This piece originally appeared as a chapter in the Latvian Institute of International Affairs' book Towards #NATO2030: The Regional Perspective of the Baltic States and Poland. Introduction The Baltic region’s geography has been the single most im [...]
On December 10, the Alliance for Securing Democracy hosted a virtual event with Ambassador Eric Edelman, Ambassador Samantha Power, and Dr. Kori Schake on steps the United States can take to regain the initiative in the emerging competition with aut [...]
Ambassador Eric Edelman, Distinguished Practitioner-in-Residence at John Hopkins’ Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies, Co-Chair of ASD’s Offset Strategy for Democracies Task Force Ambassador Samantha Power, Anna Lindh Professor of the Practi [...]
As with previous weeks, Russian state media and official government accounts promoted positive messaging related to Russia’s coronavirus vaccines, while highlighting controversies and problems related to Western vaccines. While some of this content [...]
Overview On November 30, 2020, local time, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information Department Deputy Director General and spokesperson Zhao Lijian tweeted a doctored photo of an Australian Defence Force Special Forces (ADF) soldier slitting [...]
As governments and citizens around the world have struggled with the novel coronavirus, the information space has turned into a battleground. Authoritarian countries, including Russia, China and Iran, have spread disinformation on the causes of and [...]
Co-Director Zack Cooper and Oriana Skylar Mastro write that the Biden administration needs to rethink the entire nature of alliances for an era of heavy-handed economic diplomacy from Beijing. Australia's trials are not the first time Beijing has u [...]
Last week, Russian diplomatic accounts and state media continued to tout Russia’s coronavirus vaccines, including the announcement that Sputnik V “will cost less than its Western rivals.” At the same time, state media highlighted various issues surr [...]
Overview On Sunday, November 15, 15 Asia-Pacific nations signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) via video conference. Comprising China, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, Japan, South Korea, Aust [...]
The Biden administration will need to get both its words and actions right to rebuild trust in the USA in Southeast Asia. What awaits the Biden administration in Southeast Asia? Although the Trump administration trumpeted its efforts in Vietnam, th [...]
DROG interviewed Fellow and Program Manager Nad'a Kovalčíková about China's role in the coronavirus infodemic as part of its crash course on coronavirus disinformation. [...]
As the votes were counted in the 2020 U.S. election, blacklisted China-registered technology company Huawei positioned itself on Twitter as a steadfast vendor in European markets regardless of the election results. The common narrative within these [...]
In last week’s post-U.S. election coverage from Russian state media, two major topics were the pro-Trump demonstrations in DC the weekend of November 14, in which accounts of violence directed at pro-Trump demonstrators and the size of the rally wer [...]
Overview The aftermath of the U.S. presidential election has seen a tidal wave of false and misleading information about the validity of the election results as well as the legitimacy and security of the voting process. Narratives related to ballot [...]
Many of America’s friends in Asia have high expectations for the incoming administration of Joe Biden. Biden has, after all, signalled that the region will be a top priority and promised to “build a united front of US allies and partners to confront [...]
Last week’s U.S. election coverage from Russian state media continued to feature familiar themes, including claims of fraud, criticism of mainstream media coverage of the election, and condemnation of social media platforms for election-related issu [...]
ASD Director Laura Rosenberger and Julie Smith discuss China's malign influence efforts in Europe. The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the author alone. [...]
Introduction Europe is on the cusp of a crucial technological and political transformation. This year, most EU member states will need to finalize plans for building 5G networks, which will overhaul the way their economies function. Only a handful [...]
Last week, Russian state media devoted substantial coverage to the U.S. elections. During election week (prior to the presidential race being called for Biden), the outlets continued to showcase various themes characteristic of their coverage of the [...]
Fact vs. Fake. Truth vs. Lies. Information vs. Disinformation. For voters trying to choose between competing parties and candidates the distinction between them would seem to be central. But is it still possible to tell which is which? In this week’ [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
A Future Internet for Democracies: Contesting China’s Push for Dominance in 5G, 6G, and the Internet of Everything Lindsay Gorman, Fellow for Emerging Technologies at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, discusses China's lead in shaping the future [...]
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 [...]
Executive Summary Democracies and Authoritarian Regimes in Competition for the Future Internet The United States and its democratic allies are engaged in a contest for the soul of the Future Internet. Conceived as a beacon of free expression with [...]
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 [...]
With just days to go before the U.S. presidential election, Americans are once again scrolling through news feeds full of stories about foreign operations that seek to undermine their country’s electoral process. Some of the reports raise questions [...]
The New York Post’s publication of salacious and unverified personal materials from a laptop allegedly owned by Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was covered extensively by Russian state media, which focused both on the “explosive” contents of the story, as [...]
ASD Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph joined Gemma Rogers of Fintrail and Edward Lucas of CEPA to discuss how covert foreign money has undermined the democratic process in North America and Europe in a panel at the Royal United Services Institu [...]
Last week, Russian and Iranian diplomatic and state media accounts and outlets primarily focused on regional issues, while Chinese accounts and outlets concentrated on U.S.-China disputes as well as President Trump’s coronavirus recovery. Russian st [...]
Overview On September 29, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden sparred in the first of three (now two) presidential debates. The event, which was labelled a “debacle” and a “total disaster” by the U.S. news media, unsurprisingl [...]
President Trump’s positive coronavirus diagnosis was covered extensively by the Russian, Iranian, and Chinese networks monitored on Hamilton 2.0, with most of the content covering factual updates or well-wishes from diplomats and world leaders. Russ [...]
Overview On September 18, 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that new restrictions would be placed on WeChat and TikTok, two social media apps owned by Chinese companies, effectively banning the apps from being downloaded from U.S. app [...]
Last week, Russian state media and diplomats continued to emphasize the safety of and demand for the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, as well as developments around a competing Russian vaccine created by the Vektor State Research Center of Virology and Bi [...]
Overview On September 17, 2020, the assistant secretary of European and Eurasian affairs at the State Department told the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs that “Europe has emerged as arguably the central front in the Chinese Communist Party’s eff [...]
Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph discusses how the rise of foreign funding distorts politics in the West, drawing on our recently released paper Covert Foreign Money: Financial Loopholes Exploited by Authoritarians to Fund Political Interferen [...]