Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign manager, and Matt Rhoades, Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign manager, are working together on a bipartisan Defending Digital Democracy (DDD) project, aimed at protecting voting from cyberattack.
The project, launched Tuesday by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, will include experts from the national security and technology communities, including Facebook and Google.
The mission: "identify and recommend strategies, tools, and technology to protect democratic processes and systems from cyber and information attacks ... concrete solutions to an urgent problem."
- Running the project: Eric Rosenbach, co-director of the Belfer Center — a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security, and then chief of staff to former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.
- A quote from Mook: "Over the last two years, nearly every election on both sides of the Atlantic has been affected by foreign cyber attacks."
- A quote from Rhoades: "Cyber attacks on campaigns and elections are a threat to our democracy and affect people of all political stripes."
- One plan: "Providing election administrators, election infrastructure providers, and campaign organizations with practical 'playbooks' to improve their cybersecurity."
- Two more big names: Marc Elias, a Democrat of Perkins Cole, and Ben Ginsberg, a Republican of Jones Day, two of the top election lawyers in the country, will advise the project.
