Authoritarian regimes and their proxies use social media, other online information platforms, and traditional media to attempt to shape global and domestic narratives; to sow chaos and confusion in democracies; and to undermine democratic processes. Find ASD’s work on the many ways malign actors manipulate information to interfere in democracies, including by spreading disinformation, on this page.
Information Manipulation
Thinning the ICE: Russian and Chinese Messaging on the Los Angeles Protests
Hamilton Toplines: October 24-30, 2020
In the last full week of coverage prior to Election Day, Russian state media continued to advance several familiar themes, including promotion of Hunter Biden allegations, claims of media bias, criticism of the two-party system, and claims of improp [...]
Jessica Brandt Discusses Foreign Attempts to Sow Doubt in U.S. Vote Tally
On U.S. Election Day, our social media news feeds will likely be filled with stories about how foreign actors have worked to derail the U.S. election process. Some of those stories might be based in fact. Others will be unfounded rumors. Jessica Bra [...]
Laura Rosenberger in The New York Times: 7 Ways That You Can Save Our Democracy
Americans have heard a lot about threats to the 2020 election. But one of the greatest threats may be a loss of faith in our electoral system itself. The director of the F.B.I., Christopher Wray, told Congress in September that his greatest concern [...]
Laura Rosenberger Discusses Foreign Interventions in U.S. Campaigns on ‘The Lawfare Podcast’
Director Laura Rosenberger has been working on combating foreign interference in U.S. domestic politics since 2016, and she is the author of two recent significant articles—one in Foreign Affairs and one on Lawfare—both on the subject of foreign inf [...]
Linking Values and Strategy: How Democracies Can Offset Autocratic Advances
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 [...]
Zack Cooper in Real Clear World: How to Respond to China’s Information Warfare
Co-Director Zack Cooper and AEI Researcher Aine Tyrrell argue that reciprocity plays into the Chinese Communist Party’s hands in three key ways. Last week, the State Department designated six media entities operating in the United States as foreign [...]
Bret Schafer Discusses Online Election Disinformation on WLVT
Media and Digital Disinformation Fellow Bret Schafer spoke to WLVT's about disinformation on social media ahead of the 2020 election. Last month, the FBI posted a warning on its website, stating that cybercriminals and foreign actors will use soci [...]
Jessica Brandt and Bret Schafer for Brookings: How China’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ Diplomats Use and Abuse Twitter
A little more than a year ago, China had almost no diplomatic presence on Twitter. A handful of accounts, many representing far-flung diplomatic outposts, operated without apparent coordination or direction from Beijing. Today, the work of Chinese d [...]
Clint Watts Discusses Foreign Interference in 2020 Election on ‘Intelligence Matters’
In this episode of Intelligence Matters, host Michael Morell interviews former FBI Special Agent Clint Watts, current Distinguished Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Non-Resident Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democra [...]
Hamilton Toplines: October 17-23, 2020
The final U.S. presidential debate provided significant fodder for Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state media to criticize the current state of U.S. democracy. Russian state media provided the most extensive coverage of the debate, with the majority [...]
Bret Schafer Discusses Foreign Disinformation Efforts Ahead of the Election on Florida’s WPTV
Media and Digital Disinformation Fellow Bret Schafer spoke to WPTV about malign foreign actors' attempts to use local news outlets to spread disinformation ahead of elections. Schafer told Contact 5 one technique foreign actors use is to tag legit [...]
Laura Rosenberger and Lindsay Gorman in Lawfare: Foreign Interference is a Strategy, Not a Tactic
Geopolitics over the next several decades will be defined by competition between democracies and autocracies. This contest is already playing out across the military, economic and diplomatic domains—and in the information arena as well. As former Pr [...]