Don’t Hype the Disinformation Threat

“Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base,” Representative Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the news platform Puck in March.

Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat and former House Speaker, made a related claim earlier this year when commenting on protesters who were demanding a cease-fire in Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. “For them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin’s message,” Pelosi told CNN, invoking the Russian president. She added: “Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine. It’s about Putin’s message. I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia.”

Such statements, from across the political spectrum, have several troubling things in common. They blame foreign interference for problems whose origins are clearly domestic. They imply that foreign disinformation is effective at influencing a significant proportion of U.S. citizens; it is not. And they are often presented without evidence.

To be clear, foreign influence operations can impose some costs on open societies that encourage the unfettered exchange of ideas. But the self-serving and misleading way that some public officials and researchers talk about propaganda does not serve American democracy, especially during a contentious election season. In fact, when officials exaggerate the efficacy and impact of foreign influence operations, the ones who benefit the most are the very regimes that produce it.

To avoid inadvertently assisting adversaries, American officials and investigators must steer clear of two pitfalls. Downplaying the threat of foreign disinformation campaigns risks making it easier for bad actors to take advantage of an unprepared public. But the reverse is also true: overstating the power of propaganda risks amplifying not only the original falsehood, but also an even more corrosive and polarizing narrative—that American politicians are somehow remote-controlled, and that U.S. citizens don’t have agency.

WHO’S PARROTING WHOM?

Often, Russian disinformation echoes talking points by the American far right, rather than the other way around. Last fall, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, wrote on X, “Anyone who votes to fund Ukraine is funding the most corrupt money scheme of any foreign war in our country’s history.” She included a link to a debunked article published by the Strategic Culture Foundation, a Russian intelligence front already sanctioned by the Treasury Department for its role in interfering with U.S. elections in 2020. The article falsely claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisers had bought two yachts for $75 million. Two weeks after Green’s tweet, Senator J. D. Vance, a Republican from Ohio, repeated the false claim on a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, a right-wing provocateur who served as a high-level adviser to President Donald Trump. “There are people who would cut Social Security, throw our grandparents into poverty,” Vance fulminated. “Why? So that one of Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?”

At first glance, it would appear that Vance and Greene were indeed parroting Russian propaganda disseminated by an organization linked to the Kremlin that had been sanctioned by the U.S. government. In fact, the yacht rumor had been quietly circulating on the conspiratorial fringes of the American right for some time. Vance himself had made the claim as early as July 2023. Speaking at the Turning Point Action Conference, a far-right gathering in West Palm Beach, Florida, Vance told a packed auditorium that he did not wish to “immiserate our grandmothers and grandfathers to send another yacht to Volodymyr Zelensky.” Five months later, the Russians picked up the right-wing talking point, dressed it up as a reported fact, and amplified it.

This dynamic, whereby American conspiracy theorists and foreign intelligence operatives feed off one another in a vicious circle, is not new. During the Cold War, the KGB carried out active measures against Moscow’s rivals, exploiting existing social fissures by, say, picking up and amplifying rumors in a target country. Then as now, foreign operatives rarely invent political divisions or conspiracy theories: they magnify existing ones.

Often, Russian disinformation echoes talking points by the American far right, rather than the other way around.

In the 1980s, the Soviet and the East German security services conducted a propaganda campaign code-named Operation Denver, promulgating the baseless claim that the U.S. Army created HIV in a biological warfare lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland. This pernicious and polarizing myth had a far reach. In 2005, long after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the American pop stars Kanye West and Adam Levine released a hit single that included the lyric “I know the government administered AIDS.” But it would be a mistake to attribute that rumor, or the extent of its reach, to outside influence peddlers. Historians have demonstrated that communist intelligence agencies did not invent the myth. Rather, the performers latched on to a conspiracy theory that had emerged on its own in the United States, after far-left activists had concocted the story and initially spread it. The fire had already been lit; the communists merely added fuel.

In a counterintuitive twist, for U.S. adversaries, a propaganda campaign may receive its biggest boost after it has been uncovered. The U.S. government exposed and sanctioned the Strategic Culture Foundation as a front for Russian intelligence well before Greene cited it as a source on social media. Yet Russia’s foreign intelligence agency did not shut down the exposed front; it doubled down by pushing out more fake news stories. Russian intelligence officers are likely designing their campaigns so that such falsehoods will gain even more traction once the subterfuge is revealed. Once exposed as propaganda, a phony story about Zelensky’s advisers’ purchasing luxury yachts serves to amplify the idea that politicians, political commentators, and some significant portion of the voting public are unwitting stooges of foreign influence or even in cahoots with the enemy. More than foreign interference itself, it is this corrosive mistrust that poses the gravest threat to American democracy.

TONE DOWN THE HYPE

As the U.S. presidential election approaches, an unhealthy fixation on foreign disinformation has researchers and organizations rushing to publicize bold claims about the reach of foreign influence. There are powerful incentives to overhype the extent and power of foreign disinformation campaigns. For some investigative outfits and firms, a big exposé can bring press coverage, bigger budgets, investment dollars, grants, and reputational gains, even if the exposed activity does not warrant so much attention.

Overhyped reports can make Russia’s active measures that much more successful. Before exposing a foreign influence operation, public officials and analysts at research organizations and security companies must ask themselves a few hard questions. Are their claims directly backed up by hard evidence—evidence that they are able and willing to share with the broader research community? Will exposure breathe new life into a concocted story? And will it undermine the public’s trust in public institutions and the media, thus serving the interests of adversaries?

Journalists, too, should not draw dubious lines from cause to effect, repeat shaky claims about who is responsible, assert without appropriate evidence that an attempted disinformation operation was successful, quote sources without scrutinizing their assertions, or speculate about why a suspected adversary may have engaged in deceptive practices.

News outlets covering the investigative reportage of other organizations and statements by public officials must take greater care not to repeat misleading claims. The very incident that prompted McCaul’s remarks about his own party being “infected” by Russian propaganda illustrates this dynamic. NBC News reported on McCaul’s comments, subtitling its article, “How Republican lawmakers echo Russian propaganda”; the story claimed that Republicans were “parroting” covert foreign disinformation. Outlets ranging from The Wall Street Journal to the BBC have made similar claims. A closer look at the facts in these cases, however, reveals the opposite: that Russian disinformation was parroting the American far right.

Disrupting propaganda efforts by malign foreign actors is important work, but it must be done thoroughly, accurately, and proportionally. Exaggerating the effects of foreign influence campaigns serves only the foreign operatives. It fosters a conspiratorial outlook, in which shadowy enemies are supposedly creating wedge issues, dissenters are merely parroting foreign spies, and trust in open democratic debate is eroded. Most important, false claims of clandestine foreign interference absolve U.S. leaders of responsibility for the health of our political discourse.