most remarkable time of year to experience it because the snow against that red rock is just breathtaking,” she said. 

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert authorized the temporary funding for custodial and visitor center services, which will cost an estimated $18,000 to $19,000 for Zion. 

“It’s really modest on the part of the state to protect the quality of the experience for visitors,” Varela said. 

New York state has provided funding to keep the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island open during the shutdown, according to the park’s website. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, slammed Trump over the federal shutdown on Twitter on Saturday. 

Officials from the Great Smoky Mountains Association said the nonprofit group would provide funding to maintain visitor center staffing, restroom cleaning and trash hauling at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the Tennessee-North Carolina border. 

The National Park Service said it would not be updating its social media accounts during the shutdown, and that while some park areas remain accessible, access could change without notice. 

Better to stay closed?

Some conservationists said it would be better to close parks entirely, as happened under President Barack Obama’s administration during a 2013 shutdown, rather than keep them open with skeleton staff. 

During the January shutdown, a pregnant elk was killed in Zion and tourists in Yellowstone National Park drove snowmobiles dangerously close to the Old Faithful geyser, said Theresa Pierno, president of the National Parks Conservation Association. 

“It’s unrealistic and dangerous to think that parks can remain open with only a skeleton crew and continue with business as usual,” Pierno said in a statement.
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Following weeks of talks between President Donald Trump and congressional leaders, parts of the U.S. government shut down on Saturday after negotiators reached an impasse over a deal to keep the government fully funded.

The majority of agencies and departments, including the Department of Defense and the Postal Service, already have secured funding and will continue operations. Still, 800,000 employees from the Homeland Security, Transportation and other departmets are affected. According to the American Federation of Government Employees, 420,000 people who have been deemed “essential” must work without pay, while 380,000 others will not be able to report for work at all. 

Trump administration officials say anyone working without pay will receive back pay once a deal is reached. Below is what will happen at some of the agencies and departments affected by the shutdown. 

Homeland Security

The department that oversees Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service is affected by the shutdown. 

But most of those agencies’ employees are considered essential, so they will need to work without pay until a government funding bill is passed. 

Of the 245,000 people who work under the department’s umbrella, nearly 213,000 have been deemed essential, according to the department’s contingency plan. 

Housing and Urban Development

Of the department’s 7,500 employees, only 343 are expected to work. Nearly 1,000 other people may be called in to work on specific tasks, for which they will not be paid until a funding bill is passed.  

Though public housing authorities and tribally designated housing entities are not part of the federal government and are not required to shut down, some of their funding is provided by the federal government, so they may need to reduce or change normal operating hours. 

The department, which is also responsible for some housing loans and low-income housing payments, said in its contingency plan a shutdown would likely not significantly affect the housing market. 

But, it added, “a protracted shutdown could see a decline in home sales, reversing the trend toward a strengthening market that we’ve been experiencing.” 

Interior 

The National Park Service, under the umbrella of the Interior Department, will have a skeleton staff. Under its contingency plan, no national parks will be open and no visitor services — including restrooms, facility maintenance and trash collection — will be provided. 

But some governors have pledged to step in, including in Arizona, the site of the Grand Canyon, and New York, where the state has provided funding for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island to stay open. 

Transportation 

Of the department’s 55,000 employees, 20,400 will be put on leave. Those employees do not include most of the Federal Aviation Administration, where 24,200 will be working, or the Federal Highway Administration, where all 2,700 employees are funded through other sources. 

Air traffic control, hazardous material safety inspections and accident investigations will continue, but some rulemaking, inspections and audits will be paused. 

Executive Office of the President 

An estimated 1,100 of the office’s 1,800 employees would be placed on leave. This will include most of the Office of Management and Budget, which helps the president implement his budget and policy goals.  
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The U.S. federal government has begun a partial shutdown of its operations.

About a quarter of the government ran out of funds at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, Washington time. More than 800,000 federal employees’ jobs have been disrupted and more than half of those employees are required to work without pay.

The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives adjourned late Friday without passing a federal spending bill that provides President Donald Trump with the $5 billion that he insists is needed to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in addition to appropriations for government agencies.

Lawmakers had until midnight to enact a measure to keep the government fully funded.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi issued a joint statement Saturday saying, “Democrats have offered Republicans multiple proposals to keep the government open, including one that already passed the Senate unanimously, and all of which include funding for strong, sensible, and effective border security — not the president’s ineffective and expensive wall. If President Trump and Republicans choose to continue this Trump shutdown, the new House Democratic majority will swiftly pass legislation to re-open government in January.”

Trump tweeted a video late Friday, saying “we’re going to have a shutdown. There’s nothing we can do about that.”

​Senate advances House bill

Earlier Friday, the Senate voted to advance a House-passed bill that included funding for the wall. The procedural vote gave the Senate “flexibility” to continue negotiating, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told The Washington Post that Democrats were open to discussions but would not agree to any new money for a border wall.

After previously saying he would “proudly” accept responsibility for a partial U.S. government shutdown if Congress does not pass legislation that includes funding for his proposed border wall, Trump early Friday tweeted, “The Democrats now own the shutdown!”

Friday afternoon he tweeted:

Congress will be back in session Saturday, but no votes are scheduled at the present time.

House bill has wall funds

On Thursday, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a temporary spending bill that included billions for Trump’s proposed wall along the southern U.S. border.

Trump repeatedly has demanded funds to build the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and he told House Republican leaders he would not sign a bill that did not include funding for the wall.

Schumer told colleagues Friday on the Senate floor that Trump is making unilateral decisions that are creating chaos throughout the world.

“All of this turmoil is causing chaos in the markets, chaos abroad and it’s making the United States less prosperous and less secure,” Schumer said. “There are not the votes in the Senate for an expensive taxpayer-funded border wall. So President Trump you will not get your wall. Abandon your shutdown strategy. You’re not getting your wall today, next week or on January 3rd when Democrats take control of the House.”

McConnell argued for the wall’s funding, saying, “The need for greater security on our southern border is not some partisan invention. It’s an empirical fact and the need is only growing.”

Frustration with Congress

Trump has voiced increasing frustration that Congress has refused his request for a $5 billion down payment on the $20 billion wall he says will thwart illegal immigration. Construction of the wall was a popular rallying cry at Trump campaign events during his successful 2016 run for the White House. Trump also told his supporters that Mexico would pay for the wall.

The dispute is occurring in the last days of Republican control of both houses of Congress.

Democrats, adamantly opposed to Trump’s wall proposal, picked up 40 seats in the 435-member House of Representatives in the November elections and are set assume control in early January, although Republicans will maintain their edge in the Senate.
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Voters who went to the polls last month in the United States’ midterm elections can rest assured that their votes were registered and counted properly.

However, a new report by the U.S. intelligence community concluded Americans were subjected to ongoing influence operations and disinformation campaigns by several countries, a finding that could trigger automatic sanctions.

“The activity we did see was consistent with what we shared in the weeks leading up to the election,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a statement late Friday.

“Russia, and other foreign countries, including China and Iran, conducted influence activities and messaging campaigns targeted at the United States to promote their strategic interests,” he added.

Early signs were there

In the months leading up to the November vote, intelligence and security officials, and analysts had expressed concerns that countries like Russia and even non-state actors might seek to physically compromise U.S. voting systems.

But the fears, based on evidence Russian hackers had accessed some U.S. state and local systems, such as voter databases, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election did not play out according to the new assessment.

“At this time, the intelligence community does not have intelligence reporting that indicates any compromise of our nation’s election infrastructure that would have prevented voting, changed vote counts, or disrupted the ability to tally votes,” Coats said.

The report, required under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in September, supports the initial assessment by Homeland Security officials the day of the election and in the weeks that followed.

“There were no indications at the time of any foreign compromises of election equipment that would disrupt the ability to cast or count a vote,” Christopher Krebs, director of the DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said a week after voters went to the polls.

Report could spur new sanctions

The new report now goes to the U.S. attorney general and to the Department of Homeland Security, which have 45 days to review the findings. Should they concur with the intelligence community’s assessment, Russia, China and Iran could be slapped with new sanctions.

Those measures could include blocking access to property and interests, restricting access to the U.S. financial system, prohibiting investment in companies found to be involved, and even prohibiting individuals from entering the United States.

Additionally, the president’s executive order authorizes the State Department and the Treasury Department to add additional sanctions, if deemed necessary.

But as in the aftermath of the 2016 election, when the CIA and FBI concluded with “high confidence” that Russia sought to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral process and help then-candidate Donald Trump win election, gauging the success of the 2018 meddling efforts is difficult.

“We did not make an assessment of the impact that these activities had on the outcome of the 2018 election,” Coats cautioned in his statement. “The U.S. intelligence community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze U.S. political processes or U.S. public opinion.”

‘Witch hunt’

That impact will likely be debated in U.S. political circles, fueled in part by the president’s own attacks against the ongoing special counsel investigation into Russia’s activities and into possible collusion with Trump’s own campaign staff.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the investigation as a “witch hunt.”

Still, some lawmakers see the new intelligence community assessment as reason to act.

“The Russians did not go away after the 2016 election,” Sen. Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Warner, who previously criticized the president’s executive order for failing to lay out strong, clear consequences for election meddling, said it was no surprise China and Iran tried to manipulate American voters, and that the problem will only get worse.

“We’re going to see more and more adversaries trying to take advantage of the openness of our society to sow division and attempt to manipulate Americans,” he added. “Congress has to step up and enact some much-needed guardrails on social media, and companies need to work with us so that we can update our laws to better protect against attacks on our democracy.”

Executive order praised

Former officials have urged patience, praising the executive order as a good start and cautioning it will take time to see how well it works.

“I don’t know that it will be a complete solution,” said Sean Kanuck, a former intelligence officer for cyber issues, said when the order was first introduced. “I doubt it will completely change the incentive-cost-benefit analysis of the other side.”

Even after the executive order was unveiled, U.S. officials, as well as social media companies, continued to turn up evidence that Russia and others tried to meddle in the 2018 U.S. midterm election.

In October, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment against 44-year-old Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, charging her with helping to finance disinformation campaigns on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, targeting both Republican and Democratic voters.

As with previous efforts, the accounts were designed to make it appear as though they belonged to American political activists and some managed to generate tens of thousands of followers.

Later that month, Facebook said it had removed 82 accounts, pages or groups from its site and from Instagram that originated in Iran and targeted liberal U.S. voters.

But U.S. officials and experts have also warned that the heavy focus on social media and influence campaigns, and the lack of evidence of tampering with U.S. voting systems and databases, should not be seen as a victory.

Saving ‘best tricks for 2020’

They say that just as the U.S. has hardened its systems against attacks and intrusions, cyber adversaries like Russia have been watching and learning, with their eyes perhaps on a much more significant target.

“The Russians were going to save their best tricks for 2020,” said William Carter, deputy director, Technology Policy Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, predicted in the days before the U.S. midterm elections in November.

“They’re going to let us chase our tails in 2018 and look for them where they’re not,” he added.
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