ASD contributes long and short form research products and analysis to inform and engage our audience on a range of issues related to malign foreign interference. In addition, we develop policy recommendations and strategies to close vulnerabilities and safeguard institutions from authoritarian threats.
Hamilton Analysis: The Vaccine Race: Russia’s Coverage of the Sputnik V Announcement
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. [...]
Covert Foreign Money: Financial Loopholes Exploited by Authoritarians to Fund Political Interference in Democracies
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 c [...]
#TrustedInfo2020: What U.S. Voters Can Do to Get Accurate Election Information
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 [...]
Securing Democracy Dispatch
Our Take In a joint report with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Media and Digital Disinformation Fellow Bret Schafer finds numerous similarities in the behavior, narratives, and specific messages promoted by a network of hundreds of thousands [...]
Hamilton Analysis: How Russia and China Covered the TikTok Ban
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. [...]
Securing Democracy Dispatch
Our Take The United States is capable of conducting safe, secure, and auditable elections in November, especially if states receive additional funding from Congress, Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine explained in his testimony to the House Ho [...]
Five Authoritarian Pandemic Messaging Frames and How to Respond
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 [...]
Congress Should Follow the Money Like the British Parliament
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 [...]
Securing Democracy Dispatch
Our Take As countries rush to change their electoral systems to account for the coronavirus pandemic, challenges to Poland’s recent elections provide some lessons for others, Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine, Fellow and Program Manager Nad’a [...]
The Challenges Poland Faced in Securing its Presidential Elections During Coronavirus
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 [...]
Defend Democracy the Australian Way
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 [...]
Looking Back to Go Forward: Strategic Mismanagement of Platform Technologies and the Race for the Future
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 [...]