Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Notable

End USCYBERCOM participation in federal election "fortification" efforts

Partially done

120 4. Department of Defense

“End USCYBERCOM's participation in federal efforts to "fortify" U.S. elections to eliminate the perception that DOD is engaging in partisan politics.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    USCYBERCOM's participation in election security has stopped, without any instrument ending it. The command's own posture statements to the Senate Armed Services Committee are the measure. In April 2024 General Timothy Haugh devoted six passages to the mission, described the standing joint task force by name — "The combined USCYBERCOM-NSA Elections Security Group (ESG) began working well before the start of the primary season" — and committed the command to "supporting the interagency effort to ensure election contests across our states and territories proceed from caucuses to certifications without effective foreign influence". In the two posture statements delivered inside the evidence window, Lieutenant General William Hartman's of 2025-04-09 and General Joshua Rudd's of 2026-04-28, the word *election* does not appear once. Nor does the subject appear anywhere in the command's complete public news archive, which runs from 2017 to 2026-08-07 and was read in full: the only election item in it is a 2020 note on the Montenegrin and U.S. elections. Leveled `partial` rather than `done`: the participation is absent across two years including the run-up to a midterm, which is a piece of the ask delivered, but no order ends it and the capability is expressly retained. Dated from Rudd's statement, the first delivered after a full election cycle had passed with the group unformed. This event replaces the `not-started` of 2026-08-28, which rested on `cybercom.mil` being unreadable; that pass's reasoning is kept in the Chapter 4 log (§6b).

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

One search covered the page 120 cyber asks, #241, #242 and #243.

  • Leads, not Evidence, because none of them is about USCYBERCOM (progress is measured on this ask, not on an adjacent one): NPR, “Efforts to fight foreign influence and protect elections in question under Trump”, https://www.npr.org/2025/02/11/nx-s1-5293521/foreign-influence-elections-cisa-trump; Just Security, “Dismantling the Foreign Malign Influence Center”, https://www.justsecurity.org/119653/wjh-dismantling-foreign-malign-influence-center/.
  • The 2024 baseline is recorded here rather than attached, because the evidence gate refuses a date before 2025-01-20 and rightly so. General Timothy D. Haugh’s posture statement of 2024-04-12 — https://www.cybercom.mil/Media/News/Article/3739700/posture-statement-of-general-timothy-d-haugh-2024/, read in full on 2026-09-05 — uses the word election six times and describes the vehicle by name: “The combined USCYBERCOM-NSA Elections Security Group (ESG) began working well before the start of the primary season”, with the command committed to “supporting the interagency effort to ensure election contests across our states and territories proceed from caucuses to certifications without effective foreign influence”. It is what makes the two in-window statements’ silence legible as a change rather than as an omission, and the Status rests on those two, both of which are inside the window.
  • The factual basis was checked and settled 2026-09-05: the evidence came from USCYBERCOM itself rather than from an outlet.
  • cybercom.mil could always be read. The bare hostname does not resolve; www.cybercom.mil answers normally. Its news listings, pages 1 to 8, were collected into a complete dated archive of 80 items from 2017-10-12 to 2026-08-07 — which is what makes the in-window silence a measurement rather than an impression.
  • Leads, not Evidence, and both off the allowlist: CNN, “US cyber team hasn’t been activated yet to protect midterm elections from foreign meddling”, 2026-04-30, https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/30/politics/cyber-team-midterm-elections-foreign-meddling, and Nextgov/FCW, “Federal drawdown of election support ‘destroyed’ ongoing relationships, experts say”, 2026-04, https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2026/04/federal-drawdown-election-support-destroyed-ongoing-relationships-experts-say/413181/. Both report General Rudd telling senators “I don’t know that an ESG has been established yet, but we are prepared to, as required” — the sentence that shows the capability is retained. The Status does not rest on them; they are why the note can say the absence is deliberate rather than accidental. Nextgov is a GovExec brand but is not govexec.com, so it is off the allowlist as written.
  • Still not about USCYBERCOM, and still leads (progress is measured on this ask): the CISA, FBI Foreign Influence Task Force and Foreign Malign Influence Center rollbacks above.
Action
eliminate
Object
USCYBERCOM election security participation
ID
242