Securing Democracy Dispatch

Russian diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week:

• Nuclear Threat: Russian state media escalated its nuclear warmongering, following several public statements from government officials and national security experts. In his keynote speech at the Valdai Discussion Club meeting, Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized that there was no guarantee that the West would not employ nuclear weapons, a phrase repeated by many news outlets. Meanwhile, Sputnik Ossetia renewed allegations that Ukraine is capable of creating a dirty bomb with plutonium from its nuclear power plants, while TASS news agency quoted the Secretary of the Security Council Sergei Shoigu who accused Ukraine of nuclear terrorism. State media outlet NTV also quoted a Russian political scientist who stated that Russia “will have no choice but to destroy its neighbor” if Ukraine develops a nuclear weapon.
• Alleged Cooperation between Ukraine and Syria: RT seeded allegations that Ukraine, in coordination with the United States, is training “terrorists” in Syria to deploy them against Russian troops. RT journalist Roman Kosarev claimed that he had “undeniable evidence” that at least 250 Ukrainian instructors had arrived in Idlib province to train militants from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni Islamist political and armed organization fighting against the Syrian government. According to an unidentified man, purportedly a Syrian military official, these militants are training to attack Syrian troops based in Hama and Russian forces at the Syrian airbase in Khmeimim. The report, which was also shared by RT en Español, alleged that the Ukrainians are supplying Syrian militants with FPV kamikaze drones, disguised as humanitarian aid on cargo ships. 

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week: 

• Positive US Election Commentary: PRC diplomats such as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Hua Chunying, the PRC embassy in the United States, and the PRC Mission to the United Nations, as well as state media outlets like CGTN Europe, the People’s Daily, and China News sought to project positivity following US President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory. The PRC’s Consul General in Belfast, Ireland shared a video of Trump’s granddaughter singing a Chinese song, while CGTN host Liu Xin explained that US voters voted for change and that offered hope for “a fresh start [in US-PRC relations]”.
• Negative US Election Commentary: The spokesperson for the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned against tariffs on Thursday, Friday, and Monday while the PRC ambassador to Colombia shared an article explaining that such measures would harm US consumers. China Daily quoted a French official saying that Trump’s election “increases the risks for the global economy” and warned that it was “set to create some ripples on (…) the wider Asia-Pacific region”. Some state media accounts also commented on the nominations announced by the president-elect. CGTN Español and the head of China Daily in Europe, Chen Weihua, praised the exclusion of Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley from the upcoming administration, while CGTN America and Pakistan-based diplomat Zhang Heqing criticized the appointments of Marco Rubio and Elise Stefanik.

Trump’s victory fuels baseless claims about election fraud on political fringes: President-elect Donald Trump’s victory last week fueled baseless claims about election fraud that center on the difference in vote tallies between 2020 and 2024, including false claims emerging from the left that Vice President Kamala Harris is “missing” millions of votes and that Elon Musk facilitated voter fraud using Starlink, and even some allegations from the right that this year’s outcome is evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Co-Managing Director Rachael Dean Wilson told the Dispatch, “It’s always encouraging to know that individuals on the far left and far right can look at the same election data and come away with opposite and incorrect conclusions. The good news here is that, unlike in 2020, no major US party leaders are promoting the false idea of a ‘rigged’ election. In fact, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a statement that made clear these elections were secure and that there was no malicious activity that had a material impact on their integrity.”

DOJ charges Iranian asset tasked with assassinating Trump: The US Department of Justice (DOJ) charged an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps asset tasked with directing the assassination of US President-elect Donald Trump and an Iranian-American journalist; two associates in the New York City area were also charged. Co-Managing Director David Salvo said, “If there are still skeptics about foreign interference representing a national security threat to the United States, I encourage them to read the DOJ charges in this case. The plot to assassinate President-elect Trump was a brazen attempt to interfere in the presidential election, while the plot to kill an Iranian-American journalist critical of the Iranian regime is a clear case of transnational repression and subversion of American civil society. Fortunately, intelligence and law enforcement agencies have made disrupting such activity by foreign nation-state actors a priority. In light of Iran’s malign activity over the past year, I’m hopeful that the Trump administration will prioritize combating foreign interference by all nation states, and particularly by Iran, Russia, and the PRC.”

In Case You Missed It

• ChatGPT blocked more than 250,000 requests to create images generated by artificial intelligence (AI) of Trump, Harris, President Biden, and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz in the month before Election Day, according to OpenAI.
• The FBI is offering up to $25,000 for information about a suspect accused of setting fire to three ballot boxes in Washington and Oregon during early voting for the US election.
• US agencies confirmed that PRC-linked hackers infiltrated telecommunications networks to steal politicians’ call records and intercept private communications in a major espionage operation.
• The US Department of Homeland Security will publish new guidance on how companies operating critical infrastructure should use AI.
• Germany’s interior minister warned of potential Russian cyber and information manipulation threats ahead of the country’s snap election next February.

Disinformation from adversaries and Americans swamped 2024 election. Co-Managing Director David Salvo quoted in The Hill

Vassilis Ntousas, analista: “Es mucho más probable que Europa tenga que enfrentarse a unos Estados Unidos más egoístas en los próximos cuatro años” (Vassilis Ntousas, analyst: “It is much more likely that Europe will have to face a more selfish United States in the next four years”). Senior Manager for Europe and Fellow Vassilis Ntousas quoted in La Tercera

Look Inside the Open Source ‘Information Laundromat’ Tool for Examining Website Content and Metadata. “Information Laundromat” highlighted in Global Investigative Journalism Network

“What’s really changed with China, we’ve seen, is pre-positioning in pipelines, in water systems, in power systems which don’t have intelligence value. And our concern is that pre-positioning is to disrupt, to make it difficult to operate those systems in a time of crisis or conflict.”

—US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger, during a talk at Columbia University on November 13.

The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the author alone.