Foreign Influence and Democratic Governance

Panelists discuss CFR’s recently released Council Special Report on foreign influence, democratic governance, and election interference.

This meeting is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.

KAHLER: Good afternoon and welcome to today’s Council on Foreign Relations meeting, “Foreign Influence and Democratic Governance.” I am Miles Kahler, senior fellow for global governance here at the Council on Foreign Relations. And I’ll be presiding over today’s discussion.

We are joined today by CFR members attending in person in D.C. and virtually over Zoom. Although your invitation to this meeting described it as a discussion of my Council special report that was published in October of 2024, we will also devote today’s meeting to an updating of the special report in light of events since its publication, the 2024 campaign and election and the changes undertaken by the new administration.

I’m especially pleased to have three expert panelists for our conversation. Their published work, along with that of many others, is reflected in the special report. You will find their complete, impressive biographies in your programs. Let me introduce them: Jessica Brandt, former director, Foreign Malign Influence Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; Norm Eisen, who is co-founder and executive chair of the State Democracy Defenders Fund; and Audrye Wong, Jeane Kirkpatrick fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and assistant professor of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California. Welcome to the panelists.

Let me begin the conversation with Jessica Brandt. 2024 was described as the year of elections in many of the world’s major democracies, including the United States. What is your assessment of the role played by foreign governments and other actors in their efforts to exert malign influence during the election campaign and the election itself?

BRANDT: Sure. Well, first, thanks for having me and for enabling me to participate in some of the conversations that led up to the report.

Maybe I could just start by sort of highlighting three big trends that we faced—that sort of shaped the landscape heading into the election. You know, the first was just a greater number of more diverse, capable actors who are interested in conducting these kind of influence operations—state and nonstate. The second is the rise of, like, commercial firms providing sort of influence for hire services, which, of course, you know, had the effect of increasing the number of actors who are capable of, you know, conducting these kinds of operations, making them more sophisticated, and also, I think very importantly, making it much harder for a harder for us to sort of track back the initial instigator, or the—you know, to attribute these kinds of operations. And then the third I think is sort of most obvious, is the rise of relevant emerging technologies—AI, big data analytics—that, again, you know, lower costs, you know, make it possible for a greater number of actors to conduct targeted campaigns and further complicate attribution.

So this was sort of the landscape that we faced heading into the—into the election cycle. Was, sort of, more complex than ever before. What did we actually see? You know, ODNI consistently said Russia was the most prolific actor. It had sort of four goals. You know, one was to shape the outcome of the presidential election in favor of the then-former president. The other is to shape congressional outcomes, sort of to dampen support for pro-Ukraine policies and candidates. You know, the third was to diminish confidence in the election process. And the fourth was to amplify social splits. And there’s a lot of information in the public record, you know, about the tools and tactics that Russia used. You know, I commend you the DOJ, you know, released an affidavit, an indictment in early September. There were a handful of election security updates, you know, lots of sort of messaging about the kinds of tactics that we saw.

And then there was Iran, which had three goals to shape the presidential outcome. But for them, it was, you know, to steer it away from an outcome that they viewed as more likely to increase tensions, and then also to diminish confidence in, you know, electoral and democratic institutions and to amplify social splits. You’re all familiar with the Hack-and-Leak operation, which was widely reported. And then, of course, there’s China, which focused its efforts at the sub-national level, you know, seeking to influence congressional races where there were candidates, regardless of party, that, you know, they viewed as important for their sort of core interests, particularly with respect to Taiwan. And, of course, to paint, you know, our democracy as chaotic and ineffective. So that’s sort of the influence landscape.

Then there’s interference. The IC defines interference as—the intelligence community—defines interference as, like, efforts to disrupt or degrade our ability to actually conduct elections. And, you know, the government said that it did not observe foreign actors attempting to seek to interfere in the conduct of the election.

KAHLER: So, going back to your point about artificial intelligence, you seem to be saying it wasn’t a transformative influence on foreign influence.

BRANDT: Yeah, I think, you know, what we said is it was a malign influence accelerant, but it wasn’t, you know, in this case, fully transformative. You know, Russia, again, most prolific actor, you know, across audio, text, images, video, you know, produced—you know, used AI to produce content. We saw Iran do this, you know, creating, like, inauthentic articles on, you know, sort of fake news websites, for example. And China did use AI as part of its influence campaigns, but these were sort of broader campaigns designed to shape views, you know, about, you know, Beijing globally, and, you know, to amplify sort of divisive social issues.

KAHLER: And you mentioned that interference was not detected, that the election infrastructure was secure. Is that, because the foreign powers that are our adversaries or rivals see that as a red line that they should not cross?

BRANDT: Yeah, I mean, what we saw was—you know, what the IC has said is we didn’t see anybody try to do it. Now, why, you know, is sort of anyone’s guess. But I think it’s, you know, sort of reasonable to say that they may view that as a red line.

KAHLER: OK. Let me ask you about the interaction of government agencies, which is mandated, to detect malign foreign influence, and their interaction with other actors such as social media platforms and state and local governments, which has been subject to certain scrutiny and certainly political controversy. How would you describe that interaction?

BRANDT: Yeah, sure. Well, first, I’d say it’s a whole-of-society problem that requires a whole-of-society effort. And so, you know, there’s roles here for government, for technology companies, for state and local governments, journalists, et cetera. You know, in terms of ODNI, you know, engaged with a wide range of technology companies, as it does on an ongoing basis. You know, those engagements were really focused at the strategic level. So, you know, talking about the kinds of evolving adversary, you know, tools and tactics. We’re not talking at the level of the account that kind of conversation, that happens—you know, FBI conducts that kind of conversation according to FBI’s authorities.

And then, in terms of our engagements with state and local officials, those were, you know, robust and regular. We, you know, met state and local officials around the country in places where they work. You know, we held regular briefings. So every time we, you know, released one of the routine election security updates we provided briefings or offered them to state and local officials so that they—you know, there were no surprises. And I think, you know, they are just incredibly important actors in this ecosystem. They’re really on the frontlines every day conducting our elections. And we view our role, you know, as the federal government, to support, you know, them in their work.

KAHLER: OK. Well, let me ask you then, in closing, how should the U.S. government—not just this administration but any future administration—assess the threat of malign foreign influence to our institutions, and act on their view of that threat?

BRANDT: Yeah. I guess I’d say, like, I sort of view this as a persistent asymmetric competition between the United States and authoritarian challengers that’s happening, you know, in the information domain. And so first we have to understand the nature of the competition, that it is persistent, that it is asymmetric, that our adversaries are sort of choosing tools that they believe, you know, suit their interests, right? Democracies depend on a healthy information environment in order to thrive, right? They sort of depend on the idea that the truth is knowable, and citizens can discern it, and we can use it to govern ourselves. And autocrats have no such need for a healthy information environment to thrive. And so that’s why they resort to these tools. I think open information environments, you know, confer tremendous advantages on democracies over the long run, but in the short term they do create certain vulnerabilities. And that’s what our adversaries are exploiting.

So the task for us is, like, to resist, I think, the temptation to respond in a tit for tat way, because we’re ultimately just sort of perpetuating the conflict on territory that is more advantageous to the adversary, and rather do sort of an audit of our own strengths in this competition. And so I think that will require, you know, a handful of activities within the information domain supporting, you know, open information environments, because it’s the right thing to do but also because, you know, it puts autocrats on the back foot, for example. So a handful of things that we can do sort of within the information environment. But then we should be willing to think beyond it. So using cyber capabilities, for example. You know, of course, like, you know, in accordance with authorities, et cetera. But where we have advantages, you know, we should use them. You know, the centrality of our markets, you know, our financial leverage, et cetera, to go on offense in the places that I think are more conducive to our success.

KAHLER: Thanks.

So, Norm Eisen, let me turn to you. We’ve been talking about the kind of technological frontier of foreign influence. And I’d go to a very old-fashioned question of foreign influence, which is corruption. There have been several high-profile cases recently of foreign influence exerted through corruption. There was the conviction and sentencing of former Senator Bob Menendez, the indictment of Representative Henry Cuellar, whose trial is now set for September, and, of course, the investigation and indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. There’s a pattern here. They’re all Democrats. That’s one thing. But also those accused of bribing these officials were not associated with countries that are usually regarded as our adversaries—Egypt, Azerbaijan, Turkey.

And the other pattern is that in each case there was an appeal or an intervention by President Trump or the Trump administration. So Senator—former Senator Menendez made an appeal at his sentencing that he hopes Trump will clean up what he called “the cesspool,” which he regards the Southern District of New York—the prosecutors and such of the Southern District of New York. Trump early on suggested that Cuellar was being punished for his views on border security by the Biden administration, but nothing has happened on that front. And, of course, most recently the Department of Justice, after multiple resignations by prosecutors, asked that charges against Eric Adams should be dismissed without prejudice, something that’s being considered by Judge Ho as we meet.

So how serious is this avenue for malign foreign influence? Are these just cases that come up from time to time and we should expect this as part of the political landscape? And what is the future of enforcement in such cases?

EISEN: Miles, thank you for your report, for inviting me to be with you here today to consider these grave issues. It’s a pleasure to be here with Jessica, with Audrye.

I’ll start with the Eric Adams case, where we’ve been quite active at State Democracy Defenders, my nonpartisan nonprofit that works to shore up the foundations of our democracy as it’s backsliding. And I think this is—the pattern you point out, the Adams case, what may be to come in Menendez and Cuellar, is a significant degree of backsliding. I see wonderful friends in the audience from the legal community. And I’m going to address the Adams case in the context of really a large number of other moves by the new administration, including with respect to FCPA enforcement that I think open an avenue to foreign—considerable foreign influence, that that is a widening of gaps that already existed.

For those who haven’t followed the ins and outs of the Adams case, he’s accused of a series of inducements in the nature of quid pro quos that culminated in an alleged quid pro quo involving the Trump administration. In this case it’s various forms of benefit that he received from Turkish interests and in turn, the government has alleged, that he provided favors—real estate and other favors. The opening of—there was a delayed opening of a Turkish government office, and he allegedly sped that along.

We know—I know this, as a former ambassador, that every country in the world, including allies—Turkey is a NATO ally. They’re also an example of a backsliding democracy that was never able to reverse course. So they’re an ominous example. Erdogan is a poor role model, in my view, for President Trump. Not quite as bad as Mr. Orbán over in Hungary who’s the principal exemplar. We know that—and Hungary, also a NATO member and part of the EU, and very complex set of relationships there.

We know that countries like Turkey, ostensible allies—and allies in fact. Turkey has been a good ally in some ways in NATO, particularly historically—and as well as countries that have a more tense or even hostile relationship with the United States, and even friendly countries. I know this as ambassador, I was warned. Every foreign national that you deal with is an intelligence risk. (Laughs.) They all want—their nations all want something from the United States. So, in that environment, to have an enforcement action where we are trying to cut off, in the Adams prosecution, establish accountability for an American official—in my judgment, the evidence was quite strong—to see this kind of unraveling where you have bookended quid pro quos that are alleged—not only that, Adams did favors for Turkey, and the accountability then is that’s the front end, the basis of the prosecution.

Then we flip around to the back end, where an extremely conservative interim United States Attorney, as law clerk—former law clerk of the pillar of—one of the pillars, the idols of the conservative movement in the United States, the Republican Party that the current president purports to represent, Antonin Scalia was interim U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon’s mentor, her boss. She clerked for him. And she felt that the quid pro quo of the Trump administration and the Trump Justice Department—trading the termination of this prosecution in exchange for Eric Adams’ cooperating on immigration issues in the city of New York—she felt that that mirror image quid pro quo was so odious that she was compelled to resign.

And her resignation letter, if you haven’t looked at it, is really a—and six other senior prosecutors left with her, also quite—a number of them quite conservative. And her resignation letter is really, Miles, part of a response to your question, because, you know, she says this was a strong case, it was a meritorious case. There’s no grounds to drop it in order to do a quid pro quo exchange for immigration policy. And I think that this message to the world is, in a Donald Trump administration we’re open for business when it comes to foreign influence. And it’s not just this message. It’s that Donald Trump himself has a memecoin. Any foreign government that wants to influence Donald Trump can just buy his cryptocurrency, his digital currency.

He’s continuing to do business. We have a delegation in Saudi Arabia now shamefully selling Ukraine down the river. I never thought—he really outdid—far outdid Neville Chamberlain, who—however misguided Chamberlain was, negotiated in foolish good faith at Munich. Rubio, I never thought I would see former Senator Rubio parroting the—it was like Molotov-Ribbentrop part two in Riyadh. Who Donald Trump has business interests with the Saudis as well. The Constitution forbids him to take foreign emoluments. His businesses—anything of value. I litigated those cases in a prior administration. His business are sucking those in all over the planet.

He’s eliminated—there’s a DOJ enforcement memo that’s inviting—is going to lower the standards for—my friend Tom Firestone is here. He’s an authority. He knows all about this. He was working on these issues in the embassy in Moscow when I was the ambassador. They’re not going to enforce FCPA violations, as has historically been the case. Another loophole to foreign influence.

KAHLER: Let me ask you—let me ask you, Norm, about—

EISEN: I could go on, but I’ll stop there.

KAHLER: No, no. Let me—let me ask you briefly though on one other issue, which has loomed very large, and actually figured in the Menendez prosecution, which is the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the FARA. There have been many calls for reform of FARA. Some people say there are too many loopholes. Some people say it’s too broad. It could be used to persecute political opponents. I cite in the report an ABA proposal in 2021 which made some very sensible suggestions, I think, for reforming FARA. But enforcement has sort of swung from very lax to more rigorous. And now, from what we can tell from the current attorney general, it’s going to be much more relaxed than it has been. Is it—what’s your assessment? Very briefly, is it an effective instrument for regulating efforts at foreign influence? Or should it be reformed? One minute. (Laughter.)

EISEN: There have been challenges in using the FARA as a criminal prosecution mechanism. There have been notable failures with defendants on both sides of the political aisle. But I think as a civil mechanism and as a regulatory mechanism it can be effective. That’s part—that’s why things like how we’re handling the existing prosecutions, what our FCPA posture will be, what the acceptance of emoluments or not, the general posture of the administration on lawlessness—the FARA can be an effective tool, Miles, if there’s a tool kit.

The first rule of compliance, when I was President Obama’s ethics czar, and I’ll stop here, is tone at the top. And the tone at the top on foreign malign influence is the exact opposite of what we need it to be. Perhaps that should not come as a surprise from a president who has thirty-four felonies himself for election interference and cover up—2016 election interference and cover up. That’s the New York prosecution. It’s not a surprise, but it’s a profound disappointment, and makes both analysis and action all the more important.

KAHLER: OK. Thanks. Audrye, let me turn to you. We already mentioned the state and local level of government, which has received a lot less attention than the federal level in dealing with malign foreign influence. I did note in the special report one recent case of Chinese influence at the state and local level, a high-level aide to two New York governors who was indicted related to her work as a Chinese agent. Do you want to—could you tell us a little bit about the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party’s influence activities, especially at the state and local level, and how they’re organized?

WONG: Sure. Yeah. Thanks, Miles, for including me on this panel. It’s a pleasure to be here.

So let me outline—so I think—let me outline two ways in which the CCP has really been trying to exert influence at the state and local levels. A lot of these activities are conducted through the united front, which, you know, for those who are less familiar, is sort of this—it’s a party—it’s a government organ in China, but it’s sort of comprised of an amorphisms network of official, quasi-official, and grassroots civil society organizations in China and abroad, sort of trying to promote China’s interests, you know, co-opt friends and repress and silence critics. So, sort of two means and mechanisms of influence that I’ve seen in my ongoing work. One is community mobilization and second is political mobilization.

So, the first, in terms of community mobilization, that means grassroots and civic organizing, really trying to shape societal discourse. Getting people on the streets, especially ethnic Chinese communities. And so this really isn’t just about, you know, typical propaganda that’s, you know, trying to cultivate patriotism towards China. It’s really part of a more sophisticated and relatively new strategy of exploiting social divisions and getting involved in local issues, you know, in the United States. And actually actively playing on group identity politics as a way of, you know, trying to shape the behavior of overseas Chinese communities and expand Chinese influence.

So you see these united front Chinese government-linked actors really trying to activate a sense of threat to ethnic Chinese communities, highlighting how, you know, they’re the target of long-standing racial discrimination, of political marginalization in America. Really creating this us-versus-them mindset, right? And so in New York City, for example, you see the formation of united front-linked civil society groups with, you know, names that claim to protect Asian American rights to advocate for these issues. And these groups are organizing street protests and demonstrations, sometimes up to, you know, thousands of people, over issues such as affirmative action, standardized, you know, testing in schools, anti-Asian hate crimes, and, you know, more recently, over, you know, proposed homeless shelters in Chinese-majority neighborhoods.

So they’re waving American flags. They’re chanting slogans. You know, it says equal justice for AAPI communities. So they’re really good at co-opting, you know, broader societal political rhetoric, sort of the ongoing, contentious issues that we’re seeing in American society today, right, as opposed to just sort of sticking to traditional issues that China’s seen as caring about, like Taiwan or Xinjiang, right? But this is really key in laying the groundwork to promote China’s interests and foreign policy goals, right? The effect of such community mobilization is to present the Chinese government as, you know, protector of ethnic Chinese communities, really trying to cultivate a sense of loyalty and favorability towards the Chinese government, right?

And this, you know, brings me to my second point, which is community mobilization really creates a foundation for a political mobilization. And we’ve seen united front-linked actors explicitly articulate goals of, you know, cultivating preferred candidates, of sort of getting, you know, people into power. At protests, they are publicly endorsing—you know, exhorting demonstrators, right, to vote for, you know, certain politicians, certain, you know, assembly people in attendance, right? And so we’re starting to see the united front really operating almost like a political machine. And, you know, for example, in New York City politics they’re, you know, fielding candidates and sort of trying to mobilize votes and really build up power bases, right?

And so these efforts at electoral influence really directly further CCP goals of, you know, placing friends in high places. And so, you know, I think we’ve see reports of, you know, sort of foreign agents, you know—you know, sort of aides to, you know, New York governors, right, being accused of being foreign agents. And this goes beyond that, right? This is about getting people into power, right, down to the local levels of government. And we’ve, you know, again, sort of talking about New York City as an example, right, this is—you know, I’ve seen—we see sort of evidence, right, where Chinese government-linked actors and networks have basically helped—you know, associated with, have helped to elect, you know, at least three local politicians in south Brooklyn in the last three years.

So we’re talking about a Republican state senator, a Democratic city councilwoman, you know, a recently elected state representative. So, sort of crossing party lines, right? And they’re really, you know, shaping—changing the political landscape, and changing—you know, influencing the political leanings, right, of key portions of the electorate. And so there, I think this is—this can have a really powerful sort of aggregating, trickle-up effect, right, where, you know, if you see state and city politicians, right, recently beholden to these actors or increasingly aligned with Beijing’s interests, sort of echoing some of these policy positions, right? That’s going to change the discourse of a populist and an influential state, right?

And I’ll just sort of end with one point, where, you know, this is not just about a national security threat, right? This is also a threat to civil liberties, to sort of political representation, right, that’s central to multicultural democracies, right? If the CCP is able to claim to, you know, represent Chinese American communities and really sort of disproportionately elevating its voice, right, that’s going to repress alternative viewpoints in a diverse Chinese American community, and distort the nature of political representation. But I’ll stop here.

KAHLER: Well, we need to move to Q&A. But let me ask you one last question, which is, you were reaching the point of saying that the Chinese government could repress certain attitudes, certain leanings, politically. And that leads us to this question of transnational repression, which is the way that governments intervene in other countries to suppress, harass, in some cases assassinate, their political opponents in those countries. And there certainly have been cases of that with regard to China.

Freedom House has recently released statistics which suggests, though, that transnational repression has been engaged in by twenty-three governments, including backsliding democracies and not only autocracies. But China was the major perpetrator, according to Freedom House. There were police stations, so-called, in in New York that were set up by the Chinese government. What should be done about transnational repression, not only with regard to China but perhaps other countries as well? I mean, from your viewpoint, though. What could—what could be done better, perhaps, to counter transnational repression?

WONG: I think that’s a tough question. I mean, thinking about the police stations, for example, that, you know, China has been setting up, I think the issue is that some of these, you know, groups gain legitimacy because they’re not only engaging in transnational repression or sort of these overt expressions of Chinese government influence, but also sometimes providing, you know, community services and sort of outreach to the ethnic Chinese communities. And some of this work is—you know, can be legitimate, right?

So I think what we really want to do is be able to, you know, addition to, I think, getting more information, getting more transparency, you know, I think really trying to build sort of a robust civil society network, right, and sort of engaging with grassroots organizations that legitimately represent the interests off, you know, a range of Chinese American community viewpoints, right? And that sort of limits China’s ability sort of step in and, you know, use these organizing networks, you know, to surveil, to monitor, and to repress, you know, Chinese dissidents and engage—I think it, you know, doesn’t eliminate, but it sort of reduces their ability to engage in transnational oppression, if you have a robust sort of network of information and groups that can counter such networks.

KAHLER: Great. Thank you. OK, at this time I want to turn to—invite participants here in Washington and online to join the conversation with your questions. And I want to remind you that this meeting is on the record. So we’ll begin with those in the audience here. And, yes, please. Could you identify yourself before you speak?

Q: Jonathan Cedarbaum, George Washington University Law School.

Thank you. And I had a question from Ms. Brandt about one of the elements in the landscape of foreign influence that you identified at the very beginning of your remarks. And that is the growth of an industry of, I gather, companies that are offering foreign influence services. And I wondered if you could say a little bit more about that industry. Where are those companies based? How do they get their personnel, and so on?

BRANDT: Yeah, sure. I mean, what we’re talking about is the rise of these, you know, commercial actors, that—many of them use, you know, some of the tools that I described—you know, artificial intelligence, big data analytics—to offer influence as a service to a wide array of actors—you know, nation-states, but also their proxies, nonstate actors. And in a fracturing sort of global information environment, to other media companies—you know, to a wide variety of actors. And so, as I said, you know, this kind of complicates the landscape for government because it makes it much more difficult for us to attribute these kinds of activities back to the person or the entity that is sort of the original instigator. And, you know, especially, you know, for the intelligence community, for example, like, our work starts and ends when there’s, you know, attribution back to a foreign actor. And so attribution is kind of this very essential first step. And it’s really sort of complicated that landscape.

KAHLER: Another question? Yes.

Q: Thank you. Alan Raul, practicing lawyer and lecturer at Harvard Law School.

My question is about TikTok. In the Supreme Court’s recent decision, it avoided the issue of the propaganda risk and the risk of algorithmic manipulation of the U.S. population. They avoided it because of the greater First Amendment constitutional concerns. But the evidence that Congress considered in passing the law to ban TikTok, unless it divested the Chinese ownership, it raised the propaganda and the algorithmic risk. How do you assess that risk? And where do you think that will end up? Thank you.

KAHLER: Good question. Anyone? Anyone?

EISEN: Alan is somewhat of a ringer, like many in the room, since I often litigate with him. And I will leave it to others to offer their views of those risks. I will only say that it should be a matter of profound concern, alarm, and even scandal that the United States Congress has made a risk assessment and set out a set of criteria necessary, given that level of risk, for either TikTok to be shut down or to continue. And that included it had to have relatively advanced business negotiations for the sale of TikTok. No such conditions existed. And the Supreme Court had franked that and said, yes, we’re not going to give you legal relief. None of the conditions for risk mitigation authorized the Trump administration to continue TikTok. Personally, I happen to believe that it should continue TikTok.

To Jonathan—who’s also a friend—to Jonathan’s question, much of the information that the Chinese were worried about—the Chinese garnering from TikTok is commercially available, that and more. They can buy what they need. It’s ridiculous to take it away from my daughter. Be that as it may, Congress has spoken. They have established criteria for risk mitigation, including these advanced business negotiations for American purchase. The Supreme Court has said, yes, that’s how it must be. No such conditions exist. And the administration is flaunting the law by allowing this to continue.

It’s another part of that pattern of impunity, Miles, that we were speaking of, that you see in the Adams case, the FCPA, the FARA enforcement, and just the bad role modeling, that suggests to the world America’s open for malign influence. And of course, a very big TikTok investor was reported to be cozy with Trump. And he changed his position after a meeting with that individual—American individual. And he’s been—that’s my answer. It’s not strictly on point. (Laughter.)

KAHLER: Jessica, do you want to add to that at all?

BRANDT: I don’t have a ton to add. I would just say, you know, Congress did have access, as you said to—you know, to a wide array of evidence when it considered its decision and when it legislated.

KAHLER: I think—I think the question is—as in so many other issues of foreign influences—is what is the delta? What is the delta, the additional effect of foreign influence through that medium as compared to X, where there is no longer any flagging, as far as I know, of foreign—you know, foreign government posts? So Twitter has a different audience. I mean, these all have different audiences. And you could argue that the audience perhaps is more vulnerable in this case. But it seems to me that unless the social media platforms in general are behaving differently, as compared to TikTok, then it’s not clear to me what the delta of TikTok is in terms of Chinese propaganda. And I’m not sure how you would assess that, frankly. But Jessica—

BRANDT: Yeah, I mean, on this question about, like, measuring the impact of a particular vector, I think that’s—I understand the appeal of that question. But it’s all about—it’s all counterfactuals, right? It’s very difficult to determine, like, what shapes—many, many, many inputs shape views. So, you know, for example, you know, Russia’s efforts to shape views about the conflict in Ukraine. You know, even if we had—you know, basically, like, we can measure performance, we can measure clicks, we can measure likes, we can, you know, look at surveys of, you know, American attitudes about a particular topic. But drawing that, like, clear, causal link is really challenging. I would argue it’s just—it’s just really hard to do. And so I’m not sure it’s the right, like, question here.

Then there’s also, you know, with TikTok, like, there’s the question of, like—and then generally, like, there’s sort of a question about what are we seeing here and now and what are the risks that we can anticipate? And, like, this is just an important question for the policymakers, like our, you know, legislators in Congress have to weigh as they determine, you know, steps forward—sort of the tradeoffs between the here and now and sort of prospects for future risk.

KAHLER: OK. Let’s take a question from online, if we could.

OPERATOR: No one has questions at this time.

KAHLER: OK. Yes, please.

Q: Hi. Good afternoon. Simone Williams, former Defense Department official.

My question actually follows very nicely after the TikTok. Is a two part, in the sense of we’re assessing this question of foreign influence and democratic governance from the lens of national security imperatives and implications we have there. But how do we better tell this story to people who aren’t looking at it from the national security imperatives? We’ve already said that it has these implications in civil liberties. So that means it impacts everybody. But we don’t do a good job of telling that story. To your point, why should we take your daughter’s TikTok away? Like, they don’t—like, she’s not going to understand that. How are we going to better make that argument? And then the second part of my question is, we’ve clearly identified what the problem is. We’ve identified some of the symptoms. But what is—and how to tackle some of those symptoms. But have we thought through some of the better foundational ways of actually tackling the problem to better—I guess, better combat the influence?

KAHLER: Thank you. Two very large and two very good questions. Anyone want to talk about the first one, which is how do we impress upon those who are not convinced about foreign influence and its threat to democracy?

BRANDT: I mean, I can talk about, you know, how we approached communicating about election threats this cycle, which was to be, you know, as you all saw, you know, we were sort of communicating proactively with an emphasis on transparency. We did it in a routine way. We, you know, sort of tied election security updates to dates on the calendar. So we did it at 100 days, you know, forty-five, thirty, fifteen, in order to sort of ensure that we were providing, like, regular and transparent updates, but also that we weren’t, like, responding to—necessarily, like, responding to particular events, but rather—and this sort of, like, opens you up potentially to, you know, concerns about politicization.

And so we just—we said ahead of time, you’re going to hear from us. And we’re going to give you an update about what it is that we know at these points, you know, on the calendar. And that was an effort to kind of, like, set the landscape, so that when we did—you know, in case we did—and we did have to come in over top to do kind of standalone public notifications when there were, you know, kind of important and very time-sensitive events that we had sort of, like, set the landscape, or sort of laid the table. So they’re sort of, like, communicating about the climate and then coming in and saying, like, hey, there’s a storm happening. (Laughs.) And I think those things kind of worked together.

KAHLER: Audrye, would you want to add to that, in terms of—you were mentioning how you would deal with community groups in the Chinese diaspora, maybe. And how would you convince them this is a threat or a problem that they should be dealing with? Is there a strategy one could deploy?

WONG: Yeah, I think it goes back to, sort of, my earlier point about sort of working from the ground up. So sort of not coming in from top down and saying, like, you know, this is a threat, like, this is all illegitimate. I think it’s acknowledging some of these, you know, grievances or issues that are going on, you know, in these communities or that are salient to these communities, sort of acknowledging that and finding ways to engage constructively. You know, not just during election cycle, right, but that sort of over time.

And I think that is sort of a fundamental way of improving the resilience, right, of these communities to potential, you know, malign influence or interference, because if they have a broader set of resources, you know, other grassroots organizations, sort of, you know, law enforcement is seen as a friend as opposed to a threat, I think that gives them—you know, individuals in this community—more freedom, more sort of flexibility, right, in turning to these resources, as opposed to feeling like, oh, we don’t have anywhere else to go, and sort of fall into sort of the same trap.

KAHLER: All right. And what about the foundational question? The kind of deeper issue of not just these foreign influence, but are there other larger public policy changes that need to be made? Norm.

EISEN: I’ll speak to both of the—both of those questions. In terms of the first one, I think the question is a specific example of a much larger problem of the fragmented communications, and information, and really cultural landscape, where you have—everybody in this room and almost everybody watching online, probably, has a common frame of reference and a shared set of perspectives that make it possible for us to talk about these issues. I thought when I arrived today—my friend Ben Rhodes likes to talk about the blob. But we’re really in the heart of what he refers to as the establishment, the little—even Brookings doesn’t give you a little carafe to go with your—to go with your water. (Laughter.) I spent my whole life clawing my way from the hamburger stand in Los Angeles to be on stage at CFR. So I love it.

How do we penetrate out of that information bubble? That may be the single most critical policy question confronting the U.S. as a nation. And because of some of the features of our information landscape and our disinformation landscape in the U.S.—certainly on this question of malign foreign influence, but much more broadly—you know, we’re in a quite perilous place. We’re at a crossroads as a democracy. And you’re seeing the devastating knock-on effects of the inability of those who are advocating for sound policy to convince a sufficient mass of our countrymen and -women of ideas like those about malign foreign influence. So I think the first question and the second question hinges on—then I’ll let others weigh in—is how do we escape?

I do not believe that it’s possible to reach all Americans anymore. The days of the monoculture, of the three networks being the principal source, and newspapers, radio being the principal sources of information, that’s over. It’s never coming back. I’m actually doing a little experiment. I have Jen Rubin quit the Post because of other reasons, I quit CNN, in part for this reason, to do our own venture in that fragmented cultural landscape, the Contrarian. And in a month, we have accumulated half a million subscribers. And we get some days two million views a day. It’s still a small fraction of Joe Rogan, but we’re trying to be part of this landscape.

And the last thing I’ll say is to lure people in to read our essays about malign foreign influence and the Eric Adams case and FARA and FCPA, we have a cooking column—two cooking columns, pets every Friday. (Laughter.) My first—our first hire was Andy Borowitz, the humor columnist who does a weekly humor column. We’ve just hired a very prominent culture writer who’s going to take over our culture pages. Sports—we’re sending a sports reporter to spring training, talking about the commonalities between spring training and we’re now in spring training for democracy as we embark on this four year fight. I gave away the lead of my Sunday story, which I’m cowriting with this sports columnist who’s going to Florida.

So that question—and if we do not figure out—not reach everybody, but you need to have a governing mass of the American people. And if we cannot persuade a governing mass of the American people of these issues in a pretty short order—we’ve got to build this, we’ve got to break through in the next four years or I fear we’re in for a long winter indeed. If we can’t solve that problem, American democracy, and therefore the world, is going to be in a lot of trouble. But I think we can solve the problem.

BRANDT: Can I just add, you know, I think maybe three things on the communication front. Like, one is just focus on the behavior of foreign actors, what the foreign actors are doing. You know, the second is that this is a bipartisan problem. It affects, you know, candidates, parties, institutions, organizations on both sides of the aisle. You know, so I think there’s—and then I guess maybe, third, that, like, elections are a flashpoint, but they’re not the start or end point of this activity. And it puts a wide array of targets in its crosshairs. I mean, academic institutions, American businesses. And so, you know, I think everyone sort of understands why elections are this important moment, but I think, you know, the aperture is just—it’s just much wider.

And then in terms of, like, what we can do, I think you’re asking kind of about these, like, foundational—like, a sort of broad approach. You know, I think we need to, as I said, like, look at this as an asymmetric competition. And so we need to shore up the sources of our strength—you know, our local journalism, our—you know, the strength of our information environment, our responsiveness to, you know, to civil liberties, et cetera, et cetera. And also our technological competitiveness. I mean, this is a broad competition. And then we need to organize ourselves, you know, against the problem. I think, you know, we’ve seen government begin to do this with the creation of a handful of institutions to address the problem. But there’s more that can be done. And then go on offense, I think, in the places that are most conducive, you know, to our success.

KAHLER: Let me—let me just add a sort of pessimistic note to those comments. Which is—(laughter)—

EISEN: Oh dear.

KAHLER: At the end of the special report I mention that many of these issues of foreign influence would be lessened or eliminated if we could fix underlying problems in our democracy, which I think is what you’re getting at in your second question. For example, campaign finance. The possibility—we didn’t talk about that—the possibility that foreign influence could be exerted through campaign finance. Well, if there weren’t so much dark money in campaigns in this country, which is now a big problem, a big issue for many people, foreign influence wouldn’t be a problem, or it wouldn’t be as big a problem, because we’d have more transparency about campaign finance. You can go right down the list, which I do very briefly at the end of the special report.

But to solve these problems—they’ve been on the agenda for a very long time and we haven’t been able to solve them. These are fundamental problems for our democracy overall. The other issue is politicization, and how these issues of foreign influence get politicized immediately, very often. And I highlight some research in the report which is actually quite depressing. You would think people would rally around the flag and decide, oh, it’s terrible to have foreign influence. We’ve got to do something about this. But in fact, researchers—experimental and also all kinds of research has been done. And it’s been pretty clear that it depends on who is benefiting from the foreign influence.

And if you benefit from the foreign influence, very often, you don’t say anything negative about it. You’re actually quite happy to get it. And you can see that in many other countries, smaller countries. Look at Romania’s recent election, for example, right? So if you’re the beneficiary—I doubt that the AfD in Germany is upset about the intervention by Vice President Vance in German politics. Other parties are very upset. The AfD is not. So that’s a problem as well, right? We think everybody should be concerned about foreign influence, but in fact, empirically, it depends on who is benefiting from foreign influence.

So next question. Oh, you want to do one online? OK, we have a question from the online audience.

OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Wafa Ben-Hassine.

Q: Hello. Thank you so much. My name is Wafa Ben-Hassine, with Omidyar Network.

I really appreciated this discussion today. As many of you emphasize, we find ourselves in a vastly different landscape where the new administration doesn’t seem to have issue with foreign influence, and even Congress seems to gloss over the issue. Some researchers working on the topic are retreating due to harassment. And journalists are also discouraged with the information bubbles online and harassment directed at them too. So which leads me to ask, what role do you see for civil society actors, such as nonprofit organizations, including international ones, to ensure a more honest, truthful, and fact-based, evidence-based information environment? Thank you.

KAHLER: Well, this goes back to your whole-of-society issue, Jessica, so—

BRANDT: Yeah, academic researchers provide, you know, an incredibly important public service when they highlight these campaigns. I think also, you know, when we talk about, like, trust in terms of communicating about these issues, I think it’s very important that—you know, government will go out and speak from its experience and from what it’s seeing. But it’s helpful when there are, you know, independent journalists, civil society researchers, academics, companies, you know, looking at the landscape, from their, you know, unique vantages, and saying what it is—what they see. And when those things are sort of aligned, I think that sort of increases, you know, trust broadly, you know, in the kinds of messaging that folks are getting.

And also, like, I would just say, like, you know, the intelligence community isn’t sitting on the internet, like, watching—I would often hear, you know, from folks, like, how come—why are we hearing from, you know, Microsoft, for example, first about, you know, a foreign influence campaign? You know, and the answer is, like, the intelligence community has a unique vantage, but it’s certainly not the only vantage. And for all kinds of reasons, related to privacy and civil liberties, like, reasons that are—you know, we should not want our intelligence community to be, you know, sitting on the internet, you know, watching First Amendment-protected speech. And so there are just—there are things that, you know, companies have unique vantage, and places where, you know, researchers are uniquely positioned to provide insights to the broader polity.

KAHLER: Audrye.

WONG: I think Jessica covered it all. I would just add on a pessimistic note that that, you know, it’s not—sort of the challenging environment for civil society, and sort of all of these groups operating, you know, with these sort of shifts and policies, does not just sort of, you know, create a threat of foreign influence at home, but it’s also just undermining, you know, U.S. influence globally. It’s sort of giving China an even better opportunity to step in and fill in the gap, you know, to push its own narratives, to say, you know, look, the U.S. is unreliable. China is here to help you. And we can achieve win-win cooperation. So I think that’s sort of an even broader spectrum of concerns.

KAHLER: Norm, did you want to add?

EISEN: I do, but it’s such a vast question I’m not sure of the proper vector of attack. It seems to me that, as I say, U.S. democracy is at a crossroads, and with it global democracy. As Miles knows, I wrote a long report in which I grapple also—in the post-election period—grappled with some of the international dimensions. Who will step up, given this level of threat to democracy? Can the torch be passed? And so forth. I think here—and I think the lesson—we looked at—we looked at Poland, and Brazil, and the Czech Republic, where I was ambassador, all of which in recent years have halted democratic backsliding and ejected, at the polls and in court, autocratic regimes or initiatives. And also Hungary and Turkey, where that failed.

And among the lessons—why does it work in some places and not in others, and what are the lessons for the United States and the global implications? And it seemed to us that there were a set of priorities. There are a thousand and one things you can do, but there’s a set of seven priorities that require a whole-of-society investment. And that’s why I, at State Democracy Defenders Fund, have launched more than a dozen pieces of litigation—we haven’t lost yet, we’ve been very selective, maybe that means I’m not litigating enough—to defend the rule of law. That is number one. You must protect the rule of law because if autocratic forces take a hold of courts, prosecutors, judges, they will use them as a weapon, and you are not able to use them as a brake.

You must focus on elections, we’ve talked about that, because that’s the ejection button. You’ve got to deal with, at a whole-of-society basis, think tanks thinking, do tanks—like Democracy Defenders, litigating, acting, communicators communicating, business stepping up, religion. You must speak out against the corruption, that is the topic—was the topic of my initial question. Every tyrant, every autocrat, has an oligarch, often many. Every Trump has a Musk. Civic and media space must be rigorously protected, including the ability to have conversations like this one. And we have to defend our media outlets, too many of whom are bowing down, kissing the ring, bending the knee.

And then you have to fight for pluralistic governance. You need to combat disinformation. Every tyrant has a scapegoat. That’s why my first lawsuit was to defend birthright citizenship. It’s unconstitutional targeting that Trump is doing. And finally, you have to explain—you have to demonstrate democracy delivers, dictatorship doesn’t. And those—there’s 994 other things you can do. Those seven things, with a whole-of-society approach, including civil society formulating the strategies for others to litigate or act, that’s what’s required. We don’t know if America domestically and in our global leadership role is up to it. We’re about to find out. I am not pessimistic. I think we’ve seen—the press doesn’t always cover it. We cover it on the Contrarian. I think we’ve seen a lot of green shoots these first thirty days. But no one knows what the denouement will be.

KAHLER: Let me close with another pessimistic note, which is—(laughter)— what the United States current administration has done at USAID, for example, and the National Endowment for Democracy has had a tremendous impact already on NGOs around the world, including NGOs that, for example, scrutinized policy in China. Have been, as Jessica suggested, valuable sources of information of all kinds that cannot be obtained elsewhere.

So we think of these civil society organizations as sort of out there floating in this transnational, you know, cyberspace of some kind, or space of some kind, but in fact they’re dependent, often on government funding of some kind. And they’re certainly dependent on access, which can only be granted by governments. And around the world backsliding democracies—not just autocracies, but backsliding democracies—have been cracking down on NGOs and the access that NGOs have to their society. So that is definitely a risk, I think, going forward. And I’m less optimistic than normal on this point.

We have time maybe for one question. No, I’m getting the—I’m getting the nod that we don’t. So thank you so much. You’re welcome to come and speak with the panelists, those of you here in the audience, following the session. But thank you so much for joining us at today’s meeting in this very frigid afternoon in Washington. Thank you, Jessica, Norm, and Audrye for joining me on the panel. And please note that the video and transcript of today’s meeting will be posted on the CFR website. Thank you all very much. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.