In-depth, detailed assessments of the trends and issues shaping transatlantic debates.
In mid-2020, the Alliance for Securing Democracy convened a task force of 30 leading American national security and foreign policy experts to devise a national strategy for the United States to offset autocratic advances in non-military domains of [...]
Executive Summary Democracies and Authoritarian Regimes in Competition for the Future Internet The United States and its democratic allies are engaged in a contest for the soul of the Future Internet. Conceived as a beacon of free expression with [...]
Russia’s disinformation tactics, techniques, and procedures are evolving. Stakeholders of all types—journalists, regulators, and researchers—must see the full picture of Russian activity as it is changing to anticipate what might be to come. Intro [...]
Executive Summary The United States, like many other democracies, faces concerted and sophisticated operations aimed at disrupting, delegitimizing, and in some cases altering the outcomes of its elections. While foreign interference operations are [...]
ASD’s Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems’ Director for Europe and Eurasia Beata Martin-Rozumilowicz provide a guide to help election officials in the United States and Europe conduct secur [...]
This policy paper was co-authored with Edgar P. Tam, visiting senior fellow at the Paris Office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Please click the link at the right to view the full paper. President Donald Trump’s views on Iran hav [...]
Introduction According to a 2013 indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice, hackers backed by a foreign power gained access to the controls of the Bowman Avenue Dam, a small dam in the New York City suburb of Rye, New York. Cyberattacks on inf [...]
Executive Summary In addition to more widely studied tools like cyberattacks and disinformation, authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China have spent more than $300 million interfering in democratic processes more than 100 times spanning 33 [...]
Summary As the coronavirus pandemic has spread around the world, authoritarian actors have engaged in robust information-manipulation campaigns. China—where the virus originated and spread due to the government’s initial cover up and mismanagement [...]
Introduction One morning in 2016, staffers from the National Security Council and the Office of the U.S. Chief Technology Officer boarded a black van outside the West Wing. They were on a field trip to the State Department led by U.S. CTO Megan Sm [...]
ASD Research Assistant Etienne Soula and GMF Asia researchers Franziska Luettge, Melissa Ladner, and Manisha Reuter find that from March to April 2020, the Chinese Communist Party and large Chinese companies made at least 70 prominent donations to [...]
Introduction In a 1972 paper for the United States Air Force Project at RAND, the late Andrew Marshall defined what he called a more “efficient, effective U.S. competitive role.”A.W. Marshall, Long-Term Competition with the Soviets: A Framework fo [...]
ASD Emerging Technologies Fellow Lindsay Gorman, Harvard's Hugo Yen, and Virginia Tech's David Simpson provide a brief overview of 5G technology and related policy considerations for Harvard Belfer Center's Technology Factsheet Series. Introducti [...]
Introduction Authoritarian governments increasingly adopt technology-centric national strategies and methods of internal governance. They control their societies through digital censorship, propaganda, and surveillance, and use these same tools to [...]
ASD’s Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine and the Bipartisan Policy Center's Director of the Election Project Matthew Weil identify 20 ways states could further protect the 2020 presidential election with additional funding. Introduction At t [...]
ASD Program Manager and Fellow Nad'a Kovalcikova and RAND Corporation Policy Analyst Gabrielle Tarini argue that NATO needs to develop a comprehensive political, economic, and security strategy to deal with China’s growing global power in a Women i [...]
ASD’s Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine joined with experts from the Brennan Center, Pitt Cyber, and R Street to produce a new report that provides an in-depth look at the equipment, staffing, supplies, and other costs of administering electi [...]
Introduction “For our friends, we produce fine wine. Jackals, we welcome with shotguns.” - Ambassador Gui Congyou, 2019Edward Lucas. “Sweden’s China Problem.” CEPA, January 7, 2020. This was how a Chinese ambassador warned Sweden of potential con [...]
Introduction Europe has been at the forefront of confronting asymmetric attacks from foreign adversaries. Disinformation campaigns have been used against the European public since the Soviet era, and with the advent of social media platforms, they [...]
Protecting the 2020 Election Intelligence and law enforcement agencies warn that Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign actors will seek to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. De [...]
In a world increasingly interconnected by technology, democratic governments are grappling with how to defend against and counter information operations targeting their societies. Russia has emerged as the most prolific foreign actor engaging in t [...]
How to Interpret Hamilton 2.0 Hamilton 2.0 displays outputs from sources that we can directly attribute to the Russian, Chinese, or Iranian governments or their various news and information channels. These channels and accounts often engage with t [...]
About the Author Nina Jankowicz is a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Kennan Institute, where she studies Russian disinformation and the democratic challenges of the technology age. Her first book, How to Lose [...]
This article was originally published as a German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Take on July 26, 2019. In 2014 the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) revealed a staggering Russian money-laundering operation perpetrated through [...]
In his testimony this week, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller III reiterated that foreign interference is “among the most serious” challenges to democracy, and that it “deserves the attention of every American.” The Alliance for Securing Democr [...]
On July 18th, 2019, ASD Deputy Director David Salvo and Head of External Affairs Rachael Dean Wilson released this report together with the Brennan Center for Justice, the University of Pittsburgh Center for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security, and the [...]
The following is an introduction to the submission by ASD Intern Amber Frankland In April 2019, the United Kingdom’s Home Office published its Online Harms White Paper, which proposed a regulatory framework designed to address the prevalence of “il [...]
Executive Summary In recent years, European democracy has been shaken by internal and external events. European nations and institutions are confronting numerous challenges like migration, nationalist extremism, and discontent with the political s [...]
Clint Watts Distinguished Research Fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute Non-Resident Fellow, Alliance For Securing Democracy, German Marshall Fund of the United States Author, Messing With The Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hacker [...]
International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy, and Democracy May 27, 2019, Ottawa, Canada Remarks by Dr. Heidi Tworek, Assistant Professor of International History at the University of British Columbia, Visiting Fellow at the Joint Center for [...]
Statement by Laura Rosenberger, Director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States BEFORE THE UNITED STATES HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS Concerning: “Undermining Democracy: Kreml [...]
The Energy Weapon is second in a six part series on Illicit Influence, published by the Alliance for Securing Democracy and C4ADS. The first part, A Case Study of the First Czech Russian Bank, can be found here. Russia has a long his [...]
Russian interference operations against the United States during the 2016 presidential election were vast and complex. That’s the conclusion drawn by Special Counsel Mueller, as well as by the Department of Justice, the Intelligence Community, and [...]
Awareness of who owns what is critical to national security, and the U.S. government knows far less than you think. Even after Congress outlaws completely anonymous companies, it will still be difficult for the government to understand patterns of [...]
Understanding the rise of illiberal populism has been a focus of recent debate on both sides of the Atlantic. This “illiberal international” has many faces, often seemingly at odds: Donald Trump and Jill Stein in the United States, Marine Le Pen an [...]
Later this year, Canada faces its first federal elections since potential foreign interference became one of the main concerns for democratic elections in the 21st century. After extensive discussions and consultations, the government has taken sign [...]
Statement of JOSHUA KIRSCHENBAUM Alliance for Securing Democracy, the German Marshall Fund of the United States BEFORE THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL CRIMES, TAX EVASION AND TAX AVOIDANCE Concerning “Money laundering cases involving Russian ind [...]
Introduction In the spring of 2016, as the Russian-domiciled First Czech Russian Bank (FCRB) approached insolvency, staff worked feverishly to erase ledgers, destroy documents, and conceal evidence of the bank’s activity over the previous 9 years. [...]
Executive Summary Two years after the Russian government manipulated social media to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, online information platforms continue to serve as mediums for such operations, including the 2018 midterm electi [...]