Transcripts For CSPAN3 Hearing On Combating Global Disinformation 20240713

Thank you very much for being here, and i want to thank him because he graciously allowed to have the subcommittee hearing and for me to be able to chair it. This is a discussion really important to so many of us here and so many of our colleagues. Information is power today, and we see it all over the globe when its used improperly, hes used as a weapon. Democracies like ours require a well informed electorate, but our enemies are increasingly trying to undermine that principle through socalled disinformation campaigns designed to mislead voters. Malign actors like russia systematically exploit social media, radio, television, and print to twist facts to suit their needs and distort the truth to an unsuspecting populous. Its not just about elections. We see it today with regard to the coronavirus and misinformation thats being spread. Its an interesting tactic because its inexpensive and yet can be very effective. It has a high degree of deniability. Its anonymous almost always and if left uncheck, it can be devastatingly effective. In 2016, senator chris murphy and i established this organization within the United States government through legislation. The idea was to have an Interagency Group to lead this global disinformation effort and work with International Partners for a unified response. The Bipartisan Legislation Global Engagement center within the state department is now law. Its taken awhile, frankly, to get it up and going. Were going to hear a lot more about that today. But were pleased that were making progress. The mission of the gec is to, i quote, lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the local government in combatting disinformation efforts. Its a broad and important man dade. Its to provide a shield against the falsehoods that threaten our democracy and other democracies. Were pleased to have leah gabriel here with us as our first witness. Shes the special coordination of gec. Shes a former human intelligence operations officer, a defense foreign liaison officer, a u. S. Navy program director. A navy atnc Fighter Pilot and National Television news correspondent and anchor. Shes done all that within her short life. So its very impressive. Shes well experienced in combatting disinformation campaigns. Were glad to have her leading in this initiative. We look forward to hearing how she has staffed the center to meet the mission. We look forward to the assessment of the emerging threats we face and the budgetary requirements moving forward. I think its critical that we resource the gec to meet this Important Mission and therefore i support the f21 president budget request of 138 million. An increase of about 76 million over last years budget, more than a doubling of the current funding. I think thats important. Our second panel will have dr. Elaina paulyokovik. I always call her elaina. From the center from european policy analysis and Dan Blumenthal from the American Enterprise institute. Those are our experts witnesses as we have a frank and serious discussion about the global weaponization of information and the u. S. Governments response. Doctor and mr. Blumenthal have testified before, before this and other committees and are hirely regarded for their work. We look forward to hearing their insights. Today, well also aim at exploring the inAccurate Information imflaming societies. Here in the United States, we have extensive documentation that russia conducted a coordinated interference campaign in our 2016 elections. Something were working hard to prevent this election cycle. Elsewhere, ukraine has been the subject of a sustained Russian Disinformation Campaign in its efforts to break free of moscow. Were seeing a rise in the tactics from china, both in the indopacific and in europe. This is truly a global problem that requires an integrated global response. I was recently at the Munich Security Conference with some of my colleagues here and we had a robust discussion about this and the European Partnership in fighting this disinformation. Today i want to dig deeper into that subject as well. With regard to the indopacific region, theres been a commitment that is a model for others to follow. And how the prc manipulates or blocks information that doesnt meet their narratives. Its important that the u. S. Continue to be a world leader i combatting this disinformation. Where the United States goes others tend to follow. We have established a close and effective relationship with some of our european counterparts and our joint efforts are beginning to join traction elsewhere. The topic of disinformation is now a topic of discussion across the globe as we saw at the conference in munich. To continue our leadership on this issue, weve got to have an Effective Organization within the federal government to coordinate our response. This hearing will address how we can address the issue better and make the gec even more effective. The problems caused by deliberate statesponsored disinformation are going to be here for a long time. The tactics are inexpensive, highly effective, and its important we understand the dangers they present. I look forward to hearing from our winces and from the members of the committee, i turn to senator booker for his opening remarks. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Its incredible to be able to be sitting here today next to you. You, frankly, not only helped to get this hearing done but you and senator murphy, your extraordinary leadership in drafting the legislation that authorized the gec, if i understand it correctly, you took it from an executive order at the whims of president and really was something that was established and its incredible youre here, and i want to thank senator murphy for his continued leadership as a more Junior Member on the committee, just being a friend and a mentor. I am disappointed, i want to say, this is a very bipartisan hearing. I mean, this is legislation that the two of you wrote together. Its something that bonds us all and concerns the mission of the organization, but the state department refused to provide the committee with the witness it requested. And thats unacceptable to me. Its not the way we should be doing business. We all have shared interest and shared values and a shared understanding of the growing and more sophisticated threat. Its unacceptable to me. Its not helping us to do the business of the people of this country in protecting us and keeping us safe. And that brings me to where my thoughts are for the moment, which is in the aftermath of september 11th, the u. S. Created the gec with the goal of reducing the influence and effectiveness of terrorist and extremist groups that were seeking to harm americans. Today, the scope of the gecs work is incredible to me. It extends beyond terrorist, violence, extremist groups and statesponsors propaganda, disinformation is growing to be an incredibly Critical Mission given the complex challenges from our adversaries. As were sitting here in this hearing, there are actors seizing on widespread concern rarting the coronavirus to intentionally spread disinformation at a time when people are worried and vulnerable and willing to believe what theyre reading often, and we understand that in the context of this, fdrs words are very profound. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. We have a real threat and the additional threat threat of fear. The Washington Post has been reporting on this. Talking about the use of social media and the conspiracy theories being thread that put us at danger. The report revealed evidence of a coordinated inauthentic activity which was responsible for pushing these dangerous falsehoods. One Conspiracy Theory is seeking to attack people in this country, blame them in this case, bill and melinda gates. If people in the u. S. And across the globe are turning to social media for information about this looming threat, they find these lies, these malicious actors who are trying to really prey upon our vulnerability and put us more at danger. And so this intentional desire to muddle the facts, to undermine our security and our safety, to make us doubt our institutions, to make us doubt each other, will weaken the bonds of our democracy as well as put people at risk. And this brings us to the gecs work. Theyre at work getting to the bottom of this disinformation about the coronavirus was exactly why it was created by congress, led by the gentlemen on my either side, but i have questions about why both the gec and the state department have so far refused to comment about the report and about the reliable news outlets seeking to expose this disinformation. And so i hope to have that conversation as this goes on. Im also hoping to get to the bottom of Important Information the gec themselves have uncovered about those who are spreading the falsehoods and what purposes they see and what effects its already having. Russian interference in the 2016 elections demonstrated the dangers b s posed by disinforma and we know the russians and other countries are trying it get better and better and more sophisticated at what theyre doing. This is their playbook, targeting democracies, attempting to weaken relationships between allies. There is no reason for us to believe that theyre not going to continue to employ this playbook, to get better at it, to come at the coming elections and to seize any opportunities like the coronavirus to undermine our safety, security, and our very bonds here in the United States of america. While the state department does not have the authority over the homeland through the data and analysis the gec collects on russian techniques and practices, we know a lot more about what they may do to meddle in this years election and to meet a lot of the challenges they present. I want to know how this is being shared with relevant agencies including the department of homeland security, fbi, and more. And while the u. S. Recently has begun to see these russian threats more broadly, russias democratic and prowestern neighbors have had to contend with russias attempts to reverse democratic gains for years. We also know these russian efforts are not limited to europe and the United States. As in europe, were seeing this now growing in africa. Moscows engagement enables autocrats and fostered corruption, especially in already fragile african countries. We know the kremlins activities designed in part to weaken the u. U. S. s leadership in that region. Last year, facebook identified accounts targeted eight african countries saying although the people behind these networks attempted to conceal their identities in coordination, our investigation connected these campaigns to entities associated with a specific Russian Oligarch who is described as the architect of russias interference in the 2016 election. China, too, has rapidly increased the use of influence tactics in the information space. The near peer competition is clearly playing out in the misinformation space as well. And so to me, the gecs task is considerable, to lead interagency efforts to counter propaganda and disinformation from International Terrorist organizations and foreign countries. I look forward to hearing from both panels about how we as congress can continue to strengthen our work to make sure we are meeting what i believe is a growing threat tactic and techniques being used by our adversaries to undermine this country as well as critical allies as well as the stability and strength of free peoples all around the country. Thank you again for being here. And mr. Chairman, i turn it back to you. Thank you. I appreciate those statements. We look forward to getting into more of those issues as we move forward. Our first witness is ms. Lea gabe rielle, the special envoy and coordinator for the u. S. Department of state. Your written record will be in its entirely in your record. We ask you limit your oral remarks to five minutes. We look forward to your testimony and an opportunity to ask questions. Your opening statement. Thank you, chairman portman, Ranking Member booker, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me to testify before you today. Im pleased to be here to talk about the Global Engagement centers work. This is abimportant topic with serious implications to u. S. National security and i appreciate the subcommittee devoting this time to it. The gec is dedicated to the mission of leading and coordinating the u. S. Governments erchts to decisively expose and counter foreign state and nonstate disinformation propaganda. Secretary pompeo has called upon the gec to employ a broad suite of tools to stop americas adversaries from weaponizing information and using propaganda to undermine free societies. Since becomes the special envoy of the gec just over a year ago, my team and i have made significant progress towards building International Partnerships, executing dynamic programs, and deploying robust Analytical Capabilities globally to address foreign propaganda and disinformation. I have worked to insure my team has the necessary tools and resources to do the job given to it by congress. At the state departments recent chief conference, i spoke with our u. S. Ambassadors who represent us around the world. I shared our threat assessment on disinformation and propaganda and i listened to their perspective on how gements are playing out on the ground. We at the gec recognize the crucial role that our missions and our Public Diplomacy officers play on the front lines of this information battleground. My teams are working with embassies overseas and with the departments regionals bureau daily to execute and to coordinate activities. Today, ill outline how we view the disinformation the kremlin and the Chinese Communist party are propagating, what were doing to counter each, and the role that data and analytics play in our work. Ill also describe the gecs role in coordinating a whole of u. S. Government efrfort to respond to disinformation. And also discussions about how they Counter Terrorist organizations like isis as well as disinformation from the iranian regime. Lets start with the kremlin. The intent, scope, and style of disinformation and propaganda spread by the kremlin and the Chinese Communist party are distinct from one another. The kremlin swamps the media environment with a tsunami of lies. Outside of russia, the kremlin seeks to weaken its adversaries by manipulating the information environment in nefarious ways, by polarizing political conversation, and attempting to destroy the publics faith in good governance, nld media, and democratic principles. To counter the kremlins disinformation, the gec is creating Strategic Partnerships with foreign governments to enable the information sharing and the coordination that allows us to get ahead of the russian governments Information Operations. The gec is also providing support to our missions abroad and our International Partners for a wide range of efforts to counter the kremlins disinformation. These include supporting Civil Society groups in central and Eastern Europe that build resiliency in their local communities. These also include running joint Communications Campaigns with allies to counter russias historical revisionism and to empower Fact Checkers in latin america to stem the surge of russian disinformation in that region. With increased funding, we intend to provide more of this type of support to additional allies and partners globally so that they can increase their own ability to resist these russian tactics. The investments we have made have also allowed us to expose elements of the russian governments information ecosystem. This exposure inoculates audiences against this threat and its critical. Now, while moscow wants to disrupt the current world order, the Chinese Communist party seeks to shape it to beijings advantage. Beijing is pursuing a comprehensive and coordinated influence campaign to advance its interests and to undermine the United States. But when you take a closer look, its clear that many of the ccps actions in the economic, security, and human rights space are built on propaganda. The gecs programs are focused on puncturing those false narratives. Our efforts to counter ccp propaganda include increasing awareness of the problematic aspects of the belt and road thisative, increasing awareness of the problematic aspects of human rights abuses in china, as well as beijings abuse of open research and academic environments to achieve its military objectives. We also have programs to build global resilience to prc disinformation through Media Training and support to investigative journalists and to map prc influence in the information environment to guide current and future approaches. Beijing also wants to shape third country perspectives of u. S. Foreign policy. In order to restrict the space, where ccp propaganda can take root, the gec partners with our missions overseas on efforts that provide Accurate Information about u. S. Policies and the contributions of u. S. Business to the local communities. In all of this, our success depends on leverages analytical tools as well as networks of credible partners and local voices overseas, capabilities were refining and expanding each day. My team and i are committed to the commission that congress has tasked to the gec. And our modern age, the russian government, the prc and other adversary said have clearly found ways to leverage new technologies to deepen and accelerate the impact disinformation propaganda can have. As has always been the case, free nations must unite and Work Together to defeat this threat. Im here today to report that were making progress. Were building up the gecs capabilities. Were crafting strategies tailored to the specific approaches of our adversaries and most importantly, were regaining the initiative. Again, thank you very much for the opportunity to testify here today. I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you, and appreciate your opportunity to share with us in more details some of the things you addressed in your opening statement. I have three colleagues here all of whom have scheduling conflicts. What im going to do is take a minute now, and have the opportunity to ask more questions after they have a chance to ask theirs before they have to leave. And the one i want to talk about is coronavirus, and thats such a hot topic. In fact, in this very room, we had a hearing earlier today, a briefing, i guess you would call it, with some of the nations experts on the issue. Theres been some discussion in our Opening Statements about the fact there is disinformation out there, unfortunately, including groundless conspiracy theories that are being promoted. And theres an analysis i saw that they believe there is evidence of coordinated and inauthentic information. Can you talk about the work gec has done on this subject already, the spread of disinformation on the coronavirus and the conclusions you come up with regarding the role of state actors and others in propagating these falsehoods . Absolutely, and thank you for raising this important issue. The coronavirus is an example of where we have seen adversaries take advantage of a Health Crisis where people are terrified worldwide to try to advance their priorities. The gec has a robust analytics and research capability. We also work with partners so we can use the highest level of technology and the latest data science tools to be able to assess the information environment. So we have been watching the narratives that are being pushed out, false narratives around coronavirus. Unfortunately, we have been able to assess that accounts tied to russia, the entire ecosystem of russian disinformation, has been engaged in the midst of this world Health Crisis. One of the best practices in countering propaganda and disinformation is exposing it. So decreasing the vulnerabilities in audiences that are targeted and increasing their resiliency requires exposing examples of disinformation. This is an example where the gec works with Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the state department so we can get the word out and we actually engaged with a Media Organization to share some analysis that we had on what we were seeing in terms of coronavirus. We saw the entire ecosystem of russian disinformation at play. Russian state proxy websites, official state media, as well as swarms of online false personas pushing out false narratives. Exposing it by working with the media has built awareness around this issue that theres a lot of disinformation, and right now, i hope that all actors will act in the most responsible manner to support people who are scared around the world in the midst of this crisis. Thank you. Exposing it is obviously critical. Also providing the counternarrative, which is the factual narrative and the scientifically based narrative. We thank you for that. Again, well have an opportunity to talk more about that and other issues. Senator booker. Im just going to defer to senator murphy again. And express my gratitude for his leadership on this, and looking forward to hearing his line of questioni questioning. Thank you very much, senator booker. Thank you for convening this hearing, and thank you for what has been very able leadership, and i congratulate you with a fairly skimpy budget, having extended the reach of the gec substantially during your time. Listen, we have been complaining forever about the fact that were fighting asymmetric wars all over the world, predominantly with russia. Thats where you hear that term used the most, but with china as well. And of course, asymmetry is a choice, right . Its not an inevtublt. We have made a choice over the years to not equip our forces and our Foreign Policy Infrastructure Overseas with the capacities they need to compete. And the gec is an attempt to fill what for too long had been a vacuum. A vacuum on our side of the ledger with respect to the ability to fight and combat disinformation. And yet, you know, the reach of the gec is frankly meager compared to the need thats out there today. And im glad to see an increase in funding being proposed by the president , and hopeful we can get that through. With respect to funding, i think its important to note that, and you can tell me if im wrong, that the president s budget request is requesting funding within the state department for the gec. At the very beginning, we were forced to do a transfer of funds from the dod to the state department in order to get the gec up and running, but that was it is a cumbersome process that is unnecessary given the fact we now all agree on the efficacy of your work. So can you just speak to the importance of having the gec funded through the state Department Rather than through transfer funds . Yes, senator murphy, and thank you very much for raising this important issue. The gec is focused on our mission of disinformation, and so what were requesting and what is reflected in the president s budget request to congress is an increase to allow us to expand the scope and scale of our activities to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation and bring all of the different tools to bear, and to focus our team on the Mission Rather than on process. We truly appreciate the work from congress on finding mechanisms to assist in providing funding for the gec in the past. Over the past year, we have seen the process of trying to obtain funding from a Different Agency to be extremely cumbersome, although we work closely with the combat and command and have built very strong relationships with the dod, we do assess that the best practice and the best process would be direct funding for the gec at the state department. So your report on coronavirus disinformation has gotten a lot of attention. Im glad that you have produced it. Tell us a little bit about your ability to be able to communicate with the social Media Companies that are transiting a lot of this information, whether you have that capacity today, whether thats something you envision being able to do more robustly and more effectively with additional with Additional Resources. So i think its important to understand that right now, what were seeing are these ecosystems where disinformation and propaganda is being pushed out across platforms. The relationships are very important, and were working to build relationships. We have an lno from the gec now in Silicon Valley and were doing outreach with Tech Companies to understand some of the technologies being developed to counter propaganda disinformation but also to have those open lines of communication. But i do want to be clear here. The gec works for the American People. Social Media Companies are companies. So the gec is going to be focused on best practices to serve the American People in countering foreign propaganda and disinformation. So sometimes that means sharing information. Sometimes it means exposure through the media. That relationship is important, but im going to be focused on the best practices and not looking at any specific individual accounts but rather the overarching principle of whats happening and now we can counter it. So i also have a question, and maybe im leading into this question about sort of what lanes different parts of the federal government occupy here. And maybe youre starting to give me an answer to this question. There have this important question of identifying sources of propaganda, identifying foreign actors that are putting propaganda online. There are some Platform Companies that are more willing to take those actors off their platform. There are others that are not as discriminating. Are you saying that that isnt primarily your role to identify those sources and have that communication with the Platform Companies . That there are other elements in the federal government that are better suited to do that . I think the social Media Companies have a tremendous challenge with protecting their consumers in terms of what is happening on their platforms, but the point im trying to make is its not just about the individual platforms. Its the overall big picture were seeing develop and how adversaries are using the social media landscape to push out false narratives. So we focus on and i think theres a misunderstanding out there about how to counter disinformation. Theres an understanding that its just taking down specific personas online or that its point and counterpoint. Thats not best practices. The gec has put a lot of focus on working with our partners, our partners worldwide, working with the academic community, to really understand how you do this, and its about sensitizing audiences. Getting out in front of the problem rather than reacting to it. And also, trying to focus on sources rather than specific content, right . Because its hard to chase one lie after another. You have to actually go after the source and expose the source as illegitimate or untrustworthy, is that right . Thats correct. And lastly, tell me about the relationship with the different state department posts. You have embassies all over the world that have political officers that are also working on this question of disinformation, have relationships with local objective journalists who are trying to do the right thing. I imagine current staffing levels, its hard to be able to have a hand into all of the embassies and places we care about on the periphery of china and russia. Is that something you can do more of with Additional Resources . Theres so much we can do more of with Additional Resources. As my team has said to me, we would like to really get the g in gec, meaning global. So posts are critical, working with regional bureaus is critical. We have been doing a good job of that. Just to give you an understanding of how sort of the gec is broken down. Disinformation of propaganda is being used to undermine the u. S. Security and our best interests and that of our allies and partners worldwidworldwide, eve all the tile. We have to focus our resources on what is having most effect. We divided it into threat teams, russia, china, iran, and we focus on the violent extremist threat, and we have built cross function teams. We have a Tech Engagement Team working to identify the best technology in the space to counter disinformation and propaganda. Whats very critical is we have an analytics and Research Team that supports all of the teams. This is where we can put a lot of resources to make sure that were staying up with the latest technologies so we can do those assessments of the information environment and apply those best practices. Our analytics and Research Team has around 25 data scientists who are experts in things like ad tech, semantics processing, social media and traditional media monitoring. They have all the tools, they know how to use the tools available on the market. They have also written their own algorithms and codes so they can build programs we can share with our partners and allies. Another thing we have done is built the first of its kind, i think that noise may be my mic too far away. Something different . Okay. So i want to talk about disinformation sharing platform that our analytics and Research Team has developed. The first of its kind. What were sharing these tools and capabilities to do analytics with our partners worldwide, not just so they can see our analysis and use ortools but also so they can be a force multiplier and be providing and feeding back in, so this large coordination is a big parts of what were doing. Resources will help, and we need to take this issue global. Im grateful to do this work with senator portman. Thank you for being here at the hearing. Thank you, senator murphy. We look forward to continuing this conversation in a minute. Those were really important points you raised. Senator merkley. Thank you very much. And i wanted to get a better understanding of how much work youre doing inhouse and how much work youre contracting out. Do you have a way of kind of employee equivalence or funding that goes outside, inside, so forth . Try to get a picture of how youre structured. At the gec, we have 118 people as of today. Thats a 42 increase since we received the expanded mission in fy 17. But with this global problem that were facing, i think its clear that we have to be a force multiplier, and thats really what we aim to do. So since i have been onboard, i have been very focused on building a team with the expertise that we need. That means regional expertise, analytics and research expertise, people who understand Information Operations, people who come from an advertising background, so expertise in building the team has been critical. I have been focused on making sure the team has the resources they need to be able to execute on this, and then we have been very focused on building a strategy. Our strategy really has three main lines of effort. The first one is to lead and execute countering propaganda and disinformation campaigns. So thats bringing into alignment what were learning from the experts, what wer. Doing within the interagency, what we coordinate from a policy perspective and other policy guidance and then what we coordinate with our International Partners, so really being a force multiplier in taking countering propaganda and disinformation campaigns globally. And then the other thing we have been doing is we have been having the opportunity to put Program Funding where they can have high impact solutions. So in building this big picture of essentially what everybody else is doing in the space, coordinating it, and bringing it instrateging alignment, we can see where theres opportunities to have high impact, and thats where we put funding and thats where we can work with thirdparty implementers who have unique expertise, ability, knowhow in different parts of the world. I think to give you a picture, we really see ourselves as a data driven Mission Center that should be energizing the Network Worldwide of our partners and allies that counter propaganda and disinformation. Okay, so my question was pretty simple, which was what proportion of your operation is inhouse and what proportion is outside, and you havent answered that. Can you just give me an answer . Its difficult to do an apples to apples comparison on that. Again, we have 118 people with a worldwide problem. So were a force multiflier. I would say the work were doing worldwide in working with our allies and partners is much greater than the sum of its parts. So your inhouse spending, ballpark, is it 20 of your budget, is it 80 of your budget . Just trying to get a basic understanding here. The inhouse spending, i want to get back to you with an exact number, but i would say its consider closer to around 75 , maybe 70 . But i have to make sure that you understand, a big portion of this is creating those analytics and research capabilities. Were data driven. We dont want to be using anecdotal evidence to try to attack this problem, so to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign propaganda and information, it starts with data, it starts with having the right experts inhouse and having the capabilities to then drive and push out solutions. So if i go back two years ago, there was reported that the inhouse team that was working on russian propaganda didnt have any russian speakers. Im guessing that by now, thats completely been corrected. Yes, it has. How many russian speakers do you have now . I want to make sure i get you a correct number, and well make sure you report back to you on that, but i know that my deputy is a russian speaker. But your team is working on russian propaganda. Are they all russian speakers . No, theyre not all russian speakers. And as a former human intelligence operative i can tell you oftentimes when youre working in different environments, you use linguists and others to help you understand the information environment. Okay. But youre able to get the talent you need . Youre pretty satisfied that you have yes, okay. You can follow up and get me details on that if you would. So in 2019, one of the reasons i was asking about how much is done out of house is once you contract with outside groups, sometimes its hard to keep control over exactly what theyre doing. We had at least one case where i think things got a little out of hand with iran disinformation project, in which they were putting out essentially disinformation rather than being counterdisinformation, including attacking and smearing some u. S. Citizens. I know you cut off funding to them, or your predecessor did. Im not sure when you came in. Can you just fill us in a little bit on that and how youre developing strategies so we arent funding groups that actually are engaged in disinformation rather than countering disinformation . Thank you for raising that important issue. I was the special envoy and coordinator when that issue arose. And i will tell you that within hours of learning about the fact that one of our implementers had gone outside the scope of their agreement, it was never intended for them to be addressing u. S. Domestic audiences, as soon as we found out they had gone outside the scope of the agreement, i immediately suspended that particular project and we conducted an internal review and ultimately decided to end that contract, to end that agreement. We did have some Lessons Learned from that. We have teams monitoring social media, our implementers. I have been very focused on implementing measures of effectiveness in Monitoring Evaluation in all of our programs. We have an mne team. We follow the latest research as were approaching these problems so that we can make sure were using respected organizations that are vetted. We have a vetting process at the state department. And we have regular oversight as well as reporting from each of these organizations, so we have a very robust effort to put in place to make sure that any implementers are staying within the scope of work and that they are properly spending taxpayer dollars. Thats critical. Thank you. Im down to 30 seconds. I wanted to ask you in regard to this specific efforts of russia to spread the disinformation on the u. S. Regarding the coronavirus that came out of aerolab, you mentioned there was a lot of messages being generated. How much are they now using people in buildings to treat and how much of those messages are being generated by bot nets . What are we seeing in terms of the patternf the technology theyre employing . What were seeing is an entire ecosystem. If you look at the spectrum of russian disinformation, it includes russian statefunded media, official accounts, proxy news sites that spin conspiracy theories under the guise of journalism, and then legions of false social media personas, many of those were not bots. But we saw thousands pushing out false information. Thousands of people or false not bots. They were people generated. Okay. So were seeing more reliance on human operations than on bot nets in this regard . It continues to be a mix. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Senator corker. First, thank you. I cannot express the patriotic duty youre doing in this country. This whole area wasnt even imaginable ten years ago. Im very understanding this is something were all continuing to learn. I have friends who founded some of these companies that youre working closely with, and a lot of things are moving fast. The challenges are oncoming, developing and the like, and your presence, your leadership, your dedication, your commitment is incredible. I just want to get to some specific understanding. So the report that you have on the coronavirus specifically, you didnt make that public. Is there classified data in there . Is that what was a concern . We have done a number of reports on coronavirus that are intended to inform our partners and our allies, both inside the interagency as well as the ic, as well as our partners worldwide on what were seeing around false narratives. Sometimes it makes sense to share those reports, and sometim it doesnt. Again, this goes back to best practices. I think the reports that you have been referencing, there are some that have been out in the press. There was one that one report that allegedly an alleged report that was leaked to the media. I havent seen what it is theyre talking about, but it does talk about some of what we have been seeing. It does the reporting i have seen accurately depicts what we have been seeing. We did actually share one of our analysis with a Media Organization, specifically around russian disinformation and the narratives that we have seen. And that was specifically to address our best practices in countering disinformation, which is exposing it. And i guess thats my point. If were trying to expose this, wouldnt it make sense for all the reports, unless theres some kind of classified information trying to protect sources, methods, et cetera, why not get that information out there . Doesnt that help discredit the activities in and of themselves . I think whats important is exposing and showing enough supported data or supportive analysis to expose the problem, but what we dont want to do is share our tradecraft with our adversaries. Youre saying to me that the reports that you and ai are talking about that are not public have tradecraft in them that we want to protect . Thats true, and im not saying its classified, but this is methodologies we have been developing. We have intentionally made a lot of these reports at an unclassified level to share them with our partners and allies which is important in exposing, but the 0s and 1s are not important in terms of best practices in the exposure we want to do, and we dont want to give our adversaries the opportunity to get ahead of us. I respect that. And so do you see as part of your mission, though, in releasing information, that you are trying to dispel it, undercut it, kneecap whats going on out there . Best practices are not point counterpoint. Its rather to decrease vulnerability and increase resilience. Forgive me for interrupting. I understand. I get that. But i guess also, with this specific challenge of the coronavirus, there could be that dual purpose, right . Best practices helping to empower folks, but when youre exposing this, it diffuses the strength of the misinformation as well, am i correct . Thats corrects and thats exactly why we did it. To the extent youre seeing this, you said here, which is one of my first questions, specifically the russians and their growingly sophisticated networks are trying to put out disinformation about the coronavirus that puts our country and our people at risk. Is that definitively correct . We saw the entire russian ecosystem of disinformation pushing out false narratives around coronavirus. That is correct. And you have released that officially in the reports that you have released . We have shared the analysis of one of those reports with a Media Organization who accurately reported on that. We have answered questions that were provided to us through Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. I think its well known at this point that there are false narratives out there around coronavirus, and thats very helpful for people who are scared right now in the midst of this crisis to understand that they need to go to accurate sources of information. Like the world health organization, the cdc, for the Accurate Information on how to protect themselves. Right. And then i guess this is a big frustration i have is that we still have people in positions of authority in our country that are denying the growing sophistication of the russians and their ecosystem, as you call it, which seems to give strength to them if we in ourselves are denying that the russians are doing this kind of activity. Is my concern that government officials would be denying the strength, sophistication, the ecosystem, as you put it, that the russians are using to try to undermine whether its this or election security, isnt that problematic in itself, that the goal, as you said, is to diffuse this by exposing it, to have countering narratives coming from positions of authority, denying that the russians are even doing this kind of activity, doesnt it, again, make us more vulnerable and muck up the water, so to speak, with our ability to expose and diffuse those very russian activities . I can only speak to what i have seen and the support i have received. And i have seen full support from this administration to the Global Engagement center and its efforts to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation reflected by the 138 million budget request to congress, which i truly Hope Congress will support. I appreciate that. Clearly, as a representative of the administration, i dont expect you to say specifically. I just was saying, to talk about this administration specifically, allow me to do that, i have no problem, but as an actor, it is problematic if positions of authority are undercutting the very point that you have made, which is that this is a threat to the United States that the russians are growing in sophistication. They have established an ecosystem. That in itself, in an academic way, is a simple yes or no question. Its very problematic, yes or no, if we as a country are speaking with multiple voices, some saying this is not a problem, that theyre not doing this, and others are. It only gives strength to the russians themselves. Is that correct . The kremlins goal is to separate and divide us. Its classic subversion, so the more we can all Work Together bipartisan, nonpartisan, working together on countering propaganda and disinformation, the better we will be as a country. Hallelujah, amen. That is exactly what their tactic is, which is to try to divide us, to try to undermine our trust of our agencies, trust of our intelligence apparatus, to directly approach this, and its very frustrating to me when you see folks that should be working in tandem publicly giving the same message, undermining this truth and the simple truth that you are putting forward there. I appreciate that response. I will yield to my chairman here, who has a much better haircut than me. Well, first of all, it was dark hair before i got involved in this issue. Disinformation. Mr. Chairman, i used to have a big afro, so i pulled all mine out. Yeah. Listen, im very encouraged with what i hear. I want to thank you for coming. I want to follow up on a few issues, but i think senator booker is correct that the more information we can get out there the better. In the context of coronavirus, as to what some of the false narratives are, the exposures, the best practices you talked about. By the way, we have done it this morning. What you said this morning is pretty powerful. What you havent done is provide any specific examples. There was a mention earlier of bill gates, and im not sure people understand what that meant, but ill give you a chance if you would to just play out maybe one or two of these false narratives that have been out there with regard to coronavirus so people can be aware of them. I want to be careful with my words here because repeating false narratives actually reenforces them. We have learned from social science that oftentimes people believe the first version of a story they hear, and then its an uphill battle to undo that. If you would like for me to identify a certain disinformation narrative, i can. I would prefer not to. Okay, let me do it since it was mentioned earlier, which is that somehow bill gates and his lab started the coronavirus, which is an absolute falsehood, and theres absolutely no basis for it, since it was mentioned earlier, i wanted to clarify that. But thats an example of the kind of thing that for a person watching today who is not an expert on what disinformation and propaganda means, thats an example of something thats meant to try to divide us, you mentioned polarization earlier. Were already a polarized country in so many respects, to further polarize us and to create, as you said earlier and my colleagues have said, distrust in our institutions, particularly institutions of government in a democracy like ours where thats so important. So i think your role is incredibly important. You know, we have talked a lot about the budget, and i just want to put a finer point on that if i could. My understanding is that you requested 76 million and were appropriating 60 million for this fiscal year. Now youre asking for 138 million, which is, again, more than a doubling of what you currently are receiving. You know, fiscal discipline is important, but when you look at the mission and the importance of this mission and the fact that increasingly, as a former military officer yourself, increasingly, our battle is not kinetic. Its, as some say, hybrid, but specifically, its this battling of disinformation. So my hope is that we can support the mission more strongly and be sure its spent wisely. And i think senator merkleys question to you is an important one, to be sure that we dont have contractors who are misrepresenting what you want to do, and im glad that you acted quickly with regard to the iranian issue that had been in the media. But if you could talk just a little more about our new approach here, the dod transfer to you, we thought, was necessary to frankly get you up and going. And to kickstart. I afwrgree with what you have s today and what was implied at least by what senator murphy said, that that was not a successful endeavor. It took, frankly, too much of your time and other peoples time to try to work through the bureaucracy and red tape, despite the fact that secretaries of defense were always supportive when they talked to me, at least, and they were, i believe, but it took a while for the bureaucracy to respond to that, and also that your secretary of state right now, secretary pompeo, and his previous deputy, secretary, deputy secretary sullivan and current deputies, deputy secretary egan are very supportive. Thats why i think you see bigger numbers requested. We dont want to go back to the dod focus, but what we do want to do is be sure we can justify the budget increase youre asking for. So what would you say is the best way to do that . You have a mix of Foreign Service officers, civil servants, contractors, some folks who i understand are interagency detailees. You have to have sectile experts, as you talked about, who can do these algorithms, and these are highly paid individuals because you have to get them from the private sector. You cant compete directly on a monetary basis, but theyre probably happy to serve their country, but what would you think is the main reason we need to more than double the budget . Theres a very simple answer, and its because we need more of everything to be able to execute this mission on a global scale. So i think youre wanting some specific examples of initiatives and ill go further. I think we need to be focused on the continent of africa, and we should be shifting some focus there. Were seeing Russian Disinformation Campaigns on the continent. Were also seeing chinese malign influence there. We have programs ready to go that could build capacity that work with local leaders across the board. We just dont have the resources to do that right now. Weve got to continue to stay ahead in terms of the capabilities out in the tech industry. Some examples are of initiatives we have where we plan and implement coordinated campaigns that takes sending people to travel, Building Partnerships with other countries. It sometimes means bringing funding to the table and being able to lead on those initiatives. Were developing a repeatable tradecraft we can share. I mentioned this platform, this online information sharing platform were sharing with partners and allies worldwide. Thats critical. Were conducting analysis to understand and Craft Solutions to be data driven in this approach that takes money. Were analyzing the attempts of adversaries. Again, those Tech Solutions take money. And then heres another place that its really important. Supporting those nonu. S. Government efforts on the ground who have unique expertise in their regions to understand the problem and to push back with effective solutions. It all takes money. We have got to put the g back in the ge krec and make it global. Thats very helpful to have that list of specific priorities and initiatives that do require resources. One ill add that you mentioned earlier is to be proactive. I think this is something that you just said is consistent with best practices. Its also going to require some resources, and not always u. S. Government resources, as you have indected, including in listing our allies, partners. We talked about journalists earlier, and objective professional journalists to counter, so i think getting ahead of the curve is more important than ever. Thank you for mentioning africa. I couldnt agree with you more. A trade agreement with kenya, keeping some truth to help the french and others in west africa, this issue, i think theres a lot we can do right now with africa to counter what is clearly a target for other actors, including russia and china. My final question has to do with keeping us up to speed. There was a briefing recently that was conducted with congressional staff. And this hearing itself is really an opportunity for you to brief us. We would like to do more of that. I think honestly, if we had done this a couple years ago, it would have been difficult because you didnt have your feet under you at the point, you didnt have the resources, you didnt have the personnel, and it takes a little while to get the organization up and going. Youre now up and going, obviously, sw some interest growing further, but would you commit today to continuing to send your staff up here on a more regular basis to consult with and brief interested staff and members and Share Analysis of what youre doing . Absolutely, senator. I can tell you that my staff tremendously enjoyed the opportunity recently to come up and brief. Were very proud of the work were doing. And i think its a wonderful opportunity to interact and also to highlight the great leadership and the great thinking thats coming from my team at the Global Engagement center. Excellent. Senator booker, any other questions . I want to dig into africa for a second. Just your general strategic approach, and by the way, i think that was a great testimony to the need for more resources, and from whai what i have been reading, the expansive attempts of the chinese and russians on that continent to engage in, i believe the term is mishegas. Can you give a little more description of your strategic approach to that problem . I can tell you that this is a perfect example of where we really need more resources. Right now, were launching a program that Networks International china experts with local African Voices to Exchange Insights and better understanding of ccp influence operations in africa. Were also really emphasizing technology. So we actually are sending a team to kenya in a couple months for what we call a tech challenge. Its where were convening tech experts, local government experts, ngos, as well as members of our team to look at and assess different technologies being developed on the connent, that counterpropaganda and disinformation. It not only served to provide an opportunity to give a little bit of funding to some of the companies that are trying to make their technologies work and that could be effective in this space, but even more importantly, its important in building resiliency and decreasing vulnerability in the populations by exposing them and bringing them together as a community of interest on this challenge. But theres so much more we could be doing. And so thats why i think its really important that we have the funding and the direct funding were requesting. And besides china, russia, are there other sort of powers that are at work there . Well, of course, we can never take our eye off of Violent Extremist Organizations and the terrorist threat. One of the ways that the gec has really been executing on its mission is in the ct space. So i am a colead on the Communications Working Group of the Global Coalition to defeat is isis. And my team has built a Resiliency Campaign to counter isis ideology and the core we have worked through the interagency has been supported by the ns drrc, and we have takt to the Global Coalition to sensitize the 82 members of the Global Coalition on this campaign to bring us all into strategic alignment. This campaign would start in the core, but then it can also be applied to places in africa where were seeing the ct threat become more hot. I think we have to continue to keep our eye on the ball. Theres a number of threats there. China and russia, of course, are at the top, as well as the Violent Extremist Organization threat. The last thing real quickly, the power of diversity. I have seen this here in the senate. How are you doing . Senator menendez, senator cardin and i have been talking about diversity at the state department. I would love to see numbers about gender and Race Diversity in your department. Frankly, i just know from watching folks trying to deal with disinformation on social media, people deal with this on social media, they might be targeting social groups that having diverse staff can often pick up and notice things that others cant. I agree with you that diversity is very important, bringing a number of different ideas, expertise, backgrounds to this is critical. I talked about the Different Levels of expertise that we have and i know that i have made the gec more diverse as its leader. Great. I would love if you can help me to give us a picture of where you are. You are probably not able to do that right now on race, gender and religious diversity as well. We would be happy to share that information with you. Thank you very much. Again, i really appreciate your being here today. It was reassuring to me, one of the challenges i think that is apparent to all of us appearing today is that you have a very broad mandate and the mission is critical. The resources are limited and, thus, having Performance Measures and understanding, you know, what the mission is, is important. Im not going to ask you today to give us your specific measures of effectiveness, but thats something id like to follow up on, just, it would be helpful to you, including if we need to do anything on the legislative side, how can we really focus and target on what is essential given the broad mandate. So thank you much and we will stay in touch. I just want to echo, just say thank you again, you are literally trying to do a startup operation in a sense, learn to build a plane and fly at the same time. So grateful to your commitment to country and the patriotism you have shown throughout your entire career. Thank you very much for being with us here today. Thank you so much. I am proud of my team and the work they are doing and we truly thank you for this opportunity is there thank you. Well go ahead with our second panel now. We have two experts as i say who are going to join us. And i will let them come up to the front. Great. First we have mr. Daniel blumenthal, mr. Blumenthal is director of Asian Studies and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise institute. As i said he has testified before congress before on this topic. We were impressed with his testimony and dr. Elena plaakova is a 2 true expert in this area. I had an opportunity to see her in action at the Munich International conference talking to International Partners and ngos. With her today is her mother, irena. So i want to recognize you as well. I know you must be very proud. Senator booker is going to join us in a second. He has seen the testimony, so im going to ask you all to go ahead, your written testimony will be printed in the record in its entirety. So i ask you to keep your oral testimony under 5 minutes. Then we will have a chance for some give and take. And i will ask doctor, or mr. Blumenthal if he would go first. Yes. Absolutely. Thank you, senator portland and senator booker, when he comes back for holding this very important hearing. As youve heard, the disinformation censorship and propaganda threat is one of the greatest challenges we face. I think when you are talking about china and the Chinese Communist party, you have to put it under the rubrik of china is committing and engaged in Political Warfare against us and information, disinformation and censorship are one key pillar of that Political Warfare. They have been doing so for many, many years. And we have just started to engage that fight. Political warfare meaning trying to undermine our position in the world, our alliances. Our own democratic system through all means other than actual military warfare. As i outlined in my written testimony, there are an unbelievable number of organizations in china that are involved in propaganda censorship, harassment of the media, western and internal. At least ten that i mentioned, and even more than that. Thats all to say that its a feature of the Chinese Communist party system. Its not a bug. The system is built on lies. And is afraid of the truth. So, the truth even when it comes to talking about the coronavirus, part of the reason i think that we are facing a greater virus is because there was a coverup in china for a matter of almost two months. And as we now know, people who try to tell the truth in china, doctors and journalists and so on were punished, detained and arrested. China goes after these people because the Chinese Communist party cannot live with the exposure of any kind of mismanagement or corruption or injustice. But the entire panaply of china is humongous. They go after western media, as weve seen recently. They kicked out wall street journalists who were because of an oped that they didnt like that was on the opinion page. They recently arrested the hong kong tycoon and Freedom Fighter jimmy y because of a pop journal. Dont write an oped in the wall street journal if you want to stay in china. That on the media. In my testimony i say china has an innovative strategy to shut down the free speech of westerners. So if you look at the case this year of the National Basketball association, you look at the case of hollywood, there are at least six more organizations in china that censor content coming from hollywood. And the themes are very clear. Americans probably know skrr well they have never seen a chinese villain in a hollywood movie. The themes are always the u. S. Is decadent and cowardly and does it wrong in places like africa and so forth and the chinese are brave and ascendant and so forth. There are again 16 organizations that go through the content of movies in china before theyre allowed to be shown. So, the free speech writes, theyre trying to block access to the market using and shut down peoples ability even to say things like we support the hong kong, the hong kong protests. As i say in my written testimony, taiwan has been ground zero in terms of election, attempted election interference. But taiwan actually fought back and gives us good lessons. It fought back in working with social media in sending out mems right away, mum russ mems to combat the kind numerous memms to combat the kind of information they put out. A lot of lessons to be learned there. In terms of what we should do about all this. I think we got it, some of it. But i would add we need to be more on offense, so, we obviously need to continue doing what we are doing and treating Chinese Media personas as foreign agents, because thats what they are. There is no free media. They are foreign agents of the Chinese Communist party. We need to keep kicking them out, putting caps on them, register as foreign agents. We can do a lot more offensively in terms of going into china with mandarin speakers, telling our story, telling the story of successful places that are like taiwan that are chinese language speaking and culture that are democratic. Putting china more on defense, because the people of china are, from what we know, extremely fed up with the role of the Chinese Communist party. To engage in a Political Warfare in a much more robust fashion. Id love to see us go back to some organization, the gc could lead like the like the usia, it creates a cadre of the entire career path network is in this space and engaged in the fight against china and of course russia and other place and see the role in their job and their career paths developing into information warriors, information operators, taking it out of the realm of the military and putting it at the state department. Thank you mr. Blumenthal. We will follow up on all of that. Doctor. Thank you, senator portman, senator booker. I particular want to thank you senator portman and murphy who couldnt stay for your bipartisan leadership work on this specific issue. I think without your efforts in expanding the role of gc, we would not be here today so thank you for that its a true honor and privilege to be able to address you here today. Before i begin on the substantive issues, i want to acknowledge that even though the president and ceo of the center for european policy analysis, which is a nonprofit, nonpartisan independent Foreign Policy think tank here in washington, my views are my own and do not represent those of the organization, which takes no institutional position. President Vladimir Putins seems to weaken governments in transatlantic institutions, discredit liberal values and create a posttruth world. But first and foremost, russia disinformation aims to undermine u. S. Leadership across the world. You only have to watch a few minutes of russian language state sponsored media at home in russia to understand the level of animosity that the kremlin has for the United States. And it very much sees itself locked in a battle for role dominance with the United States. I want to make it clear that these kind of campaigns as we have heard and our discussions of the coronavirus are not limited to elections. In fact, any disruptive world event such as a virus spread, that we are experiencing today, is an ample opportunity and Fertile Ground for disruption and for spreading these kind of disinformation influence operations. The spread of disinformation is just one part of a broader Political Warfare toolkit in russias arsenal. Just as my colleague, mr. Blumenthal mentioned on china. I think we see a lot of similarity here in how this information fits into this broader Foreign Policy objective of russia and china. Of course, its not new. I have been working in russian disinformation long before it became the issue dujour. Likewise, ukraine, georgia, the Baltic States have been the testing ground and the test labs of Russian Disinformation Campaigns for quite some time. As a result in some ways are far more resill eient than resilient than us. Unfortunately, they woke up late to the challenge. The good news of the wakeup call in 2016 is we have now moved from admiring the problem to entering a new trial and error stage, where we are trying if you efforts, including policies, social media activities and research to counter and build resilience to this threat. I want to highlight three ib sights that emerged over the last few years. One is that there is no Silver Bullet for addressing this problem. A whole of society, not just the whole of government approach is badly needed. Second, as we, meaning democratic governments, Tech Companies and Civil Society have responded since 2016, their tactics have evolved. My concern is that were not keeping up with the evolution of the adversarial threat. In my working testimony, detail that quite at length but just do mention three ways in which the russian Information Operations have evolved. One russian off operations have gone global. Not only in terms of its scope. But in terms of how other countries are copying this playbook. The russian playbook is global. The russian information has gone global and further afield to africa and also south america. The russian influence operations are full spectrum ecosystem approach. They operate across multiple platforms. They operate across multiple media platforms. Not just social media platforms. And in direct concert and focus with their other tools of Political Warfare, including paramilitary groups recent lip. Lastly, russias engagement warfare by proxy. This is important. Increasingly, theyre using cutouts, local groups and individuals and local servers to mask their or begins. This means that origins. This means exposure important is quickly becoming difficult if not impossible. The defacto seat today is the line between domestic voices protected in most democracies by free speech rights and certainly by the First Amendment here and inauthentic behavior foreign disinformation we have been talking about here, that line has essentially disappeared. Lastly, to get ahead of this threat, instead of reacting to desperate attacks in a whackamole fashion, we have to invest into resistance at the same time as getting on the defensive to deter future disInformation Operations of this nature. Our response must be calibrated. To me these future challenges as russia and other state actors will continued to use multifacet influence operations to undermine u. S. Credibility and global leadership. I can go into quite a few details in terms of recommendationings. But in the interest of time, ill stop here. Great, thank you very much. You have given us lots to chew on here. Because there are so much. We will not have time today to go into every detail. Again we appreciate your constant help on the legislation, specifically. Both of you were helpful in developing it. And we appreciate the continued briefings and as you say this is an evolving issue. As it evolves, we have to be nimble and to be able to change our strategies. Lets talk about money for a second. Because we were debating earlier you know what should the budget be . Is it 60 million, is it 130 million, can you put that into some context for us . Mr. Blumenthal, you talked about Chinese State media. You talked in the past doctor about the amount russia is spending not just on stateowned media but media here within the United States and within the district of colombia. Can you give us some sense of what that would be and as compared to the 60 to 130 million we are talking about . I would be happy to start on the russia question. One, its not such a straight forward question to answer. Because, of course, we dont know how often we are spending on covert operations. Most of what they are doing in the Digital Domain isco sert vert. The bot networks, the obfuscations of the attacks, what we know these are broad as they dont publish as much as we do, the least estimate russia spends on rt, which is a global foreign language, meaning english and other Languages Network is around 300 million. But that number is severalyearsold. And we have no updates since then. Those include a whole swath of other overt government media outlets, being one of them. Tahas and many, many others. So some estimates put that number well over a billion. But again this is an estimate. We know local russian language media, the russians spend at least 3. 1 billion in u. S. Dollars. So on the whole, its very difficult to judge covering overt ops. Most experts say its upwards of 2 to 3 billion a year. Thats help. I heard 1. 3 billion number just for state run media alone. Its a conservative estimate given that you say so much activity is covert. Again, lets compare that to what we are talking about in terms of 30 million. Mr. Blumenthal, thoughts about that . Those numbers are so opaque and you just cant trust a lot of the numbers. We do know that in the unclassified realm, that china now spends more on what they call internal security on the Peoples Liberation armys external missions, which, you know, they spend at least 130 billion on external missions. So internal security is in the billions, if not over 100 billion. Now, how much of that goes to censorship propaganda, disinformation . Its even tougher to know. I would just name some organizations that so to get a movie into china, to get movie content from hollywood into china, you have to go through not just the normal organizations that look at film like the state administration for radio and television and the ministry of information out and state counsel, you also have to go through the state Ethnic Affairs commission. You have to go through the ministry of public security, the state religious affairs, the ministry of justice, ministry of Foreign Affairs and other bureaucratic entities. So i would say we are looking at billions and billions of dollars spent on sencensoring content. Then for the Chinese People themselves to absorb and for the world to absorb. And then, money spent on detaining journalists, thats police and internal security. Money spent on kicking out journalistles. Then i think what could be very helpful, perhaps even for congress to do is to get the Intelligence Community to map out the actual funding of quote unquote state media. So who is behind so 10 cent for example which we consider publicly traded tech company, funds a lot of the state media, which are actually, which are actually agents of the government here in the United States and in europe and in other places. Pushing the party line. So the money is gigantic. Then, of course, there is how do you calculate the money of denying access to Certain Companies if they dont tow the party line in china . Well, again, its staggering. And what we are doing pales in comparison and our effort again is about exposing and providing an accurate narrative. Its not about disinformation. Its about information. But i think that was helpful to put that in some context on ukraine, in particular, doctor, you and i talked a lot about ukraine and youre an expert on much of what has happened there. I think it might be interesting to talk a little about the focused disinformation efforts that continue we talked about since the revolution of dignity russia has been active. The im the cochair of the ukraine caucus along with senator murphys and others, we have been involved in these issues. The president has a lot on his hands right now. One thing is disinformation. Can you talk specifically about what the russians are doing in ukraine to sew the crimea and the dambas and the role to help ukraine in this disinformation battle . Thank you for that question, senator. As i mentioned earlier, ukraine continues to be victim number one and target number one for russian disinformation and Political Warfare efforts. And it doesnt just stop with disinformation. Ukraine has also been the primary target of some of the most damaging Cyber Attacks we have seen in history in recent years. And i think what we have learned in this country is that what happens in ukraine doesnt stay in ukraine, all of these tactics event wanlly come to us and our other allies in western europe as welt in the nato alliance. What we have seen in the last few years is that the kind of proxy Information Warfare mentioned was first tested in ukraine. The first instance we learned about an open source was around the ukrainian parliamentary elections last year in 2018. The intelligent agencies arrested an individual who confessed to be an officer sent to ukraine to try to convince domestic ukrainians to sell or rnt out their facebook accounts, they would use zombie accounts to propagate different kind of ads. Then we saw them deploy that scale in africa in the fall. So you see a very short time line from the tests in ukraine in may. Then in october, we learned that they were carrying out this kind of proxy warfare on a large scale across i believe almost a dozen african countries that facebook identified. So i think we need to fol tloe low these kind of patterns. We have been discussing the russian disinformation in this country which the gc as we heard earlier worked together with media to expose. In ukraine, we know the russian language media has been trying to sew chaos and propagate kind of attacks on asian minorities in ukraine. That then, there have been a few instances of attacks in some ukrainian towns of people of east asian origin and this type of narrative has been propagated. The other information we see the russia disinformation machine covert operators pushing out is that the coronavirus was invented by the cia not just by linda and bill gates. This was a pattern we saw in the soviet era and we continue to see today in first informers that happens in ukraine and on ukrainian soil. Thank you much. Senator booker. Thank you so much. So, just, i want to jump in, you guys can kick the tires a little bit of the gec. You know theres a whole bunch of stove piping going on. I think you got agencies, dod, fbi, other intelligence trying to deal with the problem of disinformation. And there seems to be a very centralized highly funded, highly resource state actors that were going up against in this new war. Theyre not matching us tank for tank, Aircraft Carrier for Aircraft Carrier, this seems to be one of their ways to undermine western democracies. Just tell me as an outsider, do you believe the structure that we have set up here and the gec, is this the most effective way for us to counter this massive statesponsored undermining of western democracies, our country, at a time where ive never seen in my lifetime, the suspicion that americans have now for institutions, how well allyings and conspiracys theories weaken our culture. This weakens our bond to come together. Meanwhile, china has built 18,000 miles of high speed rail, the busiest corridor in north america from boston to washington, d. C. Runs half an hour slower, because we cant get together anymore even in a society to Work Together and meet our common threat. So, i just want you to, from outsiders, tell us, is this the best way to match the threat that we see growing in influence and strength from our foreign adversaries . You know, i guess i have been at i think we never should have gotten rid of the uscia as an independent agency which wasnt seated in any one department could coordinate with some real power across the cia and across dod and not only stop active measures that we used to call them from the soviet union but take that active measures inside the soviet bloc so the short answer to your question is no we are where we are. I think if the gec is properly funded and doesnt have to fight with special forces command and others about who has the authority, they should be in the lead. I mean, special forces command is a war fighting command. Particularly on the china issue. Which is a Strategic National level issue with the kind of things that im talking about is kicking out of u. S. Media, trying to control the content of what we say, trying to stop our free speech rights, going after our allies. Going after countrys we want to win over in africa. So you know, it should not be a military lead by any stretch of the imagination. I think if theyre given the proper authorities and can actually coordinate inner Agency Action and have the power and authority to do so, have enough chinese language linguists, who know the culture well, and not only know the information environment in china well and not only can identify the disinformation and identify these socalled media people here in the United States and kick them out under the authorities they have, we can actually go into china and tell our story or tell the truth, you know, i think, you know, well meet, well, it will be better than what weve had over the last few years. . Right. I would say that the challenge that i have with what you are saying is, i understand that the china propaganda machine. Theyre affecting our companies, business, undermining fair play and economy, so forth. Thats a little different to me. Maybe im wrong than chinas efforts to undermine our democracy, their offensive efforts. And so, could you just help me understand that distinction and because i get confused when you Start Talking about you know disney who doesnt ive actually talked to people in these industries about if you want to to have a block buster film, you no longer have a chinese villain. Its different than the chinese insinuating fear around the coronavirus here or interfering with our elections so there is more chaos created. So let me connect the two. Because i believe that once you start affecting the way hollywood or the National Basketball association, lets say hollywood, does its content, it feeds back into the United States and without noticing it, the American People are all of a sudden getting movies that are like top gun this summer that are affected by what the chinese thid and what we think made people take off on taiwanese and japanese flights i insurance your point. Thats a fair point. And getting nba stars to cow tow on the issue. Thats affecting our free speech rights in the United States. But in terms of the specifics that are you talking about, so the number 1, 2 and 3 ways that i do it, which is different than russia is, is through, you know, weve tolerated shin interestsh the institutes, im conflating them all because they all work for the same organizations, thats to be here posing as news reporters. Really you pick up your newspaper at the Washington Post. You get the china daily out of it. Its prop gatding the chinese line about their ideological world view, which by definition undermines our own world view. Its an authoritarian world view. Its a deceitful world view. And it just has no business being credential that is media here in the United States. Please, please. Ill say the big difference between russia and china is resources. The chinese no doubt have a far greater ability and capability to not just play at the margins, especially in Digital Domain, which is relatively cheap. Its very cheap to build a bot army. Its cheap to have a control that controls 50 accounts et cetera. The chinese have been doing different parts of the world, correct me if im mistaken there, isco opting local Media Organizations that are then putting out information local languages that is a positive take on china in general. L and that insid with us process is a longterm strategy, whereas the russians are playing very much a short or mediumterm strategy. I completely agree with my colleague that we completely dismantled our ability to message and to reach vulnerable populations in front line states. We still have voa, okay. But these entities are set up to fight 20th century information wars. We are not in the 20th century anymore. So we may want to consider Something Like the usia. The usia has to be a 21st Century Digital usia. Because the place we are falling behind is in that digital space. We dont have clear coordination as we heard earlier, between the Tech Companies and the end of the day, its not just about content as you said earlier, senator, its about the Distribution System that enables the amplification and magnification of that content and the precise microtargeted delivery of that content to specific vulnerable situation. That is the beast we have to fight. So the gec, just to finish, before i pass it back to the chairman. The gec is not your ideal way, its important, theyre dock important tasks. But given the looming threat thats not your theyre fought fully equipped to deal with the modern crisis we are facing. It is a good start. But we need to do so much more. I think first and foremost is a funding question we have been discussing. Second, there is a political mandate question. There needs to be an under secretary level position to own this problem. Until we have that, i dont think were going to get the kind of interagency whole of government response that we are looking for. Yeah. I again as i am reassured by what ms. Gabriel has done and the new budget request and her ambitious plans, but, i think its somewhat personality driven. Shes been effective at getting things done at a higher level. So i dont disagree with you that having someone that has the ability to work at the interagency level, because they have responsibility and authority would be help. So kicking it up to a higher level. I will say in the case of this, secretary of state, he testified in this room, where you all are sitting about this very topic and was very supportive and i think thats been one of the reasons he has been successful. That may not be the case in the future. Just quickly, i think its fascinating what you are saying ability the different approaches. We need to be cognizant of that one story i have heard recently, maybe disinformation. But i dont think so is with regard to chinas activities in africa. We talked about this earlier. I think this is one reason, gec wants to get more involved in africa. On your question about media it was actually buying or acquiring Media Companies and then providing the people of these poor countries a network and, you know, nightly news and morning news and noon news that they didnt otherwise have, but it was all based on chinas interest in propagating their own narrative and so on the one hand, its great that these communities now thanks, to the Chinese Government have better infrastructures or in this case media infrastructure, but not if its going to be disinformation as opposed to what you are saying about russia, which is not that long view, necessarily, its more taking the coronavirus and immediately taking a distrust and misinformation about that is that true, mr. Blumenthal . It is true. Its even worse than that in a sense that, so companies that are well funded like shinua or the global times or other Global Companies that we know here have Training Programs for african journalists and have and sometimes are the only source of information even though its disinformation in these countries, they are going out and id say its the entire spectrum from being able to propagate the chinese line to report the way chinese wants. Cc tv is another one of those companies that is becoming more prevalent in the rest of the world. Theyre purchasing, theyre purchasing other companies or theyre providing or theyre maintaining presence opening presence in some of the countries you are talking about. Training, supposedly training journalists and also teaching other dictators how to sensor content is another big one. So this is a huge challenge and the gec is not equipped to handle that. So lets take an individual african country that has this opportunity to have a network set up. Its more partnering with i would assume those countries and regional organizations of countries to be able to understand what the threat is and to provide assistance so they dont have to rely on that, is that the answer there . Is that more of a state Department Function . Partly. We also have great ngos who have been really very ahead of the curve, human rights watch, freedom house. I mean, they are the ones who came out with the first reports and analysis on this chinese sharp power in these countries that identified exactly by not identifying, which is they are training generations of africans and others to tow the Chinese Communist party line or i should say and or to support dictatorships in their own countries. So, you know, the National Endowment for democracy has a role. Freedom house has a role. The state department has a role some of the intelligence action versus a roam. If we can get if the American People would get a real sort of network map of which Chinese Party organization is funding which Media Organization or which Training Program for journalists, you know, that first level of transparency i think would help us a lot to see the scope. I think thats a part of the broader issue we are dealing with, with china, including here with regard to confucius institutes and the programs we heard a lot recently with dr. Lieber and so on. On the ngo issue. I know both of you are very involved and with Civil Society more broadly and the socalled Fact Checkers. Which i agree with you. If we can continue to support those kind of organizations, some of whom may not be precisely aligned with the gec on the way to approach this, the best practices earlier. On the other hand, theyre out there doing incredible work we cant afford to do as a country and often their state actors themselves, so a small country in the baltics you talked about earlier can play a role here. Can you talk about how we can leverage more in the Ngo Community and among the smaller democracies to get them to be more effective . Thank you for that question. Like on the elements, the gec that we havent discussed is their funding capabilities to local organizations. I think that has been critical in jump starting quite a bit of work, especially in Central Eastern Baltic States. The balkans and elsewhere to give these small groups that dont have funding otherwise to be able to carry out this important work. I think this signals the kind of advantage that we have as a democracy, is that you look at russia. You look at china, their approach is top down at the end of the day to any problem. Our approach will never be that way. So we have to rely on a bottomup structure. We empower local organizations, in organic but decentralized way to know their local contacts better than we do. To give them the running room, the independence to do their work and the gecs ability to fund should be maintained and increased in the next budgetary request. So its been so critical in creating this organic response to disinformation efforts, especially in Central Eastern europe. I will say one thing is that i mentioned earlier, these countries will target these attacks, especially in the ukraine and Baltic States have also built better resilience against them. I would also point to the nordic states. Rt swedish tried and failed in sweden for a reason. Nobody took it seriously because there was a genuine high level of awareness, this was a russianfunded media outlet and nobody paid attention to it. That resilience is something we can learn from. Its something that western European Countries can learn from. So i wouldnt just look at Eastern Europe as a place we need to support and fund. We should be looking at a place to take some lessons home. Great points. Sorry we didnt talk about that enough earlier in terms of what gec is doing in screening and providing help to some of these ngos, other members of Civil Society, to build that resilience of the smaller democracies. So they called for a vote, mr. Chairman, that means at some point we will have to leave here. Maybe i want to ask this general, if you have a chance, you got two senators here, are you guys concerned, worried . Or alarmed at the american responses as it stands now to what china, russia, other foreign nationals, you said doctor, you said that the russians playbook is not just worrisome because theyre Getting Better at their playbook, also it is being copied by other countries. So you can see more and more of these things spreading. I want you to know, you have a moment on the record to say you guys are concerned, given all that we are doing. Or worried or just like sound the alarm. This is the modern day paul revere. The chinese are coming. The russians are coming. Wake up, you are not doing enough. Where are you, guys . If were talking about worry, concern, alarm scale. Yes. I would say that im between concerned and alarmed. Okay. I dont think we should panic. We are the United States. We have the greatest economy in the world. We have the greatest Alliance Structure in the world. We are so capable of responding to this threat. The reason im concerned is not because the im concerned about our inability to respond. I think were very capable as a country as a government to respond. If, but im concerned that its been such a polarizing such a partisan issue that we havent been able to get the kind of momentum that we would need to be able to respond in the way that we should. So obviously my concern is less about russia destroying our democracy and i want to, i do not want us to go to that panic alarm mode. My concern is more that we need to get our act together at home to be able to respond effectively. Okay. Senator, it depends on the day, sometimes concerns, sometimes alarm. You know, when i wake up in the morning and read that were capping Chinese State media from being in the United States or using the foreign agents, the Foreign Missions act to kick them out of the United States, im less alarmed. Im you know when i see that the fbi is actually in the Justice Department Chinas Initiative is actually going after both influencers, political influencers as well as espionage, im happy we are slowly waking up. But it is, the scope that i described is alarming also. And the idea that china has engaged in a comprehensive, its not china as a whole, its the Chinese Communist party is engaged in this comprehensive effort to undermine our position in the world and undermine democracy and train others to be dictatorships and authoritarian and tow their line and in the 19th Party Congress report to say they want a whole different world order based on chinese value, the ccp values, it is alarming. And were getting started. But again you look at just american, even elite Public Awareness of, of the concerted effort to undermine content, to undermine free speech to undermine basic values. You know, were just not there yet. But its fascinating to me, im sorry, i know my history of the cold war. Yeah. We took it very, seriously. We were a whom, a whole nation state, bipartisan commitment to stopping the spread of the soviet unions influence. Now its a different day. But you know this is a great story. For the chairman, jeff flake, who i chaired the submount with. The african subcommittee. Were flying over, mugabe, coons was on that trip. Bipartisan group, ready to put sanctions, have free and fair election, emerson, mugabe, we landed in zimbabwe, honor different principles and ideals. Theyre coming in from china. Their message to him was, we dont care what you do. So i am alarmed, to be frank, that, that the chinese are looking at this as a 25, 50year process. Were seeing this in election cycles. Were not having consensus on the breath and the depth of the problem. Were still dealing with this in with still piping but yet the planet earth right now is in this battle between authoritarian governments and free democracies. Frankly, whats our scorecard in the last ten years . I can go through hungary, i can start naming countries that are shifting more towards authoritarian im. Elections are being challenged, interference from brexit elections to eu elections to here at home, mad gas madagascar, so i dont know if our capabilities are matching what the threat is. As i see first hand now having the incredible privilege of still on this committee, from what i have witnessed with my own eyes when i visit africa or other places, im really concerned about hour ability to keep ut right now. It seems to me, even though the great patriots in the administration and great committed folks, that we are not taking this threat as seriously as we should. And with that, mr. Chairman, unless you all want to comment on anything i said, a final word in my minute and 40 second left. I agree with all that, in fact, id say its even worse, the chinese have been doing this since the end of the cold war and the Tiananmen Square massacre and since they identified us as the main threat to the regime, this has been going on for an extremely long time. The one positive note is the taiwanese fought back successfully. In a massive disinformation campaign, working with twitter, google and facebook and we help them. The u. S. Government helped them. The closer they are to china, the more they dislike the ccp and they see the problem. But in general, i agree with you. Thank you very much. Just very briefly. I agree with you as well. We think the combination of china and russia activities around the world is a cause for alarm. In the longterm leadership of the world and health and democracy in the world. I think that speaks to the point why every country mat matters and why we have to be there before they are and why we are starting to lose ground we are not identifying vulnerable areas in how to reach vulnerable countries. Its not just about ukraine. Its about a variety of countries across the world. Its also what i think countries like ukraine matter a lot. Just like countries like taiwan matter so much and deserve continued u. S. Support on a strategic level. And before i close out, i want to say its very important for the congressional record to hold it for all history to come that when the doctor came here, she kaymerious because she brought her mother here to back her up. You saw this was so important, you have generational strength here. Can you say her mom . This is my mom irena poyakova. She brought me here from the soviet union. Im always grateful to that. What a great immigrant american story. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, to both of you for some very helpful inciteful testimony. I will leave on a more positive note. Which is i look around the world and i see all of these sort of nonkinetic activities and the disinformation campaigns and theyre troubling, to be sure. But to dr. Poyakova points about democracies, we have an ultimate weapon here, which is the strength of people and just being heard and bottomup rather than top down and i look at whats happened in ukraine, just in the last five years. I look at whats happened in places like bolivia, macedonia, despite massive efforts. There are some Success Stories and we should learn from those. Not that we are done in any of those countries, by the way. We have lots of work to do. But we have to figure out how to better organize ourselves, thats why we started the gec. Its not going to solve all the problems as you said earlier, there is no one solution, doctor, but your testimony today has been very helpful for us to get a better feel for that. The one issue we did not address and i think we should have gotten deeper in response to to questions we will have is with regard to social media platforms. You mentioned how on facebook and twitter it has been helpful with regard to taiwan. They also have played a role. Its not as helpful. We need to talk about that and figure out how to Work Together to push back and to ensure the right information is out there for people to make decisions on their own and to promote more freedom and democracy. Thank you all for being here toda today. [inaudible conversations]. Follow the federal response to the coronavirus at cspan. Org slash coronavirus. You can find white house briefings, hearings with Key Public Health officials and interviews with Public Health specialists, review the latest events any time at cspan. Org coronavirus. Cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up wednesday morning, well discuss the latest on the coronavirus and the u. S. Response with Pennsylvania Republican congressman dan museer on the economic effects. Then democratic congresswoman kim shryeer will be on to talk about outbreak efforts in hard hit washington state. And the American Healthcare associations dr. David gifford discusses how Nursing Homes and other assisted living facilities are dealing with coronavirus outbreaks. Watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern wednesday morning. Join the discussion. Dr. Record redfield and dr. Anthony fauci along with other Emergency Response officials testify on the coronavirus outbreak before the House Oversight and reform committee. Watch live wednesday morning at 9 30 eastern on cspan 3. Also online at cspan. Org and listen online with the cspan radio app. Acting Deputy Ken Cuccinelli heads to capitol hill on wednesday to testify on the federal response to the coronavirus outbreak. Watch that live 2 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan3, cspan. Org or the listen radio app. John Charles Fremont brought the Pacific Coast into the United States. At the beginning of the story, the United States the havent a Pacific Coast. There was territory in oregon disputed with britain and california which belonged to mexico. Fremont encouraged the american settlement of oregon and took part in the american conquest of california just in time for the gold rush and so he did play a real role in changeing the map of the United States. Npr morning edition host Steve Innskeep on imperfect union. That you they invented celebrity and helped cause the civil