FACT: The People’s Republic of China (China) and their proxies bought, stole, or hacked as many as 220 million Americans’ voter registration data. China’s collection included non-publicly available data.

Details

FACT: The declassified documents provide the official definition used by the Intelligence Community for “election interference.” That definition includes a foreign power’s targeting of voter registration infrastructure or data. The definition from the documents is: “Election influence includes overt and covert influence activities of foreign governments or actors serving as agents of, or on behalf of, foreign governments intended to affect directly or indirectly a US election- including candidates, political parties, voters or their preferences, or political processes. Election interference is a subset of election influence targeted at the technical aspects of the election, including voter registration, casting and counting of ballots, and reporting of results.”

FACT: The Intelligence Community in 2022 flagged a Chinese Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) actor as having acquired voter registration data stored on commercial websites. CNE actors typically use cyber activities to illicitly obtain data that is not publicly available.

FACT: The Intelligence Community documents describe the potential malign activities a foreign power can activate once it possesses American voter registration data. Here is a verbatim quote from the documents: “Adversaries could alter data to potentially prevent individual voters or groups of voters from voting, causing delays on election day or forcing voters to use provisional ballots. Adversaries could also use the registration data which in some cases is also available publicly or for purchase – to tailor other interference or influence efforts.”

FACT: In preparing President Trump’s July 16, 2026 speech on China’s election interference, the White House coordinated with representatives from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Intelligence Agencies approved the factual statements from their documents used in the President’s speech.