Federal Government Contracted with Center for “Internet” Security to Secure Election Systems (US)

The federal government contracted with an organization whose name is the Center for Internet Security to protect election infrastructure from internet-based threats — while simultaneously maintaining the official public position that the very election systems being protected are not connected to the internet. The logical tension this creates is not merely rhetorical. If election systems were genuinely air-gapped and offline, the engagement of an organization whose entire institutional identity and mission is organized around internet security would be, at minimum, unnecessary. The contractor’s name implicitly concedes what official denials explicitly rejected: that internet connectivity is a live and present concern in election infrastructure. Federal officials testified under oath before Congress that election systems are protected in part by being “non-Internet connected,” while simultaneously funding an organization called the Center for Internet Security — receiving at its peak $27 million per fiscal year in federal funds — to provide 24/7 internet threat monitoring, incident response, and intrusion detection services to those same systems.