Director Laura Rosenberger joined the Henry Jackson Society for a webinar discussion entitled “When the World Wasn’t Looking: How Authoritarian States Have Taken Advantage of the COVID-19 Crisis.”
“Covid-19 has left a trail of destruction everywhere in its wake, but one of its most pernicious impacts is likely to be in the advances made by authoritarian states—and putative authoritarians—against their own populations but also against the free world.
“Human rights violations and suppressions of dissent that would normally spark global outrage have gone largely unnoticed given the understandable pre-occupation of governments with pandemic mitigation. Meanwhile, the free world has faced a torrent of fake news and disinformation originating from authoritarian countries keen to take advantage of the confusion that Covid-19 has engendered.”
