Italy has long been a prime target for Russian interference efforts. From cultivating malign financial ties and relationships with political elites to executing covert information operations, Russia has consistently sought to increase its influence [...]
2024 is a year of critical elections around the world. This holds especially true in Europe, where, in June alone, the European Parliament elections, British snap elections, and surprise French parliamentary elections all took place in quick success [...]
Introduction In the days after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a torrent of false and misleading information about the attack flooded social media. While the majority of these claims see [...]
Senior Fellow Bret Schafer spoke to CBS News about how Russian propaganda works and how Europeans and Americans can help stem its tide. watch here The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the author alone. [...]
Senior Fellow Bret Schafer joined Special Report with Bret Baier on Fox News to discuss the significance of a recently dismantled Russian influence network on X. watch here The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of [...]
Peter Benzoni, an investigative data and research analyst on the information manipulation team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) presented the Information Laundromat. Using this tool, researchers examined content laundering practices acro [...]
ASD at GMF and the Cyber Collective are excited to announce our partnership to strengthen global cybersecurity and protect democracy. This collaboration is designed to bring research-backed, expert-verified information to the top of the algorithms o [...]
“This is really the tip of the Russian propaganda iceberg,” said Bret Schafer, a co-author of the report and a senior fellow at German Marshall Fund. “It was quite evident when we were running the search results in the E.U. that if Russian propagand [...]
New Information Laundromat tool used to analyze how RT.com skirts sanctions and platform bans Washington, D.C. – The Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (ASD at GMF), the University of Amsterdam (U [...]
Executive Summary Over the past year, ASD at GMF, the University of Amsterdam (UvA), and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) have collaborated to develop the Information Laundromat, an open-source tool to uncover content and metadata simila [...]
Despite a lower profile in the national debate, the tools, tactics, motivations, and actors associated with foreign interference in US elections have evolved significantly since Russia’s “sweeping and systematic” 2016 operation. The Cybersecurity an [...]
Co-Managing Director David Salvo joined the Center for a New American Security's Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Jim Townsend, alongside the International Republican Institute's Brady Hills, for an episode of the Brussels Sprouts podcast to discuss Russia [...]
More than half the world’s population will head to the polls this year in the largest display of democracy in human history. This series of elections is also the first to unfold in an era in which advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) [...]
Researchers from two European universities with support from ASD have uncovered evidence that a small network of Polish news blogs—Lega Artis, News na Dziś, and Daily Blitz—may serve as pathways for Russian state media and pro-Kremlin media to reach [...]
“Look up SMARTMATIC and tweet me what you think?” tweeted Rudy Guiliani, then-US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, in the weeks after the 2020 US presidential election. It was part of a broader campaign to delegitimize the election by castin [...]
Tuesday, February 27, 2024 10:00 - 11:00am ET 1600 - 1700 CET In the two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Russia’s and the People’s Republic of China’s use of disinformation has increased along with Moscow and Beijin [...]
While the news cycle is still abuzz with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin, flying under the radar are new details about Russian intelligence’s role in cultivating ties with political parties in Euro [...]
WASHINGTON D.C. – The Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States released “The ASD AI Election Security Handbook” as a resource for elections officials responding to unprecedented threats to election security su [...]
Introduction In January 2012, the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s state-owned broadcaster CCTV opened an African branch headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. Shortly thereafter, CCTV Africa—later rebranded as CGTN Africa—began publis [...]
The recent Taiwanese elections provide important insights into the tools and tactics the People’s Republic of China (PRC) might use when election results matter to its leadership. Similarly, Taiwanese authorities’ vigilance and responsiveness to Bei [...]
As we step into 2024, an unprecedented four billion people globally are gearing up to participate in what is set to be the largest election year in history. At the forefront of this democratic marathon is Taiwan, whose January elections not only ina [...]
Since coming to power in 2015, Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party has eroded media freedom and pluralism, taking over public media and hindering independent outlets. While PiS’s control of the information environment via television, radio, and pri [...]
In the days leading up to Slovakia’s highly contested parliamentary election, deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence spread across social media. In one posted by the far-right Republika party, Progressive Slovakia leader Michal Šimečka appa [...]
Investigative Data and Research Analyst Peter Benzoni presented ASD's findings about Russian propaganda bypassing content bans and posing as local news sources at Politifact's 2023 United Facts of America. watch here The views expressed in GMF p [...]
The intensification of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza since the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks has forced liberal democracies to carefully craft a message that balances their support for Israel with growing domestic criticism over civilian casualti [...]
The Community Notes feature was supposed to shut down conspiracy theories on X, formerly Twitter. Instead Elon Musk's preference for crowdsourced moderation is allowing malicious users to weaponize hatred, lies and disinformation about the October 7 [...]
Since 2019, the Alliance for Securing Democracy at GMF has operated the Hamilton 2.0 dashboard, an online tool to track messaging originating from Chinese, Iranian, and Russian state media and government officials. In its time, the dashboard collect [...]
Introduction As the de facto gateway to the vast troves of information available online, search services play a critical role in the modern information ecosystem. They are often the starting points for people’s questions about the world around the [...]
Introduction In recent years, political podcasting has boomed in the United States, with new series emerging across the political spectrum. Due to the medium’s decentralized nature, it is difficult to grasp the total audience for these shows, but [...]
Meta’s recent report on the company’s takedown of a Chinese government information campaign that was the “largest cross-platform operation” ever, and of several smaller influence campaigns that originated in Turkey, Iran, and Russia, named hundreds [...]
Over the course of the war in Ukraine, a loose network of Russian military bloggers on Telegram have provided a fervently nationalistic, though at times highly critical, view of Russia’s “special military operation”. Providing more unfiltered covera [...]
Meta’s Twitter-alternative, Threads, became the fastest app to reach 100 million users. It took five days. The app itself only took seven months to build, a remarkably short start-to-launch period that did not allow the few dozen engineers working o [...]
In this episode of "Disinformation," ASD's Bret Schafer and Peter Benzoni discuss ASD's tools and the rise of disinformation online. [...]
Lindsay Gorman, a technology expert at the German Marshall Fund, discusses on "Face the Nation" how to differentiate AI-generated images online from real ones. "Context is a really important piece of this," she noted. [...]
Overview In the early hours of June 6, an explosion collapsed the Kakhovka dam, releasing a torrent of water across the Ukrainian countryside and igniting a blame game across social media. Evidence collected by the New York Times indicates that Russ [...]
Russian officials and diplomats have been coordinating an unusually organized and large-scale disinformation campaign to discredit reports that the nation is responsible for the June 6 collapse of the Nova Kakhovka Dam, according to a new study. Disi [...]
Elections in Turkey had high turn-out, meaningful results, and little violence, but that doesn’t mean they were free from autocratic manipulation on the part of the regime. On Sunday, Turkish voters went to the polls in a mostly free but highly unf [...]
In Erdoğan’s Turkey, anti-government trolls get arrested, while pro-government trolls get paychecks. Social media has become a major source of information for Turkish people, thanks in large part to the Turkish government’s strict control of tradit [...]
Below is an unedited transcript of the proceedings provided by the Australian Parliament. Read the full transcript here. GORMAN, Ms Lindsay, Senior Fellow for Emerging Technologies and Head, Technology and Geopolitics Team, Alliance for Securing De [...]
Overview On April 13, the FBI arrested Jack Teixeira for his alleged involvement in leaking hundreds of classified documents. Teixeira, a member of the Air National Guard, reportedly shared the US intelligence assessments with his friends over the c [...]