ASD Director Laura Rosenberger published a blog post on Power 3.0, which explores how authoritarian governments survive and thrive in a globalized information age, and the ways that democracies are contending with this challenge.
There is little debate today that authoritarian powers are using asymmetric tools to weaken democratic institutions in other countries. Extensive work has documented and exposed Russia’s efforts to interfere in and undermine democracies across the trans-Atlantic space, and the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to subvert democracy and covertly influence debate in the Asia-Pacific, and, increasingly, other regions. These operations employ a combination of tactics, including information operations, cyberattacks, malign financial influence, strategic economic coercion, and subversion of civil society.
But democracies have been slow to acknowledge this threat—and even slower to devise effective solutions. Several factors complicate democracies’ efforts to mount effective responses to interference operations.