Losers from the last two presidential elections are teaming up to reinvent themselves as cyber security experts as part of a new initiative to combat election hacking.

“The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School launched a new, bipartisan initiative today called the ‘Defending Digital Democracy’ (DDD) Project,” the Center announced Tuesday.

“Co-led by the former campaign managers for Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney and experts from the national security and technology communities, including Facebook and Google, the project aims to identify and recommend strategies, tools, and technology to protect democratic processes and systems from cyber and information attacks.”

According to the Center’s news release, election hacking is an “urgent problem” and Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, and Matt Rhoades, who directed Mitt Romney’s failed campaign, are just the people to fix it.

“The Russian influence campaign was one of the most significant national security events in the last decade, and it’s a near-certainty that all the other bad guys saw that and will try to do something similar in the United States in 2018 and 2020,” Eric Rosenbach, co-director of the Belfer Center, told The Washington Post.

Rosenbach said similar efforts by the federal government have received pushback from some who object to a federal takeover of the states’ role in managing elections, and those working on the initiative hope to circumvent that issue.

“We want to be able to fill a gap where it looks like there is one, and make a difference,” he said.

The project aims to bring together experts in national security and technology with political leaders to combat cyberattacks that “affect people of all political stripes,” Rhoades said in the news release.

“Foreign actors could target any political party at any time, and that means we all need to work together to address these vulnerabilities. This project will bring together not just different parties and ideologies, but subject matter experts from cyber security, national security, technology, and election administration to make a difference,” he said.

The Post alleges the Chinese hacked Romney’s 2012 campaign, and “Russian government hackers” stole information from the Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016 to help Trump into the White House.

Citing a January report by U.S. intelligence agencies, the Post contends the alleged 2016 hacking was “the most brazen effort yet by the Russians to interfere in an American election and exploited the Internet to ‘weaponize’ political information and public opinion.”

“They did so by hacking emails online and corralling armies of bots to spread and amplify news articles on social media that contained material damaging to Clinton’s campaign – some of it false,” the “news” site reports.

Mook alleges the hacking problem is much bigger than the 2016 election, and also involves terrorists.

“Over the last two years, nearly every election on both sides of the Atlantic has been affected by foreign cyber attacks, including Hillary Clinton’s in 2016,” Mook said. “Many foreign countries, and even terrorist organizations, exploit digital technology to advance their agendas and influence public narratives abroad. This project will find practical solutions to help both parties and civic institutions that are critical to our elections better secure themselves and become more resilient to attacks.”

The “Defending Digital Democracy” project will reportedly “help institutions fortify themselves against these attacks by:

• Developing solutions to share important threat information with technology providers, governments, and political organizations;
• Providing election administrators, election infrastructure providers, and campaign organizations with practical “playbooks” to improve their cybersecurity;
• Developing strategies for how the United States and other democracies can credibly deter hostile actors from engaging in cyber and information operations;
• Assessing emerging technologies, such as blockchain, that may improve the integrity of systems and processes vital to elections and democracy;
• Convening civic, technology, and media leaders to develop best practices that can shield our public discourse from adversarial information operations.”