Short-form insights and rapid-reaction analysis of breaking news and global events.
On December 17, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a statement warning that a sophisticated and ongoing cyber breach posed a “grave risk” to government, critical infrastructure, and private sector organizations. Off [...]
Every December, the Alliance for Securing Democracy team tries to take a step back and look at the foreign interference landscape, and to take stock of where new laws and policies would have the greatest impact at strengthening our institutions from [...]
The United States Congress passed the William M. Thornberry Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, an annual bill (generally known as the NDAA) that designates funding for the Department of Defense, on a bipartisan basis. Priorities outline [...]
On December 10, the Alliance for Securing Democracy hosted a virtual event with Ambassador Eric Edelman, Ambassador Samantha Power, and Dr. Kori Schake on steps the United States can take to regain the initiative in the emerging competition with aut [...]
Thursday, December 10, 2020 | 10:30-11:30 a.m. EST / 4:30-5:30 p.m. CET Register for the event here. Opening Remarks Ambassador Eric Edelman, Distinguished Practitioner-in-Residence at John Hopkins’ Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies, Co-C [...]
Overview On November 30, 2020, local time, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information Department Deputy Director General and spokesperson Zhao Lijian tweeted a doctored photo of an Australian Defence Force Special Forces (ADF) soldier slitting [...]
Overview On Sunday, November 15, 15 Asia-Pacific nations signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) via video conference. Comprising China, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, Japan, South Korea, Aust [...]
As the votes were counted in the 2020 U.S. election, blacklisted China-registered technology company Huawei positioned itself on Twitter as a steadfast vendor in European markets regardless of the election results. The common narrative within these [...]
Overview The aftermath of the U.S. presidential election has seen a tidal wave of false and misleading information about the validity of the election results as well as the legitimacy and security of the voting process. Narratives related to ballot [...]
ASD Director Laura Rosenberger and Julie Smith discuss China's malign influence efforts in Europe. The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the author alone. [...]
Local and state election officials are the backbone of the election process and should be the first source voters turn to for information. As they work to certify the official results, here are three things to know: Election officials are on the fro [...]
As an election official, you’ve likely spent the past four years upgrading systems, patching vulnerabilities, and implementing new security features and procedures to safeguard the 2020 elections. But now, with tens of millions of ballots already ca [...]
A Future Internet for Democracies: Contesting China’s Push for Dominance in 5G, 6G, and the Internet of Everything Lindsay Gorman, Fellow for Emerging Technologies at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, discusses China's lead in shaping the future [...]
Overview On September 29, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden sparred in the first of three (now two) presidential debates. The event, which was labelled a “debacle” and a “total disaster” by the U.S. news media, unsurprisingl [...]
Overview On September 18, 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that new restrictions would be placed on WeChat and TikTok, two social media apps owned by Chinese companies, effectively banning the apps from being downloaded from U.S. app [...]
Thursday, October 1, 2020 | 10:00am-11:00am EDT / 4:00pm-5:00pm CEST / 5:00pm-6:00pm EEST Register here. Please join the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the European Centre of Excellence on Hybrid Threats in Helsinki for a virtual, interactive [...]
Attentive moviegoers who went to see Disney’s reimagined Mulan last week made an unpleasant discovery during the end credits, namely that the corporation thanked several government entities in Xinjiang, home to the Uighur minority that the Chinese g [...]
On Thursday, August 6, the Trump administration announced two executive orders that would bar any transactions with Chinese social media networks TikTok and WeChat by any person or involving any property in subject to the jurisdiction of the United [...]
ASD Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph gives readers a short introduction to his recently released paper Covert Foreign Money: Financial Loopholes Exploited by Authoritarians to Fund Political Interference in Democracies, co-authored with Resear [...]
Overview On August 11, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia had approved the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, which it dubbed Sputnik V in reference to the Soviet Union’s famous orbital satellite—the world’s first in 1957. [...]
In August 2020, ASD joined the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and its other supporting partners on #TrustedInfo2020, an education effort dedicated both to promoting election officials as the trusted sources of election informati [...]
Overview President Trump’s executive order last week outlining plans to effectively ban Chinese short-form video app TikTok from the U.S. market triggered a predictable backlash from China’s state media and government officials, who accused the U.S. [...]
This article was originally published as a GMF Transatlantic Take on July 31, 2020. After the United Kingdom’s parliament released its recent report on Russian interference in British democracy, front-page headlines howled that it damns the governme [...]
In May, just days before the Polish presidential election was scheduled, the coronavirus pandemic and a government-ordered lockdown threw preparations for the election into disarray. The conservative ruling party and its opponents could not agree on [...]
This article was originally published as a GMF Transatlantic Take on July 23, 2020. With mounting evidence that Russia regularly interferes in British democracy while the U.K. government “actively avoids” investigating, the country needs a proven pl [...]
The Trump administration has rhetorically embraced great power competition with the Chinese Communist Party, but last week it took a big step in the wrong direction by gutting the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) in what is being called the “Wed [...]
The Alliance for Securing Democracy’s Authoritarian Interference Tracker maps and catalogs over 400 instances of Russian state-sponsored efforts to undermine democracy in over 40 countries. The Tracker documents five tools authoritarian regimes use [...]
On Tuesday, June 2, 2020, eight states and the District of Columbia held primary elections—the largest number of states to hold elections since the coronavirus pandemic necessitated changes to some states’ planned primaries and voting procedures. In [...]
In November 2019, ASD partnered with Microsoft to launch the Community for Countering Election Interference, a multi-stakeholder forum dedicated both to raising global awareness of the threat cyberattacks pose to elections and other democratic insti [...]
When Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian began tweeting about the origins of the coronavirus in March, it marked a significant turning point in China’s social media disinformation operations. While China has long deployed widespread ce [...]
State and local leaders, in partnership with social media platforms, must prepare the information space for the onslaught of disinformation that epidemic-necessitated changes to the election process could generate. New York democrats may not be cast [...]
Since February of this year, as the coronavirus pandemic has swept the globe, China has been engaging in what media commentators are calling “mask diplomacy”—the sale or donation of medical supplies to countries battling the terrible disease. Russia [...]
On April 15, the French ministry of foreign affairs summoned the Chinese ambassador in Paris. After weeks of incendiary rhetoric from the Chinese delegation, French authorities were incensed by an article on the embassy’s website falsely claiming th [...]
The most recent coronavirus stimulus package signed into law includes $400 million in funds to support state and local government efforts to prevent the coronavirus from impacting the elections process. While more funding will be needed to address t [...]
Over the past three weeks, American and Chinese officials have employed escalating rhetoric in efforts to blame one another for the global coronavirus pandemic. High-ranking U.S. administration officials frequently and pointedly referred to the viru [...]
The coronavirus outbreak has opened up a new chapter in the global information contest between autocrats and democrats. In recent weeks, China has employed increasingly assertive tactics in its efforts to shape perceptions of the crisis. Data collec [...]
The global coronavirus pandemic has also spawned an epidemic of online disinformation, ranging from false home remedies to state-sponsored influence campaigns. In the confusing environment, false medical theories have even found accidental legitimiz [...]
As COVID-19 has spread around the world, the Chinese party-state’s international propaganda apparatus has swung into action. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda outlets are using declining numbers of COVID-19 sufferers inside China to por [...]
Beginning in late January, when news emerged of a “novel coronavirus” spreading through China, Beijing’s propaganda apparatus shifted into overdrive. The epidemic has also been heavily covered in externally-directed Russian state-backed media outlet [...]
Walking around China, the ubiquity of German cars on Chinese streets is astounding. Audi and Mercedes are everywhere in affluent cities; Volkswagens take their place in smaller municipalities. This anecdotal observation is reflected in the spectacul [...]