On U.S. Election Day, our social media news feeds will likely be filled with stories about how foreign actors have worked to derail the U.S. election process. Some of those stories might be based in fact. Others will be unfounded rumors. Jessica Bra [...]
Americans have heard a lot about threats to the 2020 election. But one of the greatest threats may be a loss of faith in our electoral system itself. The director of the F.B.I., Christopher Wray, told Congress in September that his greatest concern [...]
A Soviet adage suggests Westerners play chess proficiently through the opening and middlegame, only to be overtaken by a surprisingly offensive Soviet endgame. In the days ahead, Russia might stage a come-from-behind endgame attack in the aftermath [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Last week we learned Russia and Iran are interfering in the 2020 presidential election. That's concerning, but hardly surprising. It's a reminder that Americans need to be vigilant as the election approaches. And there are some common-sense actions [...]
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 [...]
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 November 3rd just around the corner, Out of Order is continuing the elections theme this week with a conversation on voting in America—making sense of this patchwork system and how it’s all working in an unprecedented year. The host seat this w [...]
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 [...]
During the second and final presidential debate between incumbent Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, the candidates faced questions about foreign interference in the election. It was an issue four years ago as well. Earlier this week, th [...]
Head of External Affairs Rachael Dean Wilson spoke to Spectrum News after the DNI announced Iran and Russia are attempting to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election. “It’s very easy to get sucked into this trap of which country is trying to support whi [...]
Program Manager and Fellow Nad’a Kovalčíková joined a number of experts in a panel discussion on Russian disinformation during the coronavirus epidemic and beyond. Read an article summary of the event here. [...]
ASD Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph joined Levi Gundert and Jesse Spiro in a panel discussion on the role of cryptocurrency in election interference at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). [...]
Russia has been trying to weaken the United States since the first days of the Cold War. But in that entire span of three-quarters of a century, even with the success of its spies and counter-espionage measures, it has never had a series of successe [...]
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 [...]
Russia’s disinformation tactics, techniques, and procedures are evolving. Stakeholders of all types—journalists, regulators, and researchers—must see the full picture of Russian activity as it is changing to anticipate what might be to come. Intro [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Thursday, October 1, 2020 | 10:00am-11:00am EDT / 4:00pm-5:00pm CEST / 5:00pm-6:00pm EEST Register here. Please join the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the European Centre of Excellence on Hybrid Threats in Helsinki for a virtual, interactive [...]
Josh Rudolph appeared on the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University's The Europe Desk podcast to discuss malign finance in politics. [...]
Russian, Chinese, and Iranian government and state media accounts and outlets covered well-trodden ground last week, with each country returning to familiar topics or themes. For the third straight week, Russian government officials and state media [...]
Clint Watts joined the Wilson Center's Nina Jankowicz to discuss the aims of Russian disinformation in the 2020 Election on MSNBC's Live with Ali Velshi. [...]
As with most major dates in World War II, Russian diplomatic and government accounts last week put out a spate of messaging marking the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and, more significantly, the recently changed date Russia recognizes [...]
Overview On August 9, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko declared a landslide victory in an election widely regarded to be neither free nor fair, sparking widespread protests across the country. Since that time, Russian, Chinese, and Iranian [...]
The major through-line in messaging from Russia, China, and Iran last week was a focus on police brutality, racial justice protests, and violence and unrest in the United States, following a pattern established earlier this year in their respective [...]
ASD Director Laura Rosenberger sat down with Gabrielle Sierra of the Council on Foreign Relations to discuss efforts the United States has taken since 2016 to secure the integrity of our political system on CFR's Why It Matters Podcast. [...]
Major news events covered last week by the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian networks monitored on the Hamilton dashboard included the Democratic National Convention, past and present geopolitical developments in the Middle East, the alleged poisoning o [...]
Iranian, Russian, and Chinese state media and government accounts focused on an array of major developments last week. Iranian accounts continued to cover the aftermath of the Beirut explosion—including continued accusations of U.S. and Israeli invo [...]
Overview On August 11, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia had approved the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, which it dubbed Sputnik V in reference to the Soviet Union’s famous orbital satellite—the world’s first in 1957. [...]
Heavy coverage of the explosion in Beirut was substantial enough to break through the coronavirus news cycle, reflected in the fact that #Beirut was the third most-used hashtag by Russian, Iranian, and Chinese state media and government accounts las [...]
Overview President Trump’s executive order last week outlining plans to effectively ban Chinese short-form video app TikTok from the U.S. market triggered a predictable backlash from China’s state media and government officials, who accused the U.S. [...]
Summary As the coronavirus pandemic has spread around the world, authoritarian actors have engaged in robust information-manipulation campaigns. China—where the virus originated and spread due to the government’s initial cover up and mismanagement [...]
This article was originally published as a GMF Transatlantic Take on July 31, 2020. After the United Kingdom’s parliament released its recent report on Russian interference in British democracy, front-page headlines howled that it damns the governme [...]
This article was originally published as a GMF Transatlantic Take on July 23, 2020. With mounting evidence that Russia regularly interferes in British democracy while the U.K. government “actively avoids” investigating, the country needs a proven pl [...]