Somehow it’s a crime when Russia does it to us, but good ‘information ops’ when we want to discredit Beijing’s Belt & Road initiatives worldwide
Since at least 2016, foreign interference in American elections and civil society have become central to American political discourse. The issue is taken extremely seriously by the U.S. government, which has levied sanctions and called out foreign adversaries for sowing “discord and chaos” through their propaganda efforts.
But apparently Washington takes a different view when it comes to American propaganda operations in foreign countries. On Monday, the House passed HR 1157, the “Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund,” by a bipartisan 351-36 majority. This legislation authorizes more than $1.6 billion for the State Department and USAID over the next five years to, among other purposes, subsidize media and civil society sources around the world that counter Chinese “malign influence” globally.
That’s a massive spend — about twice, for example, the annual operating expenditure of CNN. If passed into law it would also represent a large increase in federal spending on international influence operations. While it’s hard to total all of the spending on U.S. influence operations across agencies, the main coordinating body for U.S. information efforts, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), has an annual budget of less than $100 million.
There is obviously no issue with the U.S. government presenting its own public view of what China is doing around the world, and doing so as forcefully as needed. But this bill goes beyond that by subsidizing “independent media and civil society” and other information operations in foreign countries. Indeed, this is already routine. The Global Engagement Center, which will likely play a strong role in implementing the bill, spends more than half its budget on such grants, and USAID, which will also play a lead role, makes grants to foreign media and civil society organizations a key part of its efforts. HR 1157 would supercharge these programs.
Crucially, HR 1157 doesn’t seem to contain any requirement that U.S. government financing to foreign media be made transparent to citizens of foreign countries (although there is a requirement to report grants to certain U.S. congressional committees). Thus, it’s possible that the program could in some cases be used to subsidize covert anti-Chinese messaging in a manner similar to the way Russia is accused of covertly funding anti-Ukrainian messaging by U.S. media influencers.
Such anti-Chinese messaging could cover a wide range of bread-and-butter political issues in foreign countries. The definition of “malign influence” in the bill is extremely broad. For example, program funds could support any effort to highlight the “negative impact” of Chinese economic and infrastructure investment in a foreign country. Or it could fund political messaging against Chinese contractors involved in building a port, road, or hospital, for example as part of Beijing’s globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative.
Because some dimensions of U.S. information operations could be classified, it can be difficult to get a complete picture of the full range of what they look like on the ground. But a 2021 “vision document” on psychological operations and civil affairs from the First Special Forces Command at Fort Bragg gives a fascinating glimpse.
The document provides a case study (or “competition vignette”) of what an integrated effort to counter Chinese influence could look like in the fictional African country of Naruvu. In the vignette, members of a Special Forces Civil Affairs team spot a billboard with a picture of a port and Chinese characters. Quickly determining that the Chinese are investing in a new deep-water port in Naruvu, the 8th Psyop Group at Fort Bragg’s Information Warfare Center (IWC) works with local and U.S. government partners to immediately develop an influence campaign to “discredit Chinese activities.”
