Anticipating and thwarting foreign disinformation efforts outside our borders has been a focal point for our nation’s mission to preserve the global foundations of democracy. National security entities such as the National Security Agency, CIA, and State Department have seen huge success when coordinating to fight disinformation outside the United States, such as recent Russian attempts in Ukraine. The same can’t be said when looking at foreign-backed disinformation within the Homeland.
Across the aisle, most Americans, regardless of their political affiliation, agree on three fundamental principles: the sanctity of freedom of speech, the inviolability of the electoral process, and the importance of safeguarding these freedoms from foreign interference.
Yet, despite a universal desire to protect these liberties, the digital age has ushered in unprecedented threats to the free marketplace of ideas — not due to a single political figure, adversary, or technology, but from collective inaction and ambiguity. Coordination has been absent.
This has left a chasm of opportunity for our foreign adversaries to fill with manipulative content, seeding further division in the Homeland. Our successes abroad highlight the necessity for greater integration at home—the need for a nonpartisan, diverse coalition that serves as the nucleus for tackling foreign malign influence has never been more obvious.
The foreign interference problem
The essence of the problem lies in the covert influence operations by states like China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran. These states have exploited the information environment, creating a scenario where the once-free marketplace of ideas is unduly influenced. Our own work provides examples of this in action, such as Chinese state media spreading Spanish-language disinformation.
The strategic objectives of these adversarial nations are twofold: to exploit existing societal rifts for tactical gain and strategically disillusion citizens about their country’s worth. This exploitation of the cognitive landscape underscores the dire need for a legal and societal response.
Addressing this crisis requires acknowledging three pivotal truths: Americans’ rights to freedom of belief and anonymity, the unique legal restrictions on foreign nationals’ speech directed at American audiences, and the nuanced role of the government in safeguarding these freedoms without infringing on civil liberties.
Concerningly, U.S. inaction, driven by politics and ambiguity about the adversaries’ intentions, has allowed these threats to flourish. Adversarial nations exploit this passivity, manipulating information flow to foment division and distrust.
The role of the Executive Branch
The executive branch plays a key role in addressing the problem, albeit a legally and politically complex one.
The challenge is significant, given the political implications of addressing foreign narratives that may align with domestic viewpoints. Americans indeed have every right to – and should – question how the government is protecting both the First Amendment and their national security.
But this should not paralyze us into inaction. Inaction leaves a vacuum that results in today’s status quo: an information ecosystem that is more ripe for manipulation than ever. This situation is exacerbated when political entities leverage these narratives for partisan advantage, as seen in reactions to Russian interference in U.S. elections.
Importantly, however, the core American principle of trading some liberties for security remains relevant. While the federal government’s involvement in curbing foreign influence might touch on freedoms, defining its proper role is essential. This isn’t about overreach but about fulfilling an obligation to protect the free marketplace of ideas.
A new Coalition to fight foreign interference
The simple fact is that addressing foreign interference in our borders requires a more formal framework—what I call a Coalition—that leverages both governmental and civil efforts and places the trust of the American public at its core.
For this reason, it is imperative that the Government avoid charting a path forward alone. Beyond providing access to existing authorities, funding, scalability, and speed, any Coalition to tackle malign foreign influence should integrate a broad range of entities, all holding different capabilities and worldviews.
For a working relationship to function, existing authorities within the intelligence community must be able to provide timely resources and intelligence to entities such as researchers, media, non-partisan organizations, think tanks, academia, and social media companies. Across all these stakeholders, they will need to adhere to the strongest levels of non-partisanship, transparency, and oversight in order to participate.
For this type of coalition to establish trust, it must avoid acting like an intelligence agency. We tend to treat anything relating to foreign-backed interference as something that should be kept out of the public domain. To have the trust of the American people, secrecy is not an option—they need to be made aware of misconduct by malign foreign actors.
Fortunately, there are precedents for this model. The Center for Internet Security plays a key role in educating public and private organizations on cybersecurity. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism brings together and acts as a forum for governments and social media companies. It’s about time we draw from these organizations and redefine our defense against foreign disinformation.
