The Covert War for American Minds

Excerpt

In September 2024, the U.S. Justice Department charged two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, in connection with the transfer of $10 million to a Tennessee-based media startup. U.S. officials accused these individuals of money laundering and failing to register as foreign agents, but their case revealed a wider threat: the continued efforts of Russia and other U.S. adversaries to poison the information environment in the United States. Prior presidential election cycles in 2016 and 2020 saw similar attempts by Russia and other actors to introduce disinformation into the media diets of Americans. This year has been no different. With the unwitting involvement of notable right-wing influencers and commentators, the company in Tennessee produced and published English-language videos on social media platforms, such as TikTok and YouTube, that promoted views in line with Moscow’s “interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions,” according to the Justice Department’s indictment.

Russian influence operations, as well as those advanced by China and Iran, pose a major threat to American democracy. According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, foreign powers may not be trying to “attack the integrity of voting systems,” but they are using disinformation to “undermine trust in the integrity of the election and election processes, as well as to further exacerbate divisions among Americans.” Even though Russia’s election interference in 2016 attracted a great deal of public opprobrium in the United States, the Kremlin and other autocratic governments still seek to influence how Americans think and perceive the world.

David R. Shedd is former Acting Director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and the author of a forthcoming book about Chinese industrial espionage in the United States. Ivana Stradner is a Research Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.