Head of Policy and Research Jessica Brandt details the threats these authoritarian states pose and how the Biden administration should respond. The United States and other liberal democracies are engaged in a persistent, asymmetric competition with [...]
Following the publication of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of foreign interference in the 2020 election, Russian state media last week highlighted predictable backlash and denials from Russian government figures, with a small amount o [...]
Richard Nixon's 1969 Guam doctrine led America's allies in Asia to pursue a variety of strategies based on perceptions of America's reliability. If the Biden administration wants to strengthen the country's alliances moving forward, and avoid repeat [...]
A messaging strategy is only as good as the goal it serves; as Xi Jinping has made clear, China is seeking to make the world safer for its brand of authoritarianism by reshaping the world order. An analysis of messaging from China’s diplomats, state [...]
Ahead of the first face-to-face meeting between the Biden administration and top Chinese officials, experts from GMF’s Alliance for Securing Democracy and its Asia program are available for context and analysis from various angles. Below please find [...]
Prior to President Biden’s address to the nation last Thursday, Russian state media covered speculation and reported concerns about Biden’s lack of press conferences, at times questioning his physical and/or mental health. They also highlighted an i [...]
If democracies are to stand up to Chinese coercion, they will have to join forces, Emerging Technologies Fellow Lindsay Gorman writes in Foreign Policy. This month, China banned imports of Taiwanese pineapples, the latest in a string of punitive t [...]
Great power competition can't be won on interests alone, Co-Director Zack Cooper and Hal Brands argue in Foreign Affairs. On the campaign trail, U.S. President Joe Biden pledged to put values at the heart of his administration’s China policy. Sinc [...]
There are two possible outcomes of U.S.-China competition—but Washington should prepare for the more turbulent one, Co-Director Zack Cooper and Hal Brands argue in Foreign Policy. Competition between the United States and China has begun, but how [...]
China is reshaping the world’s economy. From infrastructure and investment to manufacturing and supply chain dependency, Chinese economic influence is becoming an increasingly important topic for policymakers in North America and Europe. How should [...]
Last week, a prominent theme in Russian messaging around coronavirus vaccines targeted the prospect of Sputnik V’s approval in the EU, with the vaccine’s Twitter account calling for the EU’s European Medicines Agency to review and approve it (the ap [...]
Russia and China, as well as Iran to a certain extent, have used the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to interfere into democratic discourse and to present themselves as internationally responsible actors, while at the same time undermining de [...]
Introduction When Vladimir Putin announced last August that Russia had granted regulatory approval for Sputnik V, the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, it signaled—albeit perhaps prematurely—not only a potential turning point in the fight to end th [...]
Media and Digital Disinformation Fellow Bret Schafer joined Josh Hamilton on The Jist. Bret and Josh first spoke three to discuss the weaponization of information and the threat to democracy. Now, three years later, things have unfortunately not gott [...]
Last week, Russian state media seized on a story involving “leaked” U.K. Foreign Office documents that allegedly revealed the “UK government's covert operations aimed at tarnishing Russia's image.” The outlets used the story to accuse both the U.K. [...]
Nobody has suffered serious legal consequences for actively welcoming—some say aiding and abetting—Russian interference in the 2016 and 2020 elections, or for having asked the presidents of Ukraine and China to similarly interfere. One reason for th [...]
A change in administration in the United States has given a brief reprieve to TikTok and WeChat, two Chinese apps targeted in a series of Executive Orders by former President Trump, but questions about the national security, privacy, and censorship [...]
Summary Recommendation Within the first 100 days of the Biden administration, the U.S. Treasury Department should publish its first-ever National Corruption Risk Assessment about the financial networks of oligarchs and kleptocrats, reviewing case st [...]
China overtook the U.S. as the EU’s main trading partner in 2020. Emerging Technologies Fellow Lindsay Gorman spoke to David Westin about the national security implications of this news, as well as the national security aspects of emerging technolog [...]
Last week, Russian state media and diplomats highlighted various instances of alleged censorship by social media companies—a recurring theme in Russia’s external messaging. State media cited Twitter’s ban of Project Veritas as an example of politica [...]
Program Manager and Fellow Nad'a Kovalčíková spoke on an Atlantic Forum panel on building a transatlantic approach to China, which was made all the more timely by Eurostat's data revealing that China surpassed the United States as the EU's main trad [...]
In last week’s coronavirus vaccine developments, U.K. medical journal The Lancet published the results of a peer-reviewed study that placed Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine’s efficacy at a level comparable to that of leading Western vaccines. Russian stat [...]
For several years, the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) has been monitoring and cataloging instances of authoritarian interference in the transatlantic space. In 2018, ASD launched the Authoritarian Interference Tracker, an online database that [...]
Overview On January 31, 2021, a new immigration route for British National (Overseas) (BNO) passport holders came into force in the United Kingdom. The BNO was a document created for Hong Kong citizens who wanted to maintain ties with the U.K. after [...]
The Russian embassy in Mexico’s Twitter account received uncharacteristically high engagement last week after a January 25 phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during which they discu [...]
On January 28, 2021, Co-Director Zack Cooper testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in a hearing titled "U.S.-China Relations at the Chinese Communist Party's Centennial." Diverging Perspectives on U.S.-China Relatio [...]
Senior Fellow Kristine Berzina moderated this GMF Face Off debate on the question "On 5G, is Germany selling out Europe to China?". She was joined by Reinhard Bütikofer (agree), a member of the European Parliament, Alliance 90/The Greens, and Julia [...]
While the weekend’s protests against the detention of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny upon his return to Russia fell outside of the week monitored, his arrest was accompanied by official statements characterizing Navalny as a criminal, crit [...]
Executive Summary In recent years, U.S. government officials have normalized a damaging notion: that soliciting or participating in foreign interference in a U.S. election will not be prosecuted. Foreign governments from Beijing to Moscow and else [...]
Overview Since the riot at the U.S. capitol on January 6, there has been a clear element of schadenfreude in Iranian, Russian, and Chinese state media coverage of political and social disunion in the United States. That adversarial state media outle [...]
An open position in China is an opportunity to show U.S. diversity. At a critical time in U.S.-China relations, one of the most important roles is vacant. U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad stepped down from his post last October, and, amid th [...]
In response to tech platforms’ more aggressive content moderation in the wake of the capitol riots (including Facebook and Twitter banning President Trump), RT has drilled down on the narrative of censorship, with isolated examples from other Russia [...]
Last week, Russian state media and diplomats continued to champion the Sputnik V vaccine, with the announcement of a deal for Venezuela to buy 10 million doses of the Russian vaccine receiving particular attention. Four of the top ten most-retweeted [...]
In 2020, the role of technology as a playing field in the geopolitical struggle between democracy and authoritarianism was magnified. While some governments like China seized control of their information environments; democracies were disadvantaged [...]
Russian state media and diplomats sought to characterize the attribution of the SolarWinds hack that affected multiple U.S. government agencies and private sectors companies to Russia as part of the tradition of the United States blaming Russia for [...]
The contest with authoritarianism requires the United States to understand its strengths. Upon winning the presidency, Joe Biden promised to lead “not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.” That pledge is important, because [...]
Every December, the Alliance for Securing Democracy team tries to take a step back and look at the foreign interference landscape, and to take stock of where new laws and policies would have the greatest impact at strengthening our institutions from [...]
Head of Policy and Research Jessica Brandt spoke to Vox's Alex Ward about China's information manipulation tactics. China has a new weapon in its global information warfare arsenal: “wolf warriors.” Named after a popular Chinese nationalistic film [...]
The United States Congress passed the William M. Thornberry Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, an annual bill (generally known as the NDAA) that designates funding for the Department of Defense, on a bipartisan basis. Priorities outline [...]
Continuing a pattern seen in recent weeks, Russian state media covered various issues and concerns related to Western coronavirus vaccines and lamented the alleged anti-Russia bias in Western media coverage of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. Meanwhile, [...]